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M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

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Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#91

Post by crest »

pohl wrote: post #20
jmull wrote: post #15

It seems like the M3 favors efficiency and thermals over raw power. This makes sense for the devices they've put it in. I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops, that favor power over thermals and efficiency? Maybe there will be a kind of tick-tock, with odd numbered processors favoring efficiency and even numbered processors for power? M3, M5, M7 for th…

Doesn't prioritizing efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? Even a desktop has moments when it's doing almost nothing but has tasks that can adequately be handled by an E core where powering up a P core is overkill. Doesn't being efficient mean that more of the thermal budget can be held in reserve for when it's actually needed? Don't desktop users desire for their powerful machine to also be quiet?

> Doesn't prioritising efficiency and thermals make sense for any device?

No. If you have the cooling to sustain the higher power mode it can be worth it to pay the power bill to get work done faster. Compared to the productivity gains for compute limited workloads the increased power bill is little more than a rounding error or even a net power saving because you need less supporting infrastructure per worker to accomplish the same assuming that the tasks are even efficiently parallelizable to multiple (human) workers.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#92

Post by Fluorescence »

jmull wrote: post #15

It seems like the M3 favors efficiency and thermals over raw power. This makes sense for the devices they've put it in. I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops, that favor power over thermals and efficiency? Maybe there will be a kind of tick-tock, with odd numbered processors favoring efficiency and even numbered processors for power? M3, M5, M7 for th…

> I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops

I don't think they care much about pro desktops given the pretty embarrassing MacPro. They just don't mean much for the bottom line compared to consumer lifestyle devices.

I expect they would be happily rid of the customer segment - annoying power users wanting low-level access and customisation. They keep their machines for too long and don't give much upselling opportunity for subscriptions, fashion accessories, house and family trinkets.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#93

Post by turtlebits »

user_7832 wrote: post #81
datpiff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want a high refresh rate screen present in cheap android phones? What is this for? Games? I avoided this to save money the last time I bought a phone. I honestly can't think of use case where a phone display needs to update higher than 60 Hz

High refresh rates aren't just for games, they make the entire interface smoother. Things like frame rate or latency are quality of life things that you don't need , but once you upgrade, the difference becomes clear. Sort of like going from a slowly accelerating station wagon to a Porsche/sports car even when (capped by the speed limit) if you've experienced that. Hopefully someone else has a better analogy.

IME, the difference is negligible. I went from a iPhone 12 to a Galaxy S21 Ultra and yes, there is a difference, but it's not something I notice, even when occasionally using my wife's iPhone 12.

The bigger difference I notice is in loading times for apps.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#94

Post by ska »

user_7832 wrote: post #81
datpiff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want a high refresh rate screen present in cheap android phones? What is this for? Games? I avoided this to save money the last time I bought a phone. I honestly can't think of use case where a phone display needs to update higher than 60 Hz

High refresh rates aren't just for games, they make the entire interface smoother. Things like frame rate or latency are quality of life things that you don't need , but once you upgrade, the difference becomes clear. Sort of like going from a slowly accelerating station wagon to a Porsche/sports car even when (capped by the speed limit) if you've experienced that. Hopefully someone else has a better analogy.

To stick with your car analogy though, with screens it's more like the performance vs. gas mileage trade off. Your sports car will get you the same place at the same time (capped by speed limit) with more fun (if you like that sort of thing) but cost you at the fuel pump. This is fine if you don't care about $/gallon, but sucks if there is gas rationing.

This analogy is also flawed, of course.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#95

Post by _ph_ »

Detrytus wrote: post #74
sneak wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Air is not the computer for people who use a lot of external monitors. 99.9%+ of MBAir users will never connect even one external monitor. They make a small MacBook Pro that is suited for that task.

And yet it's a dick move from Apple to artificially limit number of external screens supported.

They are not artificially limiting the number of external screens. To support more screens, they would have to reserve die area for an additional controller. That could mean a gpu less or something. This is about engineering tradeoffs.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#96

Post by masklinn »

sneak wrote: post #76
Detrytus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it's a dick move from Apple to artificially limit number of external screens supported.

Lots of compromises are made to get the Air to the size, weight, and most importantly, price point (ie sub-$1k) that it is. It is Apple’s best selling computer by quite a bit. They sell metric assloads of the $999 base model each fall when school starts. IMO the $999 one (or $899 with education discount) is literally the best price:perf ratio of any computer available today or at any time in my recent memory. It’s as…

Come off it.

- the 14" M3 is $1600, but limited to a single external display, and actually only has two TB ports, it's just sad

- the M3 Pro is limited to two external displays, despite an entry price of $2000

$3199 is the baseline to be able to use 3 external displays (although at that price you can plug up to 4).

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#97

Post by zarzavat »

pier25 wrote: post #50
scrlk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mixture of several problems: * TSMC N3B being a bit of a flop (yield issues, too expensive) * Brain drain from Apple's chip design teams over the last few years * Tim Cook trying to push the average selling price up to keep revenue growth going in the face of sales declines (e.g. hobbling memory bandwidth, reducing the number of performance cores for M3 Pro) I don't expect there to be a M1 style generational l…

The GPU is increasing a lot though. Another point is the CPU improvements are constant. In about two years the base M3 is now on par with the M1 Max.

It’s true but the problem with the GPU is Apple’s addiction to RAM money. Yes the GPU is improving in performance but it does you no good if it has to share a tiny amount of system RAM with the CPU.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#98

Post by bloopernova »

I want a better system load metric now that we've got heterogenous cores in CPUs. The Pixel 8 Pro has 3 types, efficiency, performance, and one single ultra performance core.

If your efficiency cores are always close to max usage, but your performance cores are idle, is your system being heavily or barely used?

I understand that system load isn't really a useful metric between systems, but it's useful to compare on a single system I think. I just want a better at-a-glance thing to communicate to me if my computer is under or overloaded.

(Additionally, do you have to specify that a particular app can run on efficiency cores, or does the process scheduler do it all without input from a human?)

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#99

Post by firecall »

euazOn wrote: post #82
asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

It sucks but at least DisplayLink works well enough. Driving 4 monitors this way with my M1 Mac Air with no issues.

Sadly it doesn’t work well enough with 4K displays for me.

At least, not the last time I tried.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#100

Post by user_7832 »

masklinn wrote: post #87
user_7832 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High refresh rates aren't just for games, they make the entire interface smoother. Things like frame rate or latency are quality of life things that you don't need , but once you upgrade, the difference becomes clear. Sort of like going from a slowly accelerating station wagon to a Porsche/sports car even when (capped by the speed limit) if you've experienced that. Hopefully someone else has a better analogy.

More importantly VFR is not useful for just high refresh rates. I would argue that for most people on a phone it's the least useful part of the thing. Instead VFR allows saving battery by slowing down the refresh rates, down to as low as 1FPS for static or high latency content. That's part of why always on display is only available on the 15 Pro: at 60Hz it's a battery killer. > Sort of like going from a slowly accel…

> So... functionally useless.

(Disclaimer, I haven't driven a sports car but I have driven cars between "nice" and "struggles to reach the speed limit")

While it might appear to be very similar, having a sports car that you're capable of driving well/defensively can literally be a life saver. There was this video from a few years back on reddit of this guy in a 911. Vehicle in front suddenly stops/crashes, he needs to rapidly change lanes at highway speeds. The little 911 unsurprisingly handled it excellently. A slow/heavy car would've very likely spun out and crashed.

Having more power if you don't need it doesn't hurt (if you're trained well). Less can hurt.

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