Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#861

Post by p1necone » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #688

p1necone wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair idle power is really important for a lot of use cases. In a compute focused cloud environment you might be able to have most of your hardware pegged by compute most of the time, but outside of that CPUs spend most of their time either very far under 100% capacity, or totally idle. In order to actually calculate real efficiency gains you'd probably have to measure power usage under various scenarios though,…

That's not really being fair, because the metric is presented to look like traditional perf/watt. And idle is not so important in supercomputers and cloud compute nodes which get optimized to keep them busy at all costs. But even in cases where it is important, averaging between the two might be reasonable but multiplying the loaded efficiency with the idle efficiency increase is ludicrous. A meaningless unit. I can'…

Yep 100% agree with you - see my last sentence. Just trying to clarify that the issue here isn't that idle power consumption isn't important, it's the nonsense math.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#862

Post by ksml » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

soylentnewsorg wrote: post #852

falkaer wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M1 (laptops) do emulate x86, and the M1 (chip) has a few x86 specific instructions to improve emulation performance

I love how you added "laptop" to make your statement... still false. There is a program running on macos that literally recompiles x86 binaries to arm, then the m1 executes the arm code. the m1 does not execute x86 binaries. period. it only runs arm binaries.

No, parent comment isn't false, even if the wording could be more precise. It is true that M1 CPUs do not execute x86 instructions, but the machines do, in effect, execute x86 binaries. Also, M1 does have added instructions for TSO to improve performance of translated code.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#863

Post by pxc » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #835

pxc wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Arch is a v]ery nice OS for server stuff if you're brave enough to wrangle pacman. if you're running a homelab and regularly 'wrangling' a package manager which is broken/incomplete by design, why are you choosing distros based on package availability rather than on the quality of the tooling? surely you can package anything you need to use

I could, but the time I'd spend getting it working on a stable distro vastly outweighs the time I'd spend setting up my pacman.conf and backing it up to git. When I say 'wrangle', I'm more talking about the instability and frequency of updates. It's definitely only for homelab use, I wouldn't ever consider deploying this on a larger scale.

I guess preexisting availability is important when you don't know what you'll want to use, and you're also interested in trying a lot of things that you may not want to keep around for long

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#864

Post by cush » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

EvgeniyZh wrote: post #839

cush wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "claims"? M1 has been out for a year. There are countless real-world demonstrations. Apple left Intel in the dust. Intel doesn't know how to make a cool mobile chip.

I mean that top Apple chip outperforms top Intel chip by 9% percent single core performance and 34% multicore on similar TDP. M1 is very energy efficient, and MBA is very cool cheap typewriter, but Apple hasn't outperformed Intel on high load. So yeah, basically Apple has chip that slightly outperform Intel at high load and also can be very low power. Performance-wise (that what the parent message was about) the latt…

> typewriter

Now that you mention, I remember my grandfather used to sit us around the fire and regale us with stories of how he used to edit 60fps 8k video on his old typewriter. I pulled it out of the attic just now and ran geekbench, and you're right, my new MBP is basically the same.

Thanks bud for bringing so much insight to this conversation!

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#865

Post by Mindwipe » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 11:31 PM UTC

chaoskanzlerin wrote: post #777

Mindwipe wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be a long time before it makes sense to buy a non-Apple laptop. A laptop that can do some light gaming is not a niche requirement, and ultimately Apple decided to completely turn it's back on that market with the ARM transition.

The architecture isn't to blame; it's the 32-bit stuff that breaks a fair amount of Steam games, and Vulkan/graphics engines lacking, both of which are...Apple being Apple

The architecture is ultimately to blame for "you can't log into Windows to fix Apple being Apple" however.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#866

Post by nimchimpsky » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #245

blakesterz wrote: post #100

I just can't figure out what I'm missing on the "M1 is so fast" side of things. For years I worked* on an Ubuntu desktop machine I built myself. Early this year I switched to a brand new M1 mini and this this is slower and less reliable than the thing I built myself that runs Ubuntu. My Ubuntu machine had a few little issues every no and then. My Mini has weird bugs all the time. e.g. Green Screen Crashes when I have…

> I just can't figure out what I'm missing on the "M1 is so fast" side of things. Two reasons: 1. M1 is a super fast laptop chip. It provides mid-range desktop performance in a laptop form factor with mostly fanless operation. No matter how you look at it, that's impressive. 2. Apple really dragged their feet on updating the old Intel Macs before the transition. People in the Mac world (excluding hackintosh) were stu…

Its literally the 25th fastest cpu available across all cpu's ? According to the geekbench scores. I'm not sure how you can say its not that fast.

Its a laptop cpu, with very very low power draw and its the 25th fastest cpu ACROSS all cpus.

Its the biggest generational leap in cpus for 20 years.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#867

Post by saila » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

pxc wrote: post #593

saila wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to run Docker on an older Intel Mini and it was fine--a little slow but usable. I've also used it on other Intel Macs without major issues, including running giant Java apps and SQL Server. On my M1 Mini, I found it unstable and incredibly slow (for Postgres at least, using stock images from Docker Hub) and mostly quit using it. I upgraded to the latest version recently and it was still too slow. For everythin…

What's the CPU arch of the container images you're running?

The postgres image (postgis/postgis:12-3.1-alpine) is linux/amd64.

I see now that the official postgres images have other arch options compared to the postgis images, which are arm64 only. I wonder if that could make a difference...

And now I see that Docker Desktop actually shows a warning about potentially poor performance when using an amd64 image: "Image may have poor performance, or fail, if run via emulation."

This is good news, since I'd much rather use Docker to run postgres in dev.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#868

Post by soylentnewsorg » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #697

soylentnewsorg wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be a surprise that a CPU that can't run most of the software out there (because that software is x86) and has ditched all compatibility and started a design from scratch, can beat last-gen CPUs from competitors. For specific apps and workloads, for which it has accelerators. But here I am, with a pretty thin and very durable laptop that has a 6 core Xeon in it. It gets hot, it has huge fans, and it comple…

>Because when you want a super fast chip, you don't design up from a freaking cell phone CPU. You design down from a server CPU. Is that really true? I don't have any intricate chip knowledge, but it rings false. Whether ARM is coming from a phone background or the Xeon from a server background, what matters in the end is the actual chip used. Maybe phone-derived chips even have an advantage because they are designed…

You actually have it correct. When you start with an instruction set designed to conserve power, you don't get "max power." The server chips were designed with zero power considerations in mind - the solution to "too much power" is simply "slap a house-sized heatsink on it."

>Apple doesn't need to have the one fastest laptop out there

correct. My complaint, which I have reiterated about 50 times to shiny iphone idiots on here who don't do any real number crunching for work, is when the industry calls "mid tier" something that apple calls "pro" - apple is deceiving the consumer with marketing. The new laptops are a competition to Dell's Latitude and XPS lines. Not their pro lines. Those pro laptops weigh 7lb, and have a huge, loud fan exhaust on the back so they can clock at 5GHz for an hour. They have 128GB of RAM - ECC RAM, because if you have that much RAM w/o ECC, you have a high chance of bit errors.

There are many things you can do to speed up your stuff, if you waste electricity. The issue is not that apple doesn't make a good laptop. It's that they're lying to the consumer. As always. Do you remember when they marketed their acrylic little cube mini-desktop? It was "a supercomputer." They do this as a permanent tactic - sell overpriced underperforming things, and lie with marketing. Like using industry standard terms to describe things not up to that standard.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#869

Post by shados » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #281

shados wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beyond that, it's a little silly to compare a desktop (presumably many times larger, ~500+W power supply, cooling system, etc) with a Mac mini (tiny, laptop chip, no fans, etc). You're totally right, but I see a lot of folks around me making absolutely bonker claims on these M1 devices. If I believed everything I'm told, I'd be expecting them to run complex After Effect rendering at 10000 frames per second.

> You're totally right, but I see a lot of folks around me making absolutely bonker claims on these M1 devices. What "but"? The claims are less bonkers with a perspective that acknowledges the significance of those physical differences. Without the case, would the full internals (motherboard/CPU/GPU/PSU/ram/heatsinks/storage) of your desktop fit in your pants pockets? Because the M1 Mac Mini's fit in mine. How much f…

I get the point, but I was answering the question of "why do people compare this with desktops". Because people compare them with everything.

You're totally right that they are impressive in their own right, especially in their category. I'm not arguing that.

Also:

> How much fan noise does your desktop produce

Basically none since modern high end air cooling is essentially silent. Water cooler pumps are noisier though.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#870

Post by lanza » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #576

lanza wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out on the fact that Apple didn't release a 12980hk or 5980hx competitor. These are 30 watt chips that trounce the competition's 65 watt (e.g. the 12980hk and 5980hx) and beyond chips. Hell, this Geekbench is faster than a desktop 125 watt 11900k. It's faster than a desktop 105 watt 5800x. Apple intentionally played to the competition here. They know AMD/Intel reach some performance level X and release…

> It might be a long time before it makes sense to buy a non-Apple laptop. ...if you only care about the things that Apple laptops are good at. Almost nobody needs a top-of-the-line laptop to do their tasks. Most things that people want to do with computers can be done on a machine that is five to ten years old without any trouble at all. For example I use a ThinkPad T460p, and while the geekbench scores for its proc…

Yea I agree. Implicit in my statement is `for the people in the market Apple is targeting`. You aren't going to buy a $4000 computer and you'll be happy with a clunker. I, and many people in my situation, don't feel there are options for $4000 laptops right now.