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Apple M1 Ultra

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Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#751

Post by kllrnohj »

jsjohnst wrote: post #738
inkyoto wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 Ultra is 64Gb extra, not 32. > keep in mind that a 1x32GB DIMM sells for less than 150$ Keep in mind that M1 Pro/Max/Ultra is LPDDR5 6400 ( https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... ) connected by a 512 bit memory controller. Whereas is a kit of 2x 32 GB LPDDR5 4800 (I could not easily locate a quote for 1x 64Gb LPDDR5 4800 DIMM, leave alone 6400) retails for USD 548 ( https://www.newegg.com/…

I remember a slide mentioning I think “up to 7.4gb/sec SSD read/write speed” or similar, which drastically reduces the pool of comparison SSDs. Intel Optane meets those specs, as do a few other brands I hadn’t heard of previously. In the later case, a 2TB version seemed to be $350-400. Take this for what it’s worth, but SSD is going to be more than $100 extra cost imho.

That's pretty much the speed that Samsung advertises for the 980 Pro: https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-st...

And what WD advertises for the Black SN850: https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-b...

And what Seagate advertises for the FireCuda 530: https://www.seagate.com/products/gaming-drives/pc-gaming/fir...

And what Gigabyte advertises for the Gen4 7000s: https://www.gigabyte.com/Solid-State-Drive/AORUS-Gen4-7000s-...

etc...

They aren't $100 for 1TB, no, but a lot of them are around $150. Which would be a lot less than +$100 to go from 512GB to 1TB, too. It's $40 to go from the 500GB SN850 to the 1TB SN850, for example.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#752

Post by kllrnohj »

jsjohnst wrote: post #743
kllrnohj wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those fans are unlikely to break 5w combined.

Guess we will see once one is available to be tested, but I doubt that’s the case. I was guessing 5-8W each, but I could be wrong of course.

Most PC fans are 1-2w. Given the claims of "near silent", I think it's plenty safe to say these are not 5,000+ RPM rippers that are going to be in the 5-8W each range.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#753

Post by the_af »

threeseed wrote: post #711
anaisbetts wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point can we finally admit that Apple's GPU claims just aren't....true? Like, every Apple keynote they put up incredible performance claims, and every time people actually get their hands on the product, it doesn't even come close to holding water in any domain where GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf)

> GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf) No one plays games on a Mac. And it has nothing to do with GPU performance but rather the fact that the audience simply isn't interested in gaming on it and so there is no economic incentive to target them. So the GPU performance that matters to Mac users and is relevant to Apple is not games but rather content creation, production etc.

> No one plays games on a Mac.

My wife does (I play games on Linux).

I have friends who own Macs who reluctantly dual boot to Windows just to play some games -- they would completely ditch Windows if they could just play every game on Mac.

I see there are Mac games on Steam.

All of this points to the situation being more nuanced than "no one plays games on Mac".

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#754

Post by airza »

threeseed wrote: post #711
anaisbetts wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point can we finally admit that Apple's GPU claims just aren't....true? Like, every Apple keynote they put up incredible performance claims, and every time people actually get their hands on the product, it doesn't even come close to holding water in any domain where GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf)

> GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf) No one plays games on a Mac. And it has nothing to do with GPU performance but rather the fact that the audience simply isn't interested in gaming on it and so there is no economic incentive to target them. So the GPU performance that matters to Mac users and is relevant to Apple is not games but rather content creation, production etc.

Huh? I know lots of people who play games on a mac.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#755

Post by jsjohnst »

kllrnohj wrote: post #751
jsjohnst wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a slide mentioning I think “up to 7.4gb/sec SSD read/write speed” or similar, which drastically reduces the pool of comparison SSDs. Intel Optane meets those specs, as do a few other brands I hadn’t heard of previously. In the later case, a 2TB version seemed to be $350-400. Take this for what it’s worth, but SSD is going to be more than $100 extra cost imho.

That's pretty much the speed that Samsung advertises for the 980 Pro: https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-st... And what WD advertises for the Black SN850: https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-b... And what Seagate advertises for the FireCuda 530: https://www.seagate.com/products/gaming-drives/pc-gaming/fir... And what Gigabyte advertises for the Gen4 7000s: https://www.gig…

I checked the first two and it’s 7,000 read / 5,000 write. Pretty sure Apple said read AND write, which would be a lot faster than those. I might go back and rewatch the keynote, but I still thinking we are arguing pointlessly as Apple has always overcharged for SSD and RAM upgrades vs the price you’d pay elsewhere. Thanks for the DV though even when what I stated was right! ;)

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#756

Post by opless »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #486
OOPMan wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would not help. The reason proton works so well is because Linux on x86 and Windows on x86....are both on x86. Proton on ARM Mac's would involve Rosetta and while that does a surprisingly good job of running x86 on ARM I'm not sure it's up to the job of running games at high speed...

Games seem playable running through Microsoft’s inferior x86 compatibility layer in a Windows ARM VM on M1 Pro/Max, so I don’t see how running games through Rosetta would be any worse.

Real world example M1 Max;

GTAV on Win11 Arm VM - okay, but not great.

GTAV on Crossover - much much better, lack of joystick support (but that's a crossover issue)

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#757

Post by rbanffy »

kllrnohj wrote: post #537
oneplane wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are a lot more parameters here than just 'there are two chips and one is the bestestst', like the availability you pointed out. There is raw performance, but there is also performance per watt, availability and scalability (which is both good and bad - M1 is available, but there is no M1 Ultra cloud available). If you want a multi-use setup, an RTX makes more sense than most other options, if you can get…

For the market this is aimed at, performance per watt is really irrelevant. Performance per dollar or just outright performance are far more important the vast majority of the time. That's how we ended up with 125w+ CPUs and 300w GPUs in the first place.

> performance per watt is really irrelevant.

Watts are dollars that you'll continue spending over the system life. It matters because you can only draw so many amps per rack and there will be a point when, in order to get more capacity, you'll need to build another datacenter.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#758

Post by superkuh »

MBCook wrote: post #533
nintendo1889 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That page says that both of those apps are supported.

I believe Dropbox was in the last few months. Which was still over a year after public release of the M1.

I'm sure most extremely popular corporate software has been ported. But that's just a tiny fraction of the available software. I know most Apple users don't try anything outside their walled garden so it doesn't make a difference to them, but the vast majority of possible software has not and will not ever be ported to a form that can run on the M1 architecture. Whereas on x86 Apple computers you can compile and run pretty much everything.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#759

Post by Croftengea »

kllrnohj wrote: post #386
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of Apple's historic MO has been to not invest in areas they don't see themselves having a competitive advantage in. Now that they can make gaming happen with a very low wattage budget they may well try to enter that space in earnest.

The gaming performance of the existing M1 GPUs is, well, crap (like far behind the other laptop competition, to say nothing of desktop GPUs). The Ultra probably isn't changing that, since it's very unlikely to be a hardware problem and instead a software ecosystem & incentives problem.

Yes, it's "crap" not because GPU is slow but rather that most triple A title games are optimized for Windows. So it's difficult to expect a good performance from a game that runs with API conversion layer(s) (Windows -> Mac) and then CPU emulation (x86 -> arm).

So publishers/developers need to make more native games. Even though every Mac port will probably make 1/10th revenue of a Windows title I guess Mac users would be happy to pay more for better games. I certainly would.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#760

Post by Macha »

jsjohnst wrote: post #742
Macha wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. They've been in stock for months here (though the retailers are charging the inflated prices too), e.g. https://www.computeruniverse.net/en/c/hardware-components/nv...

All of those listed are WAY above MSRP! MSRP is $1,499 in the U.S. and £1,399 in the U.K.

The question was if they were available, not if they were available at MSRP (thanks downvoters, the comment even called out the price was inflated...). My understanding is that until recently in the US you basically had to buy from scalpers as the stocks had none at any price unless you stalked for restocks.

They're overpriced for sure, and that's the only reason the M1U pricing looks equivalent rather than exorbitant

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