Why Apple might be waiting with the M2 Max ….

[Zest28]

Looks like there will be laptops out soon with the RTX 4090 GPU and new AMD flagship GPU. So Apple probably first wants to see how fast PC laptops will be and then overclock the M2 Max high enough to atleast match them.

According to some rumours, the laptop / mobile RTX 4090 GPU performs like a desktop RTX 3090, so it is some serious competition if people only care about raw performance.

 

[Gudi]

Yeah sure, buy storage for millions of almost finished devices and parts, which you can't change anymore anyway, until you know the exact last benchmark number of some possible competitor products. Makes sense to me!

Why even have a thermal design goal, when you can win a meaningless benchmark contest?

 

[Zest28]

Yeah sure, buy storage for millions of almost finished devices and parts, which you can't change anymore anyway, until you know the exact last benchmark number of some possible competitor products. Makes sense to me!

Why even have a thermal design goal, when you can win a meaningless benchmark contest?

Apple is not producing the M2 Pro and M2 Max atm most likely, the production is on the current M2 in the MacBook Air and 13” M2 MBP.

Performance is not meaningless, else people would be ”upgrading” to computers from 10 years ago instead of the latest model.

 

[Gudi]

Performance is not meaningless, it is why people upgrade their computers most of the time.

Professionals not consumers. There is a spectrum between soft factors (design, experience) and hard factors (raw compute performance). But even pure performance is not solely determined by a single aspect of the cpu or even the entire system on a chip. Thousands of aspects determine system performance: multitasking, boot up time, wake up time, display refresh rate, pencil tracking speed all come together. What is clock speed good for when the cpu overheats after five minutes and throttles down or sucks the battery empty in just two hours? You can't put all that on a spec sheet, because all the metrics mutually influence each other. It's performance per watt and per weight and per hours of fun. In the end what's a better computer can only be felt.

The size and weight of the damn RTX 4090 alone is reason enough to not even try to compete with it on the benchmarks, which are designed to make it look good.

 

[leman]

Why would Apple care about mobile RTX 4090? It’s not in competition of their Max chips.

 

[mectojic]

Looks like there will be laptops out soon with the RTX 4090 GPU and new AMD flagship GPU. So Apple probably first wants to see how fast PC laptops will be and then overclock the M2 Max high enough to atleast match them.

I don't think Apple has ever worked this way... sometimes they're ahead of the competition, sometimes they're not. It's not really their concern to beat benchmarks.

 

[spiderman0616]

I don't think Apple has ever worked this way... sometimes they're ahead of the competition, sometimes they're not. It's not really their concern to beat benchmarks.

Right. Even ignoring outside factors disrupting their release schedule (COVID, wars, etc.), whatever is going into the next gen MacBook Pro was planned out probably 2-3 years ago. Has nothing to do with Nvidia or anyone else.

 

[mcnallym]

Apple never been about raw performance but about usability.
they have never tried to be all things to all people either.

instead they focus there product on what they believe will work best for a specific target market and then making the product achieve that market as best as can.

with the SoC approach then rather then pure power then balancing power with performance so can work unplugged, but also neural engine , video processor so less for GPU to do.

Nvidia also has to work harder as windows and Mac OS work differently. Windows works where even if hidden then still worked out. Mac OS using the PowerVR and works Out what visible and draws that so performance wise can get more out of a lower benchmark score. Or at least that now I understood it at a very high level.

 

[Boil]

Looks like there will be laptops out soon with the RTX 4090 GPU and new AMD flagship GPU. So Apple probably first wants to see how fast PC laptops will be and then overclock the M2 Max high enough to atleast match them.

Apple silicon is designed for specific clocks from the ground up, it is not designed to be arbitrarily overclocked...

If Apple decides to use the N3X process in a few years, that is when we could see higher clock speeds, but those SoCs would be targeted towards the desktop (Mac Studio) and workstation (Mac Pro) offerings...

 

[Abazigal]

Looks like there will be laptops out soon with the RTX 4090 GPU and new AMD flagship GPU. So Apple probably first wants to see how fast PC laptops will be and then overclock the M2 Max high enough to atleast match them.

According to some rumours, the laptop / mobile RTX 4090 GPU performs like a desktop RTX 3090, so it is some serious competition if people only care about raw performance.

And those people are welcome to not buy a Mac.

Apple silicon has a very specific and compelling selling point - it affords the user great, sustained performance even when their laptop is not plugged in to an external power source, while still having great battery life. In the case of desktops, the superior thermal efficiency also results in a smaller form factor (because you don’t need as much room for heat dissipation), quieter fans and a lower power bill overall.

Apple knows very well the core audience they are targeting with said product, and they know this is something the competition is not able to match for the next couple of years at least.

The people who care only for raw performance were never the target market for a Mac anyways, so it’s no real loss that they are not getting one.

 

[MayaUser]

Looks like there will be laptops out soon with the RTX 4090 GPU and new AMD flagship GPU. So Apple probably first wants to see how fast PC laptops will be and then overclock the M2 Max high enough to atleast match them.

According to some rumours, the laptop / mobile RTX 4090 GPU performs like a desktop RTX 3090, so it is some serious competition if people only care about raw performance.

no, they are not waiting, the specs and design of the M2 pro/max/ultra probably are already done and send to the TSMC for production....if Apple would do what are you saying then we can see the M2 pro/max in late 2023 at earliest....there are several process from designing and testing till the mass production and these takes months and months