We know that heat is not best friend of any electronics. But it is what it is. Even iphones throttle, and plenty of news about Snapdragon chip overheating and throttling. I don't think people were noisy about the throttling itself, but the temperature that the sensor reaches, which is higher than the M1.
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Modern SoCs throttle in a fanless design...
- Thread starter exoticSpice
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Again read about junction temps and modern SoCs know when to slow down before it harms them. Each chip is different on how it operates.
"All semiconductors have some specified safe upper limit for junction temperature (TJ), usually on the order of 150°C (sometimes 175°C)."
Jon in the tweet knows what he's talking about and so does Apple. They have one of the best chip teams in the industry.
99% of tech youtubers don't have a degree in engineering and blow everything up.
people need to calm down. What's more of issue is Apple cheaping out on the ssd on the base model!
The more relevant temp for the macbook air is the chassis (which is why it has temp sensors in the palm rest, etc.).
Given you put it on your lap, if THAT gets above 40C or so it will burn skin. Battery longevity also decreases drastically every degree above 30C or so.
So they likely throttle the CPU well below the danger point for the processor to make sure the laptop doesn't burn you, as the chassis is a big heat sink for it. Also so the battery doesn't get degraded as quickly.
Given you put it on your lap, if THAT gets above 40C or so it will burn skin. Battery longevity also decreases drastically every degree above 30C or so.
So they likely throttle the CPU well below the danger point for the processor to make sure the laptop doesn't burn you, as the chassis is a big heat sink for it. Also so the battery doesn't get degraded as quickly.
I sure hope they don't put a fan back into the MBA. And I hope they start removing fans from other products - the studio display, iMacs, and the Mac mini would do fine with passive cooling and the Mx chips.
No need to lecture me. I never see the throttling as an issue. And I agree that the more important issue is the SSD fiasco.
I think fans are fine in other machines where they have the physical space to run a large low RPM fan. A fan will always enable them to push the hardware harder.
But yes, fans in portable devices are a compromise.
I think the current apple silicon MBPs strike a good balance. For most workloads - the fan is not spinning. Even when working pretty hard you can make the fan a lot quieter by running it in low power mode without sacrificing a heap of performance. In high power mode it will ramp up to get things done as fast as possible with the extra cooling, noise be damned.
For the use case a base model air is aimed at, a 1GB/sec transfer rate is by no means a "fiasco".
Yeah, sure - its slower. But for the use case the machine is aimed at, it will not be noticeable.
I mean for example, i have a PC (spec in my sig) with SSDs ranging in speed from 500MB/sec to 3GB/sec. I can't tell what drive applications are installed on because in regular use they're all "fast enough". Seriously - blind test, i could not tell you which drive an app is installed on.
1 GB/sec is still fast enough for consumer/home 4k video editing, which is at or beyond what a total base model Air is really aimed at.
Both will throttle. Be more concerned about how fast it gets your work done, rather than whether or not it reduces speed to a sustainable level once it has boosted up to try and process a short duration workload faster than the thermal envelope will permit for a sustained load.
The videos online were about M2s throttling sooner/getting hotter than M1s, not about the fact that they were throttling per se.
The M2 is made with TSMC's 5nm "performance" process. M1-X are made with the 5nm "low power" process (which was put into production earlier). So it can likely boost harder (higher clock speed) than the M1. Which will mean it runs faster and generates more heat more quickly (when running at that faster clock rate).
Great for the typical "non pro" workloads which are "spiky". Mostly idle until something happens which it then boosts (hard) to get a small thing done as fast as possible.
Even if it does throttle earlier than the M1 - it will most likely get even a sustained workload done faster than an M1 based air would. Despite being down-clocked more (relative to its max speed, but still likely faster than an M1) during the sustained run.
Its simply the nature of the work it is aimed at. Boost hard to get short duration things done FAST. So it can be "snappy" and responsive to user input when doing basic user things.
If you're worried about an MBA throttling when running a long duration 100% sustained workload - you're looking at the wrong machine. You need one with cooling.
Yeah, everyone wishes they could have a macbook pro killer for less money and no fan (including macbook pro users!!), but the laws of physics and thermodynamics simply dictate that you can run harder for longer with actual cooling. So if you want less or no throttling, you need a larger machine with a bigger heat sink and a fan. This is the case even with the Pros - a 16" has better cooling than the 14" because it actually has space for it. An MBA does not.
Tiny form factor or better performance? Take your pick.
This doesn't just apply to Macs. It applies to PCs as well. You can wish for high end desktop performance in a fan-less ultra-book, but you're never going to get it. You might get something today that would outperform a desktop from 5 years ago, but not outperform something current with cooling.
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Even when throttled, for the same power consumption, the M2 is still faster than the M2. So in the end, even when throttled, it will probably still finish its tasks quicker.
Also, the „form over function“ argument is very flawed when discussing a device where the „form“ - i.e. being thin and light (= ultra portable) - is a huge part of its appeal in the first place.
People are brave to buy a fan-less computer when they know their workload requires a fan.
I certainly wouldn't buy one again if they didn't. (barring an advancement in cooling design that would make a "fan" obsolete.
Or make a mistake. I should have known that, but I didn't expect it to throttle as much as it did. (m1MBA)
Honestly, my MBP's fans are on so infrequently that the Air having one wouldn't bother me.
They also provide enough insulation between the heat sink and the chassis to spread the heat evenly. And let’s not forget that the heat output of M2 is low compared to other x86 chips in the first place.
Lower-end MBPs are basically MBAs with a fan. There is space for everyone in the apple universe.
Wasn't a mistake for me as I bought it to evaluate. Since it throttled I returned it within the 15 days and bought an M1-Pro MBP.
Truth be told, my 2012 15” Retina MacBook Pro routinely benchmarks around 350-450MB/s running on Catalina is still very usable day to day for a variety of my needs. My 2015 is faster still, and my M1 is even faster. Paralleling what you said about not being able to tell which drive is faster, I can only because I’m on three separate Macs. However, the 2012 would qualify as “fast enough”, which is why the overly dramatic posts about SSD speed are quite humorous. I think that the users who are complaining about the 256GB SSD speed are really more edge case users specific to this site who tend to always complain about price but aren’t really going to buy the 256GB model. Maybe they’re buying a second machine and feel cheated, I don’t know.
Again, this goes along the same line as users trying to invent yet another “throttle gate” controversy where none exists. Apple builds the MacBook Air the way they want for their own reasons. There’s too many people here second guessing Apple’s engineering and marketing objectives that just need to accept that Apple has a different opinion. Apple provides a fan-equipped option and this isn’t it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but there’s also such a thing as accepting reality and I don’t see a lot of that on these forums.
Yeah, but an unthrottled M1 is still faster than a throttled M2, isn't it?
So, if the M2 would throttle let's say 50% more often than the M1 doing similar tasks, the question is how much of that advantage of the M2 remains.
I'd just like to chime in and saying having tested both the M1 MBA and M2 MBA, the M2 can throttle to the point it's worse than the M1 MBA. Especially in lightroom when exporting images. 17 mins on the M2 to export some compressed images compared to 11 minutes on the M1. Granted the slower drive will also play apart here, but nonetheless it throttles more noticeablely than its predecessor in quite a lot of things. The M2 Air will give you a few mins of M2 MBP performance and then absolutely tank. The M1 does also throttle, but it's not very obvious.
I suspect the M2 will throttle to 3.2GHz while the M1 maxed out at 3.2GHz? Has anyone with an M2 check what is the throttled freq of the M2? The M2 runs at max 3.5GHz. It will definitely generate more heat when running at max freq compared to the M1.