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The performance cores got a bit faster with the clock increase and performance per watt decreased a bit. But they made up for it with the improved efficiency cores that actually do improve performance/watt. There is no point to introducing a new SoC that doesn't have improvements in performance. They gained in GPU as well. I suppose they could have left the performance cores at M1 levels and just banked on the improved efficiency and GPU cores but they must have decided that they had enough cooling to handle a bit more CPU as well. Why does it have to scale linearly to be useful?

I think that they had planned on being on 3 nm for the M2 and the better process would have offset the higher frequency. Oh well.
 
I think that they had planned on being on 3 nm for the M2 and the better process would have offset the higher frequency. Oh well.
It doesn't work like that. It takes years to design a SoC. You don't wake up one day to a press release that says TSMC N3 is delayed and decide to release an SoC on TSMC N5P instead. It is possible that they designed for both N3 and N5P but unlikely considering the cost and engineering manpower required to do so.
 
I think the video would've been more enjoyable if he replaced the word insane with "insane in da membrane" 🤣
 
It doesn't work like that. It takes years to design a SoC. You don't wake up one day to a press release that says TSMC N3 is delayed and decide to release an SoC on TSMC N5P instead. It is possible that they designed for both N3 and N5P but unlikely considering the cost and engineering manpower required to do so.

My thought was designing for both nodes given that Cook is a logistics guy and you have a backup plan in logistics.
 
Low power mode on the MBA seems the way to go for most users. Can you make a shortcut to turn it off and on more easily than via Settings?
Why? Most users are going to just take it out of the box, do normal things with it, and still get around 15 hours of batter with no heating up.

This “M2 Air is too hot” crap has got to stop.
 
Why? Most users are going to just take it out of the box, do normal things with it, and still get around 15 hours of batter with no heating up.

This “M2 Air is too hot” crap has got to stop.

I put my M1 Pro on Low Power mode when I received it and it has been on it since last year. It runs absolutely fine. The thing that I've noticed is that LPM throws most work on the efficiency cores and uses a bit of some of the performance cores. I'm pretty sure that I would have been fine with all efficiency cores.
 
My thought was designing for both nodes given that Cook is a logistics guy and you have a backup plan in logistics.
Within reason. It is estimated that it can cost $500 million to $1.5 billion to design a modern SoC in a 3-5nm node. There are backup plans and then there is wasteful spending. Tim Cook isn't known for wasteful spending.
 
Why? Most users are going to just take it out of the box, do normal things with it, and still get around 15 hours of batter with no heating up.

This “M2 Air is too hot” crap has got to stop.
I don't care about perceived heat, but I do care about battery time. If it works fine in low power mode for normal usage I'd advise anyone to use it.
If it is an unnecessary thing, why has Apple enabled it, do you think?
 
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I don't care about perceived heat, but I do care about battery time. If it works fine in low power mode for normal usage I'd advise anyone to use it.
If it is an unnecessary thing, why has Apple enabled it, do you think?

To cool down 2016-2019 MacBook Pros.
 
I don't care about perceived heat, but I do care about battery time. If it works fine in low power mode for normal usage I'd advise anyone to use it.
If it is an unnecessary thing, why has Apple enabled it, do you think?
Let's say you are away from a power adapter for longer than expected and your battery just hit 40% remaining and you still have 8 hours of work to do. Change to low power and get your work done.

I thought it would be obvious what low power mode is for—saving battery.
 
Let's say you are away from a power adapter for longer than expected and your battery just hit 40% remaining and you still have 8 hours of work to do. Change to low power and get your work done.

I thought it would be obvious what low power mode is for—saving battery.
Exactly. Still, I got this strange question: ”Why?”.
 
This is a seriously fantastic video result. You can use Low Power Mode on the M2 Air and it results in drastically lower temperatures when maxed out. It uses a tiny amount of power compared to using the performance cores.

This is a very good result.
Let's compare GeekBench 5 scores:
MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019), Intel Core i9-9980HK, 8Core CPU got 1081, 6803
Macbook Air M2, low power mode: 1276, 6273,

So, in so called "low power" or "slow mode", you are still at speed of fastest 8 core Intel CPU from 2019 with passive cooling, no throttling, excellent battery life, and less weight.

Shut up and take my money.
 
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Exactly. Still, I got this strange question: ”Why?”.

I recall the Intel MacBook Pro group thinking that this was a great idea the most back when it was announced. I wish that it was supported in older MacBook Pros. My 2015 can run Monterey but Low Power Mode isn't supported. Maybe the dude just wanted some background on it.

One other reason to introduce it in Monterey is that it was a popular feature on the iPhone.
 
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The way they talk makes me want to throw up. Such tabloid style drama. The same people bitch about how the Macbook Air throttles and omg is soooo slow and then make it even slower by doing Low Power mode (which then surprise surprise suddenly is totally fast enough!) Okay yea sure.
I can appreciate the hustle. They’re almost(if not already) at 1 million subs. While they’ve popularly pointed out the flaws like the ssd and heat sink(which is inferior to the mba m1), they balanced It out with a bunch of positives as well. Nothing wrong with benefiting the consumer with their tests.
 
I can appreciate the hustle. They’re almost(if not already) at 1 million subs. While they’ve popularly pointed out the flaws like the ssd and heat sink(which is inferior to the mba m1), they balanced It out with a bunch of positives as well. Nothing wrong with benefiting the consumer with their tests.

The Low Power Mode thing is a big feather in Apple's cap. If I had an M2 Air, I'd run with it on all the time. Looking forward to the 15 Air in 2023 or 2024.
 
Weight and aerodynamics matter for fuel efficiency.

The top three selling vehicles in the US are large pickup trucks.

Fuel efficiency is a choice in vehicle and that's a bigger factor than speed. At least legal speeds.

Technically, it’s not the weight that’s the problem, it’s the energy needed to accelerate it to speed and then hold it at that speed. That’s a product of aerodynamics, available power/ torque and overcoming other forces such as gravity and friction (bigger vehicles need a larger contact patch with the ground).

Accelerating a larger mass is where fuel efficiency tanks, and keeping a large frontal area moving at speed is where aerodynamics come into play as energy used increases at the square of speed. So to double the speed needs at least a 4x increase in energy consumed.

This is very similar with CPUs where increasingly larger amounts of power are needed to eke out a few more extra clocks.

That’s why producing more performance with better efficiency is incredibly important.
 
Technically, it’s not the weight that’s the problem, it’s the energy needed to accelerate it to speed and then hold it at that speed. That’s a product of aerodynamics, available power/ torque and overcoming other forces such as gravity and friction (bigger vehicles need a larger contact patch with the ground).

Accelerating a larger mass is where fuel efficiency tanks, and keeping a large frontal area moving at speed is where aerodynamics come into play as energy used increases at the square of speed. So to double the speed needs at least a 4x increase in energy consumed.

This is very similar with CPUs where increasingly larger amounts of power are needed to eke out a few more extra clocks.

Yup.

I don't understand the race between AMD and Intel. Which is why I use Apple Silicon.
 
Does it work on iPhone as well? My 13PM is literally burning hot in this summer weather running games. I should just run low power mode all the time.
I tried it on the 12. There is some occasional stuttering on max settings, therefore I would advise turning some settings down. Also keep in mind that energy saving mode reduces your refresh rate to 30hz.
 
That‘s nothing new. You can do that on the M1 as well. In fact, the M1 iPad pro can game very well on the efficiency cores alone. Even Genshin Impact runs on max settings without getting lukewarm for hours.
This is so far away from the truth it couldn't be any further. Genshin Impact can only and exclusively run low resolution at 60 FPS without throttling.

Anything higher than that - whether medium res or heaven forbid high - lags all the way down to 30-40 FPS nonstop in battles/fights/demanding overworld scenarios etc. And it takes minutes, not hours.

It's literally a topic that has been beaten to death in hundreds of posts all over the internet, and I can assure you that no one who plays Genshin regularly is gonna recommend you an M1 iPad to run it on because the game lags to the point of unplayability if you select any resolution other than low.

EDIT: Not that low looks terrible, it doesn't - but it's a very far cry from crisp and clean looking graphics, with lots of pixelation on most objects in the FOV.
That game almost guaranteed won't be playable on High res + 60 FPS until M3 or later.
 
Interesting to see these kind of comparisons between the efficiency and performance cores. I’ve noticed from watching activity monitor on my M1 iMac that usually it favours using the performance cores almost exclusively, except if fully utilised.
 
Interesting to see these kind of comparisons between the efficiency and performance cores. I’ve noticed from watching activity monitor on my M1 iMac that usually it favours using the performance cores almost exclusively, except if fully utilised.

Switch to Low Power mode and it favors the efficiency cores.
 
Running only Efficiency cores is not always the way to save power. When running the fast cores you will run to idle quicker as a task can be finished in a smaller timeframe. So the CPUs can sit longer at even a lower power level as they are idling longer. I haven't tested this with M1/M2 chips but in the Intel days, a faster CPU on a MBP was often using less power than a slower one for similar tasks as it was sitting at idle longer.
 
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