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jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
The moment you start doing 3D rendering, the GPU goes into high power mode, so even light GPU work will see the GPU drawing more power. It is entirely possible that Apple has more advanced GPU power management (they do need to use advanced visual effects while delivering good battery life on the phones), but I am not aware of any details. Usually, as soon as you start using the 3D API explicitly, your power consumption jumps up. Would be interesting to do some more in-depth tests though...

Anyway, my point is that the M1 GPU draws 10W at it's maximum. So you can be pushing it pretty hard and still get a decent lifetime on a 50Wh battery, especially if you have some power optimizations. A 30-40W GPU on a 100Wh battery though? Not so much.

ZBrush doesn't use the GPU at all, even viewport rendering is done using the CPU (and a lot of cheating, approximations, and only updating the parts you're actually sculpting) and it's how ZBrush can work with poly-counts in the tens / hundreds of millions, as opposed to GPU based 3d tools like Blender.
 
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Gherkin

macrumors 6502a
Apr 9, 2004
682
310
is the 2016 MBP that one that people were waiting FOREVER on? I remember there was one iteration where it was almost comical. Makes the M1X feel like child's play.
 

UBS28

macrumors 68030
Oct 2, 2012
2,893
2,340
We'll see about that ;)

Btw, the bigger issues (unreliable keyboard mechanism and lack of ESC key) were fixed in the 16" btw. Performance and thermals of Touch Bar models were quite good, not sure why they get the bad rep...

It was not fixed with the 16” MBP. The i9 can run almost twice as fast in PC laptops.

So it was really a waste of money buying a 16” MBP, when Apple did not make a chassis that could handle it.

Atleast with the M2X Apple won’t have a chassis that is insufficient for it’s internal components.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,522
19,679
It was not fixed with the 16” MBP. The i9 can run almost twice as fast in PC laptops.

So it was really a waste of money buying a 16” MBP, when Apple did not make a chassis that could handle it.

Whut? The 16" MBP consistently tops the charts for i9-9880H multi-core performance on notebookcheck. The only (slightly) faster laptops are gaming models:


While notebookcheck didn't test the model with the i9-9880HK, in Cinebench R20 the model with the i9-9880H is only 20% slower than the fastest laptop they have tested with a faster i9-9880HK — Asus ROG Mothership, a 5kg gaming behemoth.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,522
19,679
ZBrush doesn't use the GPU at all, even viewport rendering is done using the CPU (and a lot of cheating, approximations, and only updating the parts you're actually sculpting) and it's how ZBrush can work with poly-counts in the tens / hundreds of millions, as opposed to GPU based 3d tools like Blender.

Oh, it doesn’t? Thank for pointing it out, I was not aware. Do you have any details on how they are doing it then? Some sort of voxel-based approximation? It’s hard to imagine that viewport rendering via CPU would be more efficient than modern GPU, but than again, these guys know their stuff…
 
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UBS28

macrumors 68030
Oct 2, 2012
2,893
2,340
Whut? The 16" MBP consistently tops the charts for i9-9880H multi-core performance on notebookcheck. The only (slightly) faster laptops are gaming models:


While notebookcheck didn't test the model with the i9-9880HK, in Cinebench R20 the model with the i9-9880H is only 20% slower than the fastest laptop they have tested with a faster i9-9880HK — Asus ROG Mothership, a 5kg gaming behemoth.

You have gaming laptops who are able to run the i9 at 4.0 ghz stable, which is quite a big difference.

The i9 is faster the more it is allowed to work with.
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 2, 2017
2,626
5,482
is the 2016 MBP that one that people were waiting FOREVER on? I remember there was one iteration where it was almost comical. Makes the M1X feel like child's play.
Yes. I had such a good experience with the rMBP that I was eagerly waiting for it for 2 years. Everyone knew 2016 was the redesign year. I thought it'd simply amplify the great experience. I expected it to be much faster, cooler, longer battery life, even better usability somehow.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,522
19,679
You have gaming laptops who are able to run the i9 at 4.0 ghz stable, which is quite a big difference.

The i9 is faster the more it is allowed to work with.

I just showed you a benchmark database of one of the most reputable sources, with many high-end gaming laptops tested. None of them are 2x faster than the 16" MBP. Besides, an 8-Core mobile Coffee Lake running at 4.0ghz will draw close to 100W watts. In which world is that reasonable for a laptop? By your logic every single laptop has insufficient cooling, as any Intel processor would run significantly faster if paired with a desktop-class cooling system.

Yes, the i9 Coffee Lakes are ridiculously hot CPUs. They are barely useable for laptops and represent the stagnation that Intel has been suffering prior to their 10nm tech got out in volume. But given all their problems, I am perfectly fine with the logic of my 2kg light, slim 16" MBP offering only 30-40% lower multi-core performance than a full desktop i9-9900K version. That's within 20% of the fastest gaming laptops with the same CPUs, laptops that are often much larger and heavier, whose battery life and ergonomy is nonexistent.
 
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UBS28

macrumors 68030
Oct 2, 2012
2,893
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I just showed you a benchmark database of one of the most reputable sources, with many high-end gaming laptops tested. None of them are 2x faster than the 16" MBP. Besides, an 8-Core mobile Coffee Lake running at 4.0ghz will draw close to 100W watts. In which world is that reasonable for a laptop? By your logic every single laptop has insufficient cooling, as any Intel processor would run significantly faster if paired with a desktop-class cooling system.

Yes, the i9 Coffee Lakes are ridiculously hot CPUs. They are barely useable for laptops and represent the stagnation that Intel has been suffering prior to their 10nm tech got out in volume. But given all their problems, I am perfectly fine with the logic of my 2kg light, slim 16" MBP offering only 30-40% lower multi-core performance than a full desktop i9-9900K version. That's within 20% of the fastest gaming laptops with the same CPUs, laptops that are often much larger and heavier, whose battery life and ergonomy is nonexistent.

There are even people who have reached stable clocks with the i9-9900K at 5 ghz on all 16 threads. Examples of gaming laptops people have used are the Alienware Area 51m.
 
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jmho

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2021
502
996
Oh, it doesn’t? Thank for pointing it out, I was not aware. Do you have any details on how they are doing it then? Some sort of video-based approximation? It’s hard to imagine that viewport rendering via CPU would be more efficient than modern GPU, but than again, these guys know their stuff…
They use something called "pixols" which are some kind of pixel / voxel hybrid approximation of the high resolution geometry, but the actual algorithm is proprietary so I'm not sure how it actually works. The key is that with ZBrush you aren't moving the camera often, you're sculpting with a fixed view, so they don't need to redraw the entire viewport, they only really need to update the small region where your brush modifies the geometry.

This is the reason ZBrush can handle polycounts that aren't possible to render in real-time even on multiple 3090s.

One of the slowest things to do in ZBrush is move the camera or rotate the entire mesh while zoomed out, because they have to update all the pixols at once and it churns through massive amounts of memory. That's the place where the M1 struggles in my experience, but actual sculpting on the M1 is incredibly responsive.
 

Serban55

Suspended
Oct 18, 2020
2,153
4,344
There are even people who have reached stable clocks with the i9-9900K at 5 ghz on all 16 threads. Examples of gaming laptops people have used are the Alienware Area 51m.
thank god you dont compare that mamooth (that is in fact a mini desktop situation) to the Macbook air https://www.dell.com/support/manual...uid=guid-da6d6c45-abca-47c5-a92d-df203388c1c8

Different class of dimensions....Again what apple achieve into an much smaller enclosure with the i9 is very confident for the future of the apple silicon 16" Mbp
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,522
19,679
There are even people who have reached stable clocks with the i9-9900K at 5 ghz on all 16 threads. Examples of gaming laptops people have used are the Alienware Area 51m.

And there are people who reach X ghz using liquid nitrogen and also those who add a nitro to their cars... how is this relevant? You won't get to 5ghz on all threads just like that, you have to undervolt and fine-tune the system, and even then you need a lot of luck since not every CPU will be able to pull it off.

Apple ships the 16" models in quantities that Alienware can only dream about. You can't expect Apple to undervolt every single CPU they ship out. The i9-9880HK has an advertised clock frequency of 2.4ghz, and as long a laptop can hit that, it is performing as intended. Anything else is just moving goalposts. It's like saying that five hamburgers are not much at all because some competitive eaters can eat dozens of them before collapsing.


They use something called "pixols" which are some kind of pixel / voxel hybrid approximation of the high resolution geometry, but the actual algorithm is proprietary so I'm not sure how it actually works. The key is that with ZBrush you aren't moving the camera often, you're sculpting with a fixed view, so they don't need to redraw the entire viewport, they only really need to update the small region where your brush modifies the geometry.

Very cool! I actually wrote "voxel" in my post, but the browser auto-corrected it to "video" :D

This is the reason ZBrush can handle polycounts that aren't possible to render in real-time even on multiple 3090s.

It should be possible with some aggressive LOD optimizations and mesh abstraction, but the narrow communication channel of modern GPUs makes these approaches not feasible. Actually, I think that Apple Silicon has the potential to severely distrust the scene here. Since CPU-GPU data transfer is blazingly fast, it should be possible to write software that uses the CPU to transform/simplify the meshes and the GPU to render it, enabling smooth and efficient performance with very high-poly meshes. Looking forward to next-gen 3D software on the upcoming Macs!
 

mr_roboto

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2020
856
1,867
There are even people who have reached stable clocks with the i9-9900K at 5 ghz on all 16 threads. Examples of gaming laptops people have used are the Alienware Area 51m.
Who cares?

The Alienware Area 51m is a wedge 27.65mm to 44mm thick, 403mm wide, 319mm deep, and weighs as much as 4.7kg.

The 16" MacBook Pro is 16.2mm thick, 358mm wide, 246mm deep, and weighs 2.0kg.

These are both nominally laptop computers, but one of them is practical to carry around everywhere and use in your lap. The other... isn't. It's chonky.

If you want a gigantic heavy thing that's more of a portability-optimized desktop computer than a laptop, and you don't mind tacky UFO gamerbro styling, go wild. Buy an Alienware.

But please stop this endless whining about the 16" MBP not letting you run the CPU with a 125W power limit. Apple will never do that, because MacBooks are designed to be truly portable computers. They're very uninterested in serving the gamer boat anchor part of the laptop market.
 

Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
There are even people who have reached stable clocks with the i9-9900K at 5 ghz on all 16 threads. Examples of gaming laptops people have used are the Alienware Area 51m.

A K SKU desktop processor versus a mobile H model. Even though Intel's TDPs are a farce, these are in totally different thermal classes.
 

nquinn

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2020
829
621
is the 2016 MBP that one that people were waiting FOREVER on? I remember there was one iteration where it was almost comical. Makes the M1X feel like child's play.

Most iterations from 2011->2019 were pretty comical because intel was only gaining like 7% performance per year. The biggest changes were probably in 2013 when retina was introduced. The rest was very very moderate improvements to cpu/igpu/ports.

EDIT: I suppose intel moving to more cores was a significant moment. That came to 13" models in 2018. 15" models have had quad core for a long time, but of course later moved to 6/8 cores around 2018 as well.
 
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Pro Apple Silicon

Suspended
Oct 1, 2021
361
426
We'll see about that ;)

Btw, the bigger issues (unreliable keyboard mechanism and lack of ESC key) were fixed in the 16" btw. Performance and thermals of Touch Bar models were quite good, not sure why they get the bad rep...
I have a 2019 16" MBP and it would melt the skin off your legs with anything more than typing in TextEdit.

Can hardly champion their performance or thermals. Anxiously waiting for Apple Silicon in a professional computer.
 

Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
We'll see about that ;)

Btw, the bigger issues (unreliable keyboard mechanism and lack of ESC key) were fixed in the 16" btw. Performance and thermals of Touch Bar models were quite good, not sure why they get the bad rep...

I know from experience that the six core 15 was a furnace.
 

turbineseaplane

macrumors P6
Mar 19, 2008
17,411
40,208
I also think that Apple lost it without someone like Jobs saying no to Ive. If you've ever worked with tech designers before, you'd know that they are idealists, unrealistic, always want change for the sake of change. You have to have a strong person to pull them back into the real world. After Jobs, there was no one higher in command than Ive to tell him no. The only person higher was Tim Cook and he isn't a product person.

This is a wonderful analysis that I think is exceptionally correct.

The loss of a product person to know what to say "Yes/No/Needs more refinement" to is an issue I would argue plagues Apple to this very moment.
 
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turbineseaplane

macrumors P6
Mar 19, 2008
17,411
40,208
The 2015 macbook is still my benchmark for the best laptop made yet. Hopefully these new 14/16" M1X models will become that new standard.

Same
It was the end state of years of great refinements.

A bulletproof workhorse that was flexible, elegant and powerful (at the time)
 
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Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
This is a wonderful analysis that I think is exceptionally correct.

The loss of a product person to know what to say "Yes/No/Needs more refinement" to is an issue I would argue plagues Apple to this very moment.

Cook, however, is an engineer who previously worked on the PowerBook G4 cooling system, so furnace thermals should have alarmed him.
 

Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
The only alarm he seems worried about now is the "margins not high enough" alarm..

The performance per dollar on an M1 machine make it a compelling value. Not much of an Apple Tax anymore.

Granted, the Intel Air was slow, noisy, and expensive for its performance.
 
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