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ADGrant

macrumors 68000
Mar 26, 2018
1,689
1,059
Fidelity Active Trader Pro.

If you want the best performance, run ATP on Windows 10 on bootcamp on your Intel Mac. M1 runs ATP miserably. There are complaints about it all the time in r/fidelity.
Fidelity Active Trader Pro is a Windows Application built on the Windows specific .NET 4.6 framework. It surprises me that it runs at all on MacOS.
 
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Coheebuzz

macrumors 6502a
Oct 10, 2005
511
148
Nicosia, Cyprus
Intel (and others) offer more solutions for multi-core tasks such as 3D rendering, 8 or even 16 rendering buckets won't cut it when the competition is at 128.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,155
14,579
New Hampshire
It actually makes sense, it would cost you around 10k (on the low-end) to built a 64-core rendering workstation and for the same amount you could get 10 minis and 80 cores.

We had Alpha Clusters back at DEC in the 1990s and they were a great way to share resources over a bunch of machines connected via network and cluster interconnect. The operating system has to include support though. I wish Windows and macOS had that functionality. You could hook a bunch of old computers together to produce the compute of a newer and faster system.
 
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Coheebuzz

macrumors 6502a
Oct 10, 2005
511
148
Nicosia, Cyprus
There are quite a few render managers for all platforms which do just that, it can be implemented by the app developers if their software have a use for it.
 

mi7chy

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2014
10,628
11,300
One area where Intel is ahead of others is support for newest AV1 hardware video decoding and encoding in 11th gen CPUs. AMD Ryzen 5000, Qualcomm Snapdragon and Apple M1 don't. Mediatek is another one that does support AV1.
 

bobcomer

macrumors 601
May 18, 2015
4,949
3,699
It would be cool if Apple put out a Multi-M1 system in a small Mac Pro form factor.
That presents a lot of problems because the M1 is basically a one chip computer. It'll certainly be interesting to see what the Mac Pro will become when it goes apple silicon.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,530
19,709
Intel (and others) offer more solutions for multi-core tasks such as 3D rendering, 8 or even 16 rendering buckets won't cut it when the competition is at 128.

To be fair though, Apple Silicon potential for multi-core configurations is tremendous. Given the power efficiency of it's CPU cores, Apple could deliver much higher performance with an identical TDP configuration. E.g. M1 multi-core performance (4+4 cores at combined ~20W TDP) is approximately 70-80% of a high-end Intel CPU (8 cores at 125W TDP). And the larger the CPU cluster, the bigger advantage will Apple have — Intel needs to severely underclock CPU cores to make the heat manageable, while Apple can still afford to run them at peak 3Ghz. A hypothetical 16+4 Apple CPU cluster (just four times the size of M1) should be able to match a 28-core Xeon while consuming 50-70% less power.
 
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ccprstuff

macrumors member
Nov 6, 2008
33
15
Austin TX
Not a win for Intel for performance, but for practicability:
Silicons can't do virtualization via VMware, for instance) for older Intel-dependent Mac OS-es (Snow Leopard-ish etc.). Have a definite need for it for several reasons I won't go into here.

I could just run the older OSs on the Intel Mac I have now and get a new silicon Mac for updated stuff going forward, and switch inputs as needed on my monitor, but that would be be very inefficient for my current work flow.

That, plus I've learned very hard lessons to never to buy Apple's first iteration of anything.
 

bobcomer

macrumors 601
May 18, 2015
4,949
3,699
I could just run the older OSs on the Intel Mac I have now and get a new silicon Mac for updated stuff going forward, and switch inputs as needed on my monitor, but that would be be very inefficient for my current work flow.
A KVM can work wonders, that's what I use.
 
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ccprstuff

macrumors member
Nov 6, 2008
33
15
Austin TX
A KVM can work wonders, that's what I use.
Do you mean a KVM switch? This is what I basically use now -- for a G4 Mac (to run a few Classic programs I really need for work) plus my current Intel Mac.

Have no desire to add a third Mac to the mix, that would take me to G4/Intel/M1. :)
 

bobcomer

macrumors 601
May 18, 2015
4,949
3,699
Do you mean a KVM switch? This is what I basically use now -- for a G4 Mac (to run a few Classic programs I really need for work) plus my current Intel Mac.

Have no desire to add a third Mac to the mix, that would take me to G4/Intel/M1. :)
Yep, that's what I mean, the HDMI ones are better than the old VGA's. I have a Windows PC and my Mac Mini on the same one... (mine supports HDMI2.1, so 4K) It's just a push button, or remote control push button, to switch between them.

It'd be fun to play with a G4, it's one mac type I totally skipped over, I went from an original Mac to the first Intel Mac, and several after that.
 

Internaut

macrumors 65816
Bearing in mind the only models launched so far are pretty entry level, how many of these limitations are really limitations? I’d say the failure to support more than one monitor, on the laptops, is a poor show. Virtualisation (including Windows on arm) is approaching far faster than I would have predicted...

I’m not so sure about the rest. To out things into perspective, an entry level MacBook Air can give a tricked out 16” Pro a run for the money though clearly won’t best it for the most GPU intensive tasks. That’s pretty remarkable given the price difference.
 
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robco74

macrumors 6502a
Nov 22, 2020
509
944
We'll definitely see support for multiple displays and more RAM. Incidentally, these limitations were also present in the lower wattage CPUs from Intel. We'll see more storage as well, but I imagine few folks looking at the entry-level models need more than 2TB. I doubt we'll see booting X64 OS versions anytime soon, if ever. I also think that there will always be some tasks where other silicon will perform better. This was the case back during PPC vs Intel, and before that when it was 68K vs MIPS vs. PA-RISC vs SPARC vs Alpha, etc.

Technically, there isn't a reason why eGPUs shouldn't work, they just need drivers.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,530
19,709
Technically, there isn't a reason why eGPUs shouldn't work, they just need drivers.

Yep, that's not a technical question, it's a policy question. That's why I doubt that we will every see them. Apple has nothing to gain by opening up their GPU driver framework to the third party, and the third party has nothing to gain by implementing drivers that work on Apple Silicon.
 

alien3dx

macrumors 68020
Feb 12, 2017
2,193
524
Yep, that's not a technical question, it's a policy question. That's why I doubt that we will every see them. Apple has nothing to gain by opening up their GPU driver framework to the third party, and the third party has nothing to gain by implementing drivers that work on Apple Silicon.
You forget to mention , user have gain upon ram usage if open and up e-gpu.. for god sake please open nvdia driver. amd nowhere to found now.
 

TrueBlou

macrumors 601
Sep 16, 2014
4,531
3,619
Scotland
Currently, taken as a standalone macOS device, so obviously ignoring things the M1 cannot do - Run x86 windows, external GPU and so on. Then the M1 has been significantly better for everything I have used so far. Even a lot of the Intel apps I use, running under Rosetta 2 are shockingly better performers.

I normally (read as always) find something to complain about when I use a laptop over a desktop. But with the M1, I haven't found anything to complain about so far. I'm, well, happy. God, that's weird to say :D
 
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