Beyond the M1 hype and why the fairy dust needs to settle.

[matrix07]

Not at all in my experience.

Keeping your battery at 100% at all time is a sure way to degrade your battery pretty quick. In fact keeping battery at more than 80% for a long period of time (weeks) is degrading your battery life than normal usage.
And I haven't yet talked about heat from plugging in.

 

[Frank707]

Keeping your battery at 100% at all time is a sure way to degrade your battery pretty quick. And I haven't yet talked about heat from plugging in.

I have my MBA plugged in every day, now since 4 Months and still have 100%. Heat what heat? lol

 

[matrix07]

I have my MBA plugged in every day, now since 4 Months and still have 100%. Heat what heat? lol

I guess you haven't touched under your MBA then.

 

[jasoncarle]

This is a thread about M1 so I don’t understand where this comment is coming from. The M1 chip also uses PCIe 4 so Apple isn’t stuck on 3. Apple hasn’t updated the Mac Pro with the M-series yet.

Did you just jump to the last page, read the last post, and reply to it with no context?

PCI 4 is more than double this speed...

 

[Frank707]

I guess you haven't touched under your MBA then.

Its not even warm. Only on load its getting warm, but thats the M1 Chip.

 

[matrix07]

Its not even warm. Only on load its getting warm, but thats the M1 Chip.

I didn't talk about M1 performance. I'm talking about charging.
Charge your M1 to 80-100%. Unplug it. Wait a minute. Touch under laptop where battery is. Now charge it to 100% and leave it there for a few hours and touch under it again and feel the difference.

 

[quarkysg]

Apple is right now stuck on PCI3 , that may be due to Intels slow adaptation of PCI 4, but my Ryzen machine is on PCI 4 and its speed makes the M1 looks slow by comparison, and that's just my ****ing around machine for playing a few games.

The memory subsystem does not go thru the PCIe bus. PCIe are mainly for peripherals like GPU cards. If memory goes thru the PCIe bus, it'll be a gigantic bottleneck and the Ryzen CPU's performance will tank like a rock sinking into a lake.

From what I know, existing CPUs are really bottle necked by memory bandwidth. DDR4 max out at around 32GB/s per channel. LPDDR4X is faster at 42GB/s per channel. That's why you see expensive server boards going multi-channel (e.g. 4, 6, 8) just so the CPU cores are fed data fast enough. Also, existing GPUs cards sitting on top of the PCIe bus are again bottle necked by it's bandwidth. IIRC PCIe4 bandwidth tops out at 32GB/s. So that's why most high end GPUs comes with tons of very fast, expensive memory to feed the hungry GPU cores data very fast. Once data is sent from main memory over to the GPU's VRAMs via the slower PCIe bus, the GPU codes could then gobble up the data as fast as the VRAMs can send it.

It's cool that you have a machine you adore for what you intend for it's use.

Apple's SoC approach is different and to me, it's exciting, because it is performant and power frugal at the same time. And they are just getting started.

 

[leman]

Apple is right now stuck on PCI3 , that may be due to Intels slow adaptation of PCI 4, but my Ryzen machine is on PCI 4 and its speed makes the M1 looks slow by comparison, and that's just my ****ing around machine for playing a few games. There isn't a Mac Pro in existence that can compete with my computer workstation that crunches/crushes data Like the US crushing Iraq in the first Gulf War. Anyway, Apple really needs to advance to the next step, DDR5 and PCI4 would be awesome. IMO, they have no excuse now.

M1 has PCIe 4, even though I have hard time understanding what it has to do with performance. And I’m pretty sure that your Ryzen does not even come close to Xeons on the Mac Pro.

Clueless post, clueless person, and what about those tasteless analogy?

 

[Kung gu]

M1 has PCIe 4, even though I have hard time understanding what it has to do with performance. And I’m pretty sure that your Ryzen does not even come close to Xeons on the Mac Pro.

Clueless post, clueless person, and what about those tasteless analogy?

@jasoncarle has stated his is the Ryzen machine 16 core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and top end Mac Pro has a 28 core Intel Xeon W-3275M. The 5950X is better than the 28 Core Xeon on Cinebench R23.

Goes to show how powerful the new AMD Zen 3 is.
So yes his Ryzen machine does come close and even exceeds in Single core and Multi core.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Test and Specs

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Geekbench 5, Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, Cinebench R15 and FP32 iGPU (GFLOPS) benchmark results

www.cpu-monkey.com

 

[leman]

@jasoncarle has stated his is the Ryzen machine 16 core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and top end Mac Pro has a 28 core Intel Xeon W-3275M. The 5950X is better than the 28 Core Xeon on Cinebench R23.

I admit that I have overlooked that they were talking about the 16-core version, those are indeed very powerful CPUs. Still, I think that comparing them to a 28-core Xeon that has 3x memory channels is a bit optimistic.

The only verifiable benchmark I was able to find for both CPUs is Geekbench 5 and it's results are as expected

W-3275M - Geekbench 5 CPU Search - Geekbench

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X - Geekbench 5 CPU Search - Geekbench

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Test and Specs

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Geekbench 5, Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, Cinebench R15 and FP32 iGPU (GFLOPS) benchmark results

www.cpu-monkey.com

CPU-monkey is a sensationalist website that uses unverified results. Their only goal is to generate traffic so tat they can make money. I would not trust anything they state.

That said, I can certainly imagine the Ryzen doing well in Cinebench. It seems to be particularly AMD-microarchitecture friendly for some reason. Probably the humongous cache...

Goes to show how powerful the new AMD Zen 3 is.

Zen3 is definitely very powerful and a good match for Sky Lake/Coffee Lake/Rocket Lake. I don't think that anyone can contest that. AMD has built a good microarchitecture with reasonable efficiency and they have made some smart business decisions along the way (chiplets). If I wanted to build an x86 workstation these days I'd go for Zen3 as well.

Edit: just had another look at Abandtech review of 5950X and wow... the Ryzen is only 60% faster than M1 in SPECfp despite 400% core count advantage and 600% higher power usage! I knew that Apple was ahead, but I didn’t realize by how much...

 

[mi7chy]

Apple is right now stuck on PCI3 , that may be due to Intels slow adaptation of PCI 4, but my Ryzen machine is on PCI 4 and its speed makes the M1 looks slow by comparison, and that's just my ****ing around machine for playing a few games. There isn't a Mac Pro in existence that can compete with my computer workstation that crunches/crushes data Like the US crushing Iraq in the first Gulf War. Anyway, Apple really needs to advance to the next step, DDR5 and PCI4 would be awesome. IMO, they have no excuse now.

I doubt M1 is even full PCIe gen 3 considering how slow disk I/O is on the MBA M1. It boots and performs about as slow as a 2008 Thinkpad with SATA3 SSD. PCIe gen 3 on the AMD 4650U boots in about half the time and programs load instantaneously vs taking several bounces on the M1.

 

[quarkysg]

I doubt M1 is even full PCIe gen 3 considering how slow disk I/O is on the MBA M1. It boots and performs about as slow as a 2008 Thinkpad with SATA3 SSD. PCIe gen 3 on the AMD 4650U boots in about half the time and programs load instantaneously vs taking several bounces on the M1.

I don't think the M1 Mac's internal SSDs are connected via the PCIe bus. It should be connected straight into the Apple Fabric, i.e. the internal interconnect fabric, which makes it equal citizen with the CPU, NPU and GPU cores.

TB3/USB4 is via PCIe bus, as dictated by the standards.

 

[Yebubbleman]

What is SO great about the M1 macs?
They offer less than Windows counterparts. No real gaming support, no support for other OS natively, no touch and VERY VERY limited app compatibly. Sure its faster than i7 11th gen but AMD processors offer greater performance and around the same battery life as the M1.

The AMD Ryzen 7 4800U offers faster performance than an M1 Air/Pro and there are laptops that have that processor that are cheaper than the M1 Air with upgradable SSD and RAM.

Now with the SSD swap issue that Apple is quiet on is very serious IMO. I have an intel 16" MBP and I have written about 7TBW and I got this machine around January 2020 and I use this laptop very heavily everyday. The fact that I see people writing over 15TBW on their M1 macs that they got 5-6 months ago is very concerning.

All I am saying is look beyond the M1 hype and see that you are getting a computer with less features, no upgradeability and limited third party software. I say this because I see some people say the M1 Air is the best deal for an Ultrabook, I strongly disagree with that claim.
The reason the M1 macs seem so good is because the previous Macs were utter garbage in terms of specs and price to performance ratio.
Ever wonder why Rosseta 2 runs Intel software better on M1 macs than on intel macs is because those intel's that Apple replaced were not at all performant.
The M1 Air had a quad core i7 a weak one at that, the M1 Pro had a 8th gen i5/i7.

For $920 on the Windows side you can get a HP ENVY x360 with a FHD screen(1080p), Ryzen 7 4700U, 16GB RAM, a 256GB SSD(user upgradable) and a 1000 NITS display with touch. Click here to see HP Envy configure page. Yes it comes with Windows but Windows can do a LOT more than macOS can ever can.
The argument that macOS is better than Windows is no longer true as Windows vastly outperforms macOS in almost everyway. It's now even more obvious with the M1 macs.

I know I can't tell people what to buy or not, but people have been making extraordinary claims on YouTube, twitter and other social media
forums that M1 macs is the future and outperform most laptops and are the best value out there and I just wanted to clarify some points.

I think much of the hype is around the battery life and the fact that where each M1 Mac's immediate Intel-based predecessor (so, we're talking the 2020 Intel 10th Gen Y-series based MacBook Air, the 2020 Intel 8th Gen ULV variant U-series based 2-port 13" MacBook Pro, and the 8th Gen Quad-core Core i3 based Mac mini) would generate tons of heat and offer minimal performance relative to other contemporary Intel Macs, let alone the M1. So, from a one-model-to-the-next standpoint, the gains are unlike any that have been seen in the last 20 years, if not ever. M1 is giving higher-end Intel Macs a run for their money too and it's really the lowest end that Apple Silicon based Macs will ever be.

As for M1's drawbacks, I'm not going to downplay them. Virtualization and x86 gaming are important to me as a Mac user. It's to the point where my Mac usage will drastically scale back on the other side of this transition (as not only will Windows be superior at these things, but the Mac won't be able to offer much of an experience at all). The fact that we're still waiting on a supported and stable way to get Windows 10 for ARM64 to run stably and consistently on Apple Silicon Macs (let alone via Virtualization), that we don't have a public ARM64 based version of Windows Server, and that non-Server client-focused Linux distros for ARM64 are still fewer and farther between compared to the selection of x86-64 variants make this architecture worse from the standpoint of multi-OS compatibility.

However, for those that don't have older programs and are only using macOS apps/utilities/plugins that are regularly maintained and updated and are only staying within macOS, the M1 Macs are going to be superb.

As for those with needs for more than 16GB of RAM or a beefier GPU, THAT'S OBVIOUSLY COMING. Again, these are LOW END Macs!

 

[NotTooLate]

I know mods don`t really care about the content that a person is posting in their forums , but some of the posts here are getting ridiculous , certain posters with agenda (across multiple threads) are posting FUD non stop , knowing they are spreading it as well ...... kinda annoying to read the same posts in ALL of the threads on this site .... guys take a break with the trolling/paid posting......

I guess their time is running out , once the "not designed for fanless computers" SoC`s will arrive it wont be anything else to discuss , but i guess we will see the threadripper compared to the M1X in a laptop and claiming a "win" in multithread benchmarks.

mi7chy - dude , in every single thread ? is this "pay by post count" job ? you are not even trying anymore ..... what do you gain from this senseless trolling in every single thread on this website ?

 

[Ethosik]

i have no idea what a threadripper is and i should have looked that up and whole hearted apologize.

BUT apple did state they are the fastest!
which i still think is a very bold statement.

Fastest integrated graphics.....integrated graphics. Threadripper doesn't have that. It would be wise to look up stuff before you comment saying Apple is wrong. Fastest integrated graphics is really not shocking to hear. Intel iGPUs are HORRIBLE. Apple's integrated graphics is able to trade blows with a GTX 1050 Ti - this is the second most popular GPU in the Steam Hardware Survey.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

While the 1050 is not that impressive, and its a few generations old, it is still impressive that a LOW END processor is able to match this when iGPU are typically absolutely trash. The M1X or whatever will likely double GPU performance.

 

[Ethosik]

Not only macs can't play games but they don't have CUDA support, don't have any CAD software with all the toolsets available. They don't have support for enterprise applications. Most Healthcare applications are written for Windows PCs.

Lets stop with this broad statement that Macs cannot play games. There are people all around the world that don't want or need to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 8K resolution. Macs have NATIVE (while not M1 native, macOS Native) Tomb Raider, Civ, Borderlands, Cuphead, Ark, Cities Skylines, Alien Isolation, Dirt 4, Blizzard titles, Valve titles, and many more.

There are more video games out there than the Call of Duties and Maddens. And not all games should or need to require an RTX 3090 to be considered a "gamer".

I flip between Dyson sphere Program, Factorio, Terraria, Satisfactory, Borderlands and Need for Speed Heat currently. Some of those are available on macOS and I do play them, even on my M1 Mac Mini. I play these games for hours after work for my entertainment. People really need to realize that there are more to gaming that 4K or 8K, and more than the Call of Duties and Maddens. I do have a dedicated gaming PC that I built in 2020, but the GPU is seriously lacking and we all know what the GPU situation is at the moment.

Also, not every single professional workflow requires CUDA. My video production is actually faster in Final Cut Pro on Mac vs any other software available on Windows.

Again with the AMD arguments. AMD was not really a thought in anyones mind until around 2018 - maybe at an announcement in 2017, but I believe the first REALLY GOOD AMD processors were available in 2018. Apple was already starting a massive transition. Why enter a partnership with AMD when you are moving to your own processors in a couple years?

 

[Ethosik]

I got my 3090 Founders Edition from Best Buy for $1500. Best Buy does a big GPU drop on their web site like every two weeks.

I have literally been watching Best Buy like a hawk for weeks now. Even asked my family to watch it too. No luck, always out of stock.

 

[Ethosik]

@jasoncarle has stated his is the Ryzen machine 16 core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and top end Mac Pro has a 28 core Intel Xeon W-3275M. The 5950X is better than the 28 Core Xeon on Cinebench R23.

Goes to show how powerful the new AMD Zen 3 is.
So yes his Ryzen machine does come close and even exceeds in Single core and Multi core.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Test and Specs

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X vs. Intel Xeon W-3275M - Benchmark, Geekbench 5, Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, Cinebench R15 and FP32 iGPU (GFLOPS) benchmark results

www.cpu-monkey.com

And this is why Apple is moving away from Intel. Heck even the just released 11900K is a complete joke when the 10900k is better than it. Intel is really done for.

People....stop comparing a high end desktop CPU with the M1. The M1 is a 15 w processor under load. The fact that it actually does compare blows with an i9 from Intel means when Apple does ramp up to a ~300w SOC in the Mac Pro tower, it will be massive. Lets compare things then. If a 4 high performance core and 4 low performance core M1 can trade blows with an i9 with 8 cores/16 threads, then a 32 high performance core M* might be able to trade blows with a thread ripper. Even if it doesn't who cares? You get what you need.

 

[MBAir2010]

Fastest integrated graphics.....integrated graphics. Threadripper doesn't have that. It would be wise to look up stuff before you comment saying Apple is wrong.

yeah, yeah, yeah- i'll go stand in teh internets corner and contemplate every computer aspect for 5 minutes.

im back!
Apple did state
"The Apple M1 chip gives the 13‑inch MacBook Pro speed and power beyond belief"
and
"And it brings the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, delivering a ridiculous 5x boost in graphics horsepower."
Now if ANY other manufacture claimed this, there would be 80 pages of comments instead the 8 here.

I read that the Ryzen and other gaming laptops are getting faster results now.

Can Apple still claim that their M1 processor is still the worlds fastest because they only make combined CPU and a GPU included on the same chip? which is like saying i'm the worlds fasted man! umm fastest 3 legged man!

this is not bashing the M1, or anything apple, just their marketing people should not make bold statements.
Just too many media outlets and advertisers are blatantly lying daily and we are getting tired of this.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

yeah, yeah, yeah- i'll go stand in teh internets corner and contemplate every computer aspect for 5 minutes.

im back!
Apple did state
"The Apple M1 chip gives the 13‑inch MacBook Pro speed and power beyond belief"
and
"And it brings the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, delivering a ridiculous 5x boost in graphics horsepower."
Now if ANY other manufacture claimed this, there would be 80 pages of comments instead the 8 here.

I read that the Ryzen and other gaming laptops are getting faster results now.

Can Apple still claim that their M1 processor is still the worlds fasted because they only make combined CPU and a GPU included on the same chip? which is like saying i'm the worlds fasted man! umm fastest 3 legged man!

this is not bashing the M1, or anything apple, just their marketing people should not make bold statements.
Just too many media outlets and advertisers are blatantly lying daily and we are getting tired of this.

I don't think you can read properly. ?

 

[darngooddesign]

I didn't talk about M1 performance. I'm talking about charging.
Charge your M1 to 80-100%. Unplug it. Wait a minute. Touch under laptop where battery is. Now charge it to 100% and leave it there for a few hours and touch under it again and feel the difference.

My M1BA was equally cold to the touch whether being charged or being used. It only got hot when I pushed it. But even if it got warm while charging, it would be pretty dumb to assume it wouldn't. I have seven years on a MBP which frequently runs hot so a little warmth isn't anything to Mac laptops.

 

[leman]

Now if ANY other manufacture claimed this, there would be 80 pages of comments instead the 8 here.

Intel recently claimed (and also delivered) an 100% boost in their iGPU with the Tiger Lake. AMD did it earlier with their integrated Vega graphics. What's your point?

I read that the Ryzen and other gaming laptops are getting faster results now.

The M1 iGPU is faster than any Ryzen integrated GPU, by a healthy margin. There is a caveat though: a Ryzen might get better performance if a game is poorly optimized for macOS (especially in older OpenGL games, where a performance penalty of 40-50% relative to Windows is fairly "normal"). More recent games that use Vulkan (via MoltenVK) or Metal directly are a different story.

Can Apple still claim that their M1 processor is still the worlds fastest because they only make combined CPU and a GPU included on the same chip? which is like saying i'm the worlds fasted man! umm fastest 3 legged man!

It is a worlds fastest integrated GPU. Not really sure what is so confusing about the concept. Also, it's a 10W GPU with the performance of a 30W dedicated Nvidia GPU...

this is not bashing the M1, or anything apple, just their marketing people should not make bold statements.

Why not? Was they said is technically accurate and defensible. Why would they not be allowed to make bold statements about the incredible technical achievements they have delivered?

 

[Quackers]

Keeping your battery at 100% at all time is a sure way to degrade your battery pretty quick. In fact keeping battery at more than 80% for a long period of time (weeks) is degrading your battery life than normal usage.
And I haven't yet talked about heat from plugging in.

As I said, not my experience at all.
My 2012 rMBP at 8 years old was plugged in all the time and still has "good" battery state.
My M1 MBA is plugged in all the time and will remain so.
Even Apple doesn't seem to agree with your numbers in that the optimized charging feature on the M1 only allows the battery to drop to 80% charge before actually charging it again.

 

[Krevnik]

As for M1's drawbacks, I'm not going to downplay them. Virtualization and x86 gaming are important to me as a Mac user. It's to the point where my Mac usage will drastically scale back on the other side of this transition (as not only will Windows be superior at these things, but the Mac won't be able to offer much of an experience at all). The fact that we're still waiting on a supported and stable way to get Windows 10 for ARM64 to run stably and consistently on Apple Silicon Macs (let alone via Virtualization), that we don't have a public ARM64 based version of Windows Server, and that non-Server client-focused Linux distros for ARM64 are still fewer and farther between compared to the selection of x86-64 variants make this architecture worse from the standpoint of multi-OS compatibility.

This is probably the crux for a bunch of people. One thing being on x86 did bring was extra flexibility by being on commodity CPUs everyone was using. For folks who were using a Mac because it was Intel+Apple, going to ARM is going to be rough. Those of us who were users in the PPC days had a bit of forewarning that this hurdle was coming. That said, in the long term, I don’t think this is going to be nearly as bad as the PPC days.

When it comes to OS support, it’s a chicken/egg problem. Hardware vendors are going to be slow to adopt ARM hardware if the OS isn’t there, and the OS vendors are going to be slow if the hardware isn’t there. That said, at least on the Linux side, things look promising. A lot of the heavy lifting is done at this point, and Debian/Ubuntu are supporting ARM64 as an official release. This should make it easier for other distros to catch up.

Windows though? That’s entirely on Microsoft’s plate at this point. They have always played things conservatively when it comes to Windows in a lot of ways, but they risk ceding the server space even more to Linux if ARM64 in the data center keeps making inroads. If the rumors that they are working on in-house ARM designs for the datacenter are true, then it’s extremely likely they are working on the changes to WoA to match. Question is more if they are going to keep with OEM-only licensing going forward here.

 

[MBAir2010]

Intel recently claimed (and also delivered) an 100% boost in their iGPU with the Tiger Lake. AMD did it earlier with their integrated Vega graphics. What's your point?



The M1 iGPU is faster than any Ryzen integrated GPU, by a healthy margin. There is a caveat though: a Ryzen might get better performance if a game is poorly optimized for macOS (especially in older OpenGL games, where a performance penalty of 40-50% relative to Windows is fairly "normal"). More recent games that use Vulkan (via MoltenVK) or Metal directly are a different story.



It is a worlds fastest integrated GPU. Not really sure what is so confusing about the concept. Also, it's a 10W GPU with the performance of a 30W dedicated Nvidia GPU...



Why not? Was they said is technically accurate and defensible. Why would they not be allowed to make bold statements about the incredible technical achievements they have delivered?

Thanks for taking the time to explain these points.
I am looking for clarity, not an argument.
This reply helped!
Again, thank you,