MBP M1 16/1TB Under Load

[clarencek]

So I put my MBP M1 16/1TB 8 core to the test these past few days.
I encoded a bunch of movies and ran Handbrake (Intel) for about three days non-stop.
Some observations...
Fan came on after about 15 min. Encoding performance vs my old 16" i9 was about 50% - generally getting 70-90 fps, vs 180-200 fps on the i9.
However, unlike the i9, the machine never got blazing hot. It was warm, but never "hot" - the fan was on the whole time.
Also unlike the i9, the machine was still very responsive during this process. I had all the office apps running, had zoom and teams calls, and things didn't slow down significantly while Handbrake was running.

At one point I had to switch to battery. Machine was using out 10% battery every 15 min. When I plugged it back in at around 50% it did the same thing the 16" did - battery continued to drain (even while plugged in) until 5% and then serious throttling with Handbrake down to 30 fps and the battery stayed at 5%.

I had to pause Handbrake for about 5 hours while the battery charged to 100% and then resumed.
Memory was well under 16GB (hovering around 11GB), but I don't think Handbrake is that memory intensive.
Overall, it performed really well.

Anyway, just my observations. I'm still amazed at the performance of this machine.

 

[Quackers]

So I put my MBP M1 16/1TB 8 core to the test these past few days.
I encoded a bunch of movies and ran Handbrake (Intel) for about three days non-stop.
Some observations...
Fan came on after about 15 min. Encoding performance vs my old 16" i9 was about 50% - generally getting 70-90 fps, vs 180-200 fps on the i9.
However, unlike the i9, the machine never got blazing hot. It was warm, but never "hot" - the fan was on the whole time.
Also unlike the i9, the machine was still very responsive during this process. I had all the office apps running, had zoom and teams calls, and things didn't slow down significantly while Handbrake was running.

At one point I had to switch to battery. Machine was using out 10% battery every 15 min. When I plugged it back in at around 50% it did the same thing the 16" did - battery continued to drain (even while plugged in) until 5% and then serious throttling with Handbrake down to 30 fps and the battery stayed at 5%.

I had to pause Handbrake for about 5 hours while the battery charged to 100% and then resumed.
Memory was well under 16GB (hovering around 11GB), but I don't think Handbrake is that memory intensive.
Overall, it performed really well.

Anyway, just my observations. I'm still amazed at the performance of this machine.

Wow. Some use
10% every 15 minutes! and couldn't replenish charge whilst all that was going on. Must have been drawing huge power.
Thanks for the insight.

 

[Gnattu]

Battery drains on a 61W adapter makes no sense to me... At this rate the internal battery will die out in an hour, which conflicts to your own observation. Are you using a weaker adapter or did you plug it into a wrong port (did not give enough power) of your dock?

By the way, handbrake does have an apple silicon native build, why use an Intel build to test "performance"?

 

[leman]

Encoding performance vs my old 16" i9 was about 50% - generally getting 70-90 fps, vs 180-200 fps on the i9.

I would have expected the M1 to be faster than that. Is ffmpeg with Handbrake optimized to take advantage of ARM64 SIMD instructions?

 

[Gnattu]

I would have expected the M1 to be faster than that. Is ffmpeg with Handbrake optimized to take advantage of ARM64 SIMD instructions?

He is using an Intel build, so definitely no.

 

[leman]

He is using an Intel build, so definitely no.

Ah, I missed that part Is ARM version of handbrake already available? If not, would be interesting to see hw the command-line version of ffmpeg performs...

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

So I put my MBP M1 16/1TB 8 core to the test these past few days.
I encoded a bunch of movies and ran Handbrake (Intel) for about three days non-stop.
Some observations...
Fan came on after about 15 min. Encoding performance vs my old 16" i9 was about 50% - generally getting 70-90 fps, vs 180-200 fps on the i9.
However, unlike the i9, the machine never got blazing hot. It was warm, but never "hot" - the fan was on the whole time.
Also unlike the i9, the machine was still very responsive during this process. I had all the office apps running, had zoom and teams calls, and things didn't slow down significantly while Handbrake was running.

At one point I had to switch to battery. Machine was using out 10% battery every 15 min. When I plugged it back in at around 50% it did the same thing the 16" did - battery continued to drain (even while plugged in) until 5% and then serious throttling with Handbrake down to 30 fps and the battery stayed at 5%.

I had to pause Handbrake for about 5 hours while the battery charged to 100% and then resumed.
Memory was well under 16GB (hovering around 11GB), but I don't think Handbrake is that memory intensive.
Overall, it performed really well.

Anyway, just my observations. I'm still amazed at the performance of this machine.

The battery takes around 2.5 hours to fully charge, when idle.

 

[TrueBlou]

Ah, I missed that part Is ARM version of handbrake already available? If not, would be interesting to see hw the command-line version of ffmpeg performs...

There’s a beta universal build available on their GitHub page if you want to give it a try.

 

[clarencek]

I didn’t know there was an ARM version. Just downloaded it (it’s in beta) and it’s running at 200 fps.
After 3 min fan just kicked on.

As for power I’m using a 100w charger. I saw the same in my 16” where if I was cranking videos on handbrake it would drain the battery even when plugged in to a 100w charger.
Apple seems to optimize performance over battery because my 16” would go full throttle until the battery was at 5% and then throttle down.

 

[TrueBlou]

I didn’t know there was an ARM version. Just downloaded it (it’s in beta) and it’s running at 200 fps.
After 3 min fan just kicked on.

As for power I’m using a 100w charger. I saw the same in my 16” where if I was cranking videos on handbrake it would drain the battery even when plugged in to a 100w charger.
Apple seems to optimize performance over battery because my 16” would go full throttle until the battery was at 5% and then throttle down.

Not a bad jump in performance for the beta release.