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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

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Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#531

Post by dylan604 »

oefrha wrote: post #190
alwillis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention 5950X alone without cooling ($799) costs almost as much as an entry level MacBook Air The M1-based Mac mini starts at $699.

Yeah, forgot about that. Everything else being equal (ostensibly), the M1 Mac Mini is $200 cheaper than the crappy Intel i5 Mac Mini, more if you upgrade the Intel CPU. As an owner of a decked out 2019 Mac Mini, in hindsight I made a shitty purchase decision.

No matter what the purchase, I always force myself to stop comparing for a bit of time after the purchase. By the time I pull the trigger, I have shopped and compared as best I can. Inevitably, as soon as I complete the sale, one of the places I was looking will have lowered the price or release the next-gen.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#532

Post by pwthornton »

testfoobar wrote: post #509
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #4

From the article's conclusion... "The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, and battles it with AMD’s new Zen3, winning some, losing some. And in the mobile space in particular, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in either ST or MT performance – at least within the same power budgets." This is the first in-depth review validating all the hype. Assuming the user experie…

Chrome and 20-50 tabs, and my Intel Macbook can be used as a blow dryer. Assuming Chrome's power needs don't change, it seems that the only way to control for overheating an M1 is going to be throttling down - slowing everything down. Curious how M1 machines feel during day to day usage.

The reviews I saw said that using Chrome gets good better life, but if you want great battery life you need to use something like Safari.

I switched to Safari a few years ago, and I couldn't be happier. Chrome's performance and battery life are atrocious. I only use Chrome when I need something specific from it.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#533

Post by heavyset_go »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #443
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, but the "whole concept of the machine" that I'm typing this on was to run Windows... 7 (I think?); that's a completely artificial limitation, as shown by running Ubuntu on it years after the hardware went out of support.

I'm not sure what the problem is, then. You have a device that does what you (or the GP) want, which is to install any operating system, tinker, etc. Is the worry that Apple and its practices will dominate the industry to the point that you literally will not be able to turn on your current machine and use it?

macOS deprecates support for Macs that are 5-7 years old with every release. I put Linux on them when new macOS releases no longer support them, and they're perfectly good machines afterwards.

When macOS deprecates support for these ARM Macs in 5-7 years, Linux isn't an option for them unless Apple puts in a lot of work to support a mainline Linux kernel on their hardware. Apple has said they won't support running other operating systems on these ARM Macs unless they're virtualized.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#534

Post by sumedh »

markholmes wrote: post #523
megablast wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is just awful on a mac. I am not sure why anyone uses it. FF is much nicer to use.

I’ve been using Safari as my daily driver for some time and it’s quite nice to use. Don’t be afraid to give it another chance.

Does Safari have extensions like Ad Blocker and does it have good developer tools?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#535

Post by heavyset_go »

jb1991 wrote: post #415
AsyncAwait wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are not the ultimate decider of what to do with the machine. If you owned it, you could do anything outside of harm.

But renting implies you are continuing to pay money and will some day need to return it.

There's a direct parallel you can draw between software licensing and leasing.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#536

Post by kag0 »

freehunter wrote: post #497
nwlieb wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a 1-1 comparison? If the ARM compile is compiling to ARM binaries then there might be less work/optimizations since it is a newer architecture. Seems like a test with two variables that changed. Would be interesting to see them both cross-compile to their respective opposite archs.

If everything else is the same, that seems like a solid reason to prefer the ARM architecture even setting aside 1:1 comparisons. Isn't faster compilation and execution the whole point of a faster processor?

The assertion is that compilation might be faster since there are fewer optimizations, and therefore runtime would be slower.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#537

Post by sudosysgen »

314 wrote: post #458
kllrnohj wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to the single time the 5950X's multi-threaded performance was compared then sure, the 105W TDP is fair. But you should also be calling that out, or you're being misleading, as the majority of the 5950X numbers in the article were single-threaded results, and it did not appear in most of the multi-threaded comparisons at all. But in multi-threaded workloads it also absolutely obliterates the M1. Ma…

It's really not clear what you are trying to argue here. The number of single-threaded benchmarks are irrelevant to this point: when the M1 was compared to the 5950X in a multithreaded comparison: * The 5950X was 2x faster * The 5950X was using 4x the power (28W system vs 105W+ for the processor). * The M1 only has 4 performance cores, the 5950X has 16. Even counting the high-efficiency cores as full cores in the com…

You're being obtuse. The only test you're using is Geekbench, which just isn't useful for these kinds of comparisons.

In other multicore benchmarks, the M1 gets beaten by parts with lower TDPs by AMD, and the 5950X has something like 3 to 4+ times more performance.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#538

Post by testfoobar »

megablast wrote: post #515
testfoobar wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome and 20-50 tabs, and my Intel Macbook can be used as a blow dryer. Assuming Chrome's power needs don't change, it seems that the only way to control for overheating an M1 is going to be throttling down - slowing everything down. Curious how M1 machines feel during day to day usage.

Chrome is just awful on a mac. I am not sure why anyone uses it. FF is much nicer to use.

I particularly like Chrome profiles. I have a few profiles with their own bookmarks/histories/open tabs/etc. For example, one of my profiles is "Shopping". Another is "Work" and yet another is "Social Media".

Context switching profiles at a macro level - as opposed to intermingling work/shopping/social - is beneficial to me.

When I switch over to "Shopping", I have my tabs on whatever purchase I'm researching open. I can drop the whole project for a few weeks and resume it later right where I left off. None of it can bleed over into my "Work" profile. I like the separation. Helps keep my head clear.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#539

Post by heavyset_go »

js2 wrote: post #339
tinus_hn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have already stated they won’t: “We’re not direct booting an alternate operating system,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “Purely virtualization is the route. [...]” https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma...

I realize Federighi's reply seems to rule out Linux, but the context of the question seemed to be with respect to Boot Camp and Windows. My take is that Apple doesn't want to continue to invest in Boot Camp, especially since Microsoft apparently isn't willing to license ARM Windows for this use case. It's not clear to me that the new Macs won't allow booting Linux if the Linux community can figure out how to do it. T…

> It's not clear to me that the new Macs won't allow booting Linux if the Linux community can figure out how to do it.

Mainline Linux support requires a lot of work from vendors. Check out the ARM SoC Linux market for an abundance of examples of this problem. Many of the devices will be forever stuck an old kernel fork and will never run a mainline kernel.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#540

Post by kllrnohj »

adrian_b wrote: post #461
egsmi wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very misleading statement. They primarily only used the 5950X in single-core tests, and in those tests it doesn't come remotely close to 105W. That’s true but keep in mind this is the power going into the AMD CPU only. The power number measured for the mini was the entire system power pulled from the wall, so that 28W included memory, conversion inefficiencies and everything. That’s crazy.

Actually a significant power, maybe around 20 W, is consumed by the I/O chip, which consumes a lot because it is made in an old process. In 2021, when the laptop Zen 3 will be introduced, that will have a much better power efficiency, being made all in 7 nm. Of course, it will still not match the power efficiency of M1, which is due both to its newer 5-nm process and to its lower clock frequency at the same performan…

> which consumes a lot because it is made in an old process.

And also because it's doing a lot. Infinity fabric for the chiplet design isn't cheap, for example. A single-die monolithic design avoids that (which is why that's what AMD did for the Zen2 mobile CPUs).

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