25 ms·
GFXBench: Apple M1
- bjoli 6y agoSo, it is slightly better than a 1050TI. What does that mean? I do nothing to stress my graphics card at all, so explain it like I am 5, I guess...
- shmerl 6y agoNot really a serious gaming option, but OK for lower end (ignoring that Apple doesn't care about gaming in general).
- entropicdrifter 6y agoIt's certainly 'good enough for government work' as the saying goes, but it's pretty bad for gaming at retina screen resolutions.
- vmception 6y agohits 60fps steadily which is a nice feat, but just barely and definitely not future proof, but as low power and integrated that's amazing! my skeptic hat has gotten smaller, still there, just smaller
- mrbuttons454 6y agoA 1050ti has a TDP of 75w, and the Apple M1 has somewhere between 10-18w (not sure if actual numbers have been published, but I didn't see them.)
- davio 6y ago10W published for MBA
- mciancia 6y agoAnd that is for the whole SoC, not just GPU
- AgloeDreams 6y agoYup, whereas the CPU in the SoC is roughly a little better in multicore than a desktop Ryzen 3600X and single core plays way at the top of the Zen 3 line.
- jandrese 6y agoA 1050Ti is a three generation old card and was bottom of the line when it came out, so not too bad for integrated graphics. It's plenty for everything but modern gaming, and since those games aren't likely to be ported to ARM on Mac anytime soon it's not a huge problem. Apple has always had something of a rocky relationship with game publishers, at least on the Mac. Lots of older games will probably work fine, assuming the driver situation isn't a nightmare. Apple is somewhat notorious for neglecting graphics card drivers unfortunately.
- olyjohn 6y agoSaying that it's plenty for everything but modern gaming isn't saying much either. Every other integrated graphics solution has been fine for everything but modern gaming.
- simlevesque 6y agoNo, many integrated graphics fail at driving things like 4k displays.
- Zetto 6y agoGTX 1050 2GB was the bottom of the line when the 1050 Ti came out. Both were released in Oct 2016, there's also GT 1030 which was released few months later.
- kitsunesoba 6y agoIt looks like World of Warcraft at the very least is getting a day-one Apple ARM build, which suggests that porting isn't too bad. It should be a relatively easy transition for any game that already ran on macOS or iOS.
- jamesgeck0 6y agoThe GTX 1050 Ti was a lower-mid-range gaming card a couple generations ago. AFAIK it can still run most new games, possibly with compromises for smooth performance (low graphical settings, 30 FPS, or sub-1080p resolution).
- mrkstu 6y agoConsidering that the devices that were replaced were integrated GPUs only, the fact that these devices now run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump. The bigger question to be answered is whether this is a baseline that will be surpassed handily by the higher end released coming later, or that this is about as good as it gets now. I'm assuming that the reason these were released separately was because the later arriving devices have significantly differing SoC's with even better performance, and maybe even discrete GPUs with variable, scaling performance.
- olyjohn 6y agoThe 1050Ti is hardly a current gen GPU. It was a budget card when it came out years ago.
- MangoCoffee 6y ago>run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump 1050 Ti is not current gen. Geforce 10 series have been out for more than 4 years now. the current gen is RTX 30 series
- mrkstu 6y agoI was trying to say 'close to a recent gen discrete CPU' not 'close (in performance) to a current gen CPU.' 1050 is just one generation removed from most current discrete GPUs, I don't believe the 3000 series is out yet on laptops, the 2080 just came out last year.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> the fact that these devices now run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump. The 1050 Ti (4 years old) has about the same performance as a GTX 680. A card from 2012. This comparison makes absolutely no sense. You'd want to compare the M1 against either the current generation integrated, such as the Vega 8 or 11 in the Ryzen 4xxx mobile CPUs or the Intel Xe-LP in the current tiger lake CPUs, or you'd want to compare it against last gen integrated. Comparing it against a discreet card from 4 years ago with the performance of a card from 8 years ago is just... weird?
- kcb 6y agoIt's very unlikely that real world gaming performance will match a 1050TI. People are assigning mythical properties to this new SOC.
- Dahoon 6y agoIt is actually worse than a 1050TI but it is better than a 1050TI in MacOS. It is a meaningless comparison when the GPU is half as fast in the OS tested compared to the same GPU in Windows. In other words: People are cherry-picking the results they like.
- _venkatasg 6y agoI'm beginning to think I can replace my Macbook Pro 2015 with the new Macbook Air...the numbers are so tempting. Let's see how the reviews turn out, where people will use at real-world tasks.
- entropicdrifter 6y agoI'm especially interested to see how it deals with heavy loads heat-wise. With no fan it could end up getting up to leg-roasting temps
- jandrese 6y agoIt seems like Apple may err on the side of just letting it get painfully slow instead of crisping your legs. The primary differentiator between the Air and Pro is that the Pro comes with a fan and a $300 premium.
- lostgame 6y agoDon't forget the Touch Bar - that weird uncle in every family that we just have to put up with - the feature nobody asked for and every coder I know would so much rather be without. It annoys me any my coworkers (we use 2017/2018 15" MBP's) every work day to no end. I hate it when when I'm accidentally logged out by feathering the 'lock' icon. I'm aware I could move it - but ideally where are times that I'd want to use the feature as intended. The lack of haptic feedback for the Touch Bar is a bizarre and unusual oversight for a company usually so detail-obsessed as Apple. We are not allowed to install anything but specifically approved software, so any third-party solutions are a no-go here. It should be built-in, it's a no-brainer. I've personally taken to using a bluetooth Apple keyboard half the time with my work laptop just to avoid the Touch Bar as it honestly feels infinitely more comfortable for coding to not have it there.
- efficax 6y agoThe air is using binned chips where one core has failed (a very common practice that intel also does), so the pro is on a better processor
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoCompared to the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M, the base GPU in the 16" MacBook Pro: https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=90754264&os1=OS+X&api1=metal&hwtype1=GPU&hwname1=Apple+M1&D2=AMD+Radeon+Pro+5500M https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=907542... Compared to the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M, the +$700 upgrade in the top of the line MacBook Pro 16": https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=90754264&os1=OS+X&api1=metal&hwtype1=GPU&hwname1=Apple+M1&D2=AMD+Radeon+Pro+5600M https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=907542... Note that the Onscreen numbers are capped at 60fps on OS X, so ignore any Onscreen results at 59-60fps.
- zaksoup 6y agoI think those are the same link
- aardvarkr 6y agoConsidering that there’s no difference between the 1050ti in the OP and the 5500M that PragmaticPulp posted I’m inclined to say this test sucks. Userbenchmark.com shows there should be a substantial (38%) improvement between those two. Take these early results with a HUGE grain of salt because they smell fishy. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-AMD-Radeon-Pro-5500M/3649vsm960765 https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-...
- kllrnohj 6y agoWell, two things there. 1: Userbenchmark.com is terrible and nobody should use it for anything. At least their CPU side of things is hopelessly bought & paid for by Intel (and even within the Intel lineup they give terrible & wrong advice), maybe the GPU side is better but I wouldn't count on it. 2: The real question there isn't "why is the 1050 Ti not faster?" it's "how did you run a 1050 Ti on MacOS in the first place, since Nvidia doesn't make MacOS drivers anymore and hasn't for a long time?"
- aardvarkr 6y ago1. Today I learned something new. Still, can’t let great be the enemy of good. It may be imperfect but it’s the source I used. Do you have a better source I can replace it with? 2. That’s a good question and I don’t have an answer for that.
- pier25 6y agoI've never been so excited and so turned off at the same time. The ARM Mac hardware is looking fantastic, but OTOH macOS is getting worse every year...
- ktpsns 6y agoAbsolutely! For me it feels as if Mac OS repeats the errors of MS Windows Vista and 10. For instance, the horrible telemetry as well as the suboptimal "one interface for touch and mouse pointer" paradigm.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoCan you expand on "horrible telemetry" please? And since no Macs have a touch screen, I'm not sure what you mean by the "one interface" thing. Big Sur may resemble iOS but it is not the same interface at all.
- tannedNerd 6y agoI think the thought is since the tap targets all got so much bigger for Big Sur it no longer feels like an OS designed for a pointer, more one designed for a finger.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> Can you expand on "horrible telemetry" please? Phoning home on every executable launch. Both because it's bad for privacy, and because the implementation of it is absolutely horrific such that when Apple's servers went down it basically locked up everyones computers at the same time. It's on the front page still, even: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
- my123 6y agoIs it even really telemetry as we'd consider it? It's OCSP digital signature verification... to check if an app signature wasn't revoked. (or a website cert, or anything really)
- bt3 6y agoWithout directly commenting on the performance of the M1 chip, I still believe the biggest hurdle is software compatibility. Apple's "universal binary" seems dubious, and I don't believe Rosetta 2 is anything more than emulation software which will have performance ramifications. Microsoft has faced this same problem themselves. Releasing the Surface Pro X is a great example of a machine that is limited by software. As others have noted in other threads, Apple's ability to run iOS apps natively on the M1 chip seems like a great mechanism to lower the switching costs, though I maintain the chasm left to cross is software. This is all of course, notwithstanding the "locked down OS" concerns from the front page for the past day or so. Does an M1 Macbook Air with BigSur make a competent development machine?
- xsmasher 6y ago"universal binary" is just a binary with multiple executables for multiple CPUs inside. Hardly unusual, it's been used for 32+64 bit before, and to package multiple flavors of arm. Rosetta 2 is emulation in once sense, but it precompiles applications in to M1 code for speed. Running all x86-64 mac apps plus iOS apps plus any updated / universal apps is pretty far from a software shortage.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoApple's "universal binary" seems dubious There is absolutely nothing even remotely dubious about universal binaries. They were used during the PPC->Intel transition and again for x86->amd64. You can create them right now.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoNeXT shipped a single binary that supported 68000, Sparc, HP and Intel CPUs. This is nothing new.
- kzrdude 6y agoThey also used a version of that in the 68k -> PPC transition.
- john_alan 6y ago
- trimbo 6y agoHow do they have one? How do we know these are real numbers?
- exacube 6y agotrust
- oneplane 6y agoHow do we know anything? Is this real life? I believe we simply assume that the reputation and trust built over time allows us to take the numbers as 'real enough' from that program & website.
- trimbo 6y agoBut isn't this just another thing people download to run benchmarks and then the result is uploaded? Anyway, answering my own question: multiple results have been uploaded in the past two days and uploaded by anonymous users. Maybe tech reviewers running it with devices they received early? https://gfxbench.com/allresults.jsp?order=date&page=1&D=Apple+M1&benchmark=gfx50 https://gfxbench.com/allresults.jsp?order=date&page=1&D=Appl...
- threeseed 6y agoReviewers receive units at least a couple of weeks before launch with strict embargoes not to talk about it or publish anything. Also large developers like Adobe, Microsoft would have had retail units months ago to help with final testing.
- kushan2020 6y agoThats how flat earth became a thing.
- oneplane 6y agoNo, that's because some of the people don't have first principles and trust at all and instead of validating they just make stuff up ;-) I was trying to point out that disputing things is fine, but the whole basis of a website where benchmarks are uploaded is trust-and-reputation-over-time to the point where enough other people can re-run the same tests on their machines (one they get them) to validate the results. Heck, you might almost call that science! Right now, there aren't additional results and you can't easily reproduce them because the machines aren't wide spread or available. But we can take the track record and reputation of the site and application and use that to value the integrity of the published benchmarks to be 'likely correct'.
- dawnerd 6y agoIt's still mind boggling why the 13" MBP w/ M1 can't run dual 4k.
- lambdasquirrel 6y agoIt’s the first release of a new product? Features take time.
- rovr138 6y agoI mean, all they're asking (and me too) is feature parity with what existed on the line before. If they can't deliver that, it probably should have been held back.
- mywittyname 6y agoThat's a pretty damn important feature, especially for professional users.
- boardwaalk 6y agoAgreed. If you think about what’s common between all the types of “professionals” that Apple targets, from coding to music production to whatever... one of them is wanting multiple screens to have everything laid out in front of them.
- Tagbert 6y agoThat’s not really the market for these models. The Air and the low end MacBook Pro only have two ports and are not really well suited to working with multiple external monitors. I suspect that, when Apple update the higher end machines, that they will be able to support multiple external monitors (and more RAM). The M1 is more of an MVP at this point.
- oneplane 6y agoI suspect (and this is just speculation) the M1 is very closely related to their iPad architecture which was never designed for more than one external display, as such the architecture wasn't really suitable and between building a 'computer' based on that chip and re-architecting the design it just wasn't feasible or required to support it on the first release.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- quelsolaar 6y agoWhy are all performance measurements of the M1 done against stuff that is far below state of the art? So its faster then a 3 generations old budget card, that doesn't run nVidia optimized drivers, over I'm assuming Thunderbolt. So? So its faster then the last Mac book air, that was old, thermal constrained, and had a chip from Intel that has been overtaken by AMD. Every test is single core, but guess what, modern computers have multi cores and and hyper threading and that matters. Apples presentation was full of weasel words like "in its class" "compared to previous models". Fine thats marketing, but can we please get some real, fair benchmarks, against the best the competition has to offer before we conclude that apples new silicon is gift from god to computing? If you are going to convince me, show me how the CPU stacks up to a top of the line Ryzen/threadripper and run Cinebench. If you want to convince me about the graphics/ML capabilities, compare it to a 3090 RTX using running Vulkan/Cuda.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoI don’t know why this particular comparison is noteworthy, but this is not a top-of-the-line CPU or GPU, is not intended to be, and those comparisons would be meaningless. It’s a 10W part for lower-end devices.
- quelsolaar 6y agoApple decided to call it "PRO", so I think its fair to treat is as such.
- theodric 6y agoAh yes, the famous Apple MacBook Air Pro, available never in history
- quelsolaar 6y agohttps://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kushan2020 6y agoI would be interested in knowing if I can play Civ VI on a Retina display with this thing.
- lalaithion 6y agoI use a GTX 970 to play Civ VI at 1440. So, probably!
- XCSme 6y agoA 970 is a lot faster than a 1050ti: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti/2577vs3649 https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-Nvid...
- joakleaf 6y agoOpenCL Geekbench results for MacBook Pro : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=MacbookPro17%2C1 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=Macb... About 60% of Radeon Pro 5500M (in the 16" 2019 Pro)
- joakleaf 6y ago... And about 1/3 of GTX 1080. And very slightly below 1050 TI. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=GTX+1080 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=GTX+... https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=1050+ti https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/search?utf8=&q=1050...
- boardwaalk 6y agoWe don’t know if this is the 7 or 8 core M1 GPU, nor whether this is the actively cooled MacBook Pro/Mac Mini or the passively cooled Air. So this seems pretty useless.
- banachtarski 6y agoFor reference, the 1050 Ti card is considered the minimum spec at many AAA game studios.
- KabirKwatra 6y agoThe 1050ti is not supported on modern macos running metal. See the difference when the card is on windows or Linux running real nvidia drivers as the card was built to.
- dang 6y agoRecent, related, and massive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026 ("Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079 ("Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers")
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- olliej 6y agoIt's been a long time since I've actually followed graphics benchmarks at all - where is this on the scale from intel intergrated to modern discrete laptop gpu? E.g. a radeon 5500 or similar? [edit: to be clear I mean modern feature set type stuff, not just raw framerate]
- tripham 6y agoThese numbers are quite good if you realize that the M1 iGPU is comparable to a discrete GPU. Also the power consumption is for the entire package not just the discrete GPU alone.
- j3i4j43JJJ 6y ago1050 TI was released in 2016 (5 years ago) and even back then it was much slower than 1060-1080 cards.
- jeswin 6y agoIf you switch the OS to Windows DirectX: OnScreen Aztec High Tier gives you 54fps on the M1, vs 106fps on the 1050Ti. Normal tier is capped at 60fps for OSX while Windows goes up to 156fps. That's a better comparison since it represents the best optimised platforms for this hardware. Comparing with NVidia on OSX isn't very meaningful.
- docsaintly 6y agoWhy is everyone surprised by this? Fudging numbers, stealing credit, and blatantly lying is what Apple has always done. Of course they put a beautiful marketing layer on top of it all so its slightly less obvious.
- unix_fan 6y agoYou know, I've always expected higher quality comments on HN.
- docsaintly 6y agoI do as well. Which is why I was sad to see mostly comments supporting the new chip without backing it up with more meaningful benchmarks, or being surprised that Apple would put out benchmarks that are half truths in order to sell a product. Neither of these are "news".
- j3i4j43JJJ 6y agoThe old 1050 TI only has 2.1 TFLOPS. Compare M1 against the real beast RTX 3090 with 35 TFLOPS - that's 17 times more than in 1050 TI. 2.1 TFLOPS doesn't impress me at all.
- qayxc 6y agoSo you don't think 320W and a massive cooler that weighs more than an entire MacBook Air is kind of a pointless comparison to a <20W SoC that can even be passively cooled? I'm not an Apple fan at all but that is some mighty impressive performance in such a small package and considering the thermal- and power envelope.
- j3i4j43JJJ 6y agoA good choice would be RTX 3050. It's 90 watt max and has > 12 TFLOPS. You can undervolt it a bit and put into Lenovo X1 Extreme => It will be a lot more powerful machine than MacBook Air with M1 and it only weight 1.8 KG.
- omikun 6y agoThat's interesting considering the M1 is 2.6 TFLOPS.
- jlaporte 6y agoThe M1 GPU is 2.6 TFLOPS, M1 Neural engine is 11 TFLOPs - in a 10 watt power envelope. The RTX 3090 draws 350 watts.
- rbrbr 6y agoI can read fear and discomfort between the lines of every second post here. This is clearly a game changer and the beginning of the end for Intel. And if Windows manufacturers can’t come up with an alternative soon they will be all in trouble too.
- nottorp 6y agoThat's decent performance for a fanless laptop for sure. Too bad that with the architecture change all you have to play is iOS games...
- musicale 6y agoYeah, Steam seems even more dead on macOS at this point. On the other hand, there are probably more PC game ports to iOS than there ever were to macOS, and they may run better than ever on the M1.
- hughw 6y agoDoes M1 perform these graphics calculations on the general purpose CPU, or is there a specialized graphics subsystem that does e.g. SIMT?
- gjsman-1000 6y agoQuick Question: Is GFXBench ARM-native? If this is actually under Rosetta...
- diebeforei485 6y agoThis makes me very curious about the performance of their future 16" MacBook Pros once they move away from Intel. I assume they'd still have a discrete GPU, but maybe as an option instead of as standard?
- EugeneOZ 6y agoI'm not an expert in the field of GPU/CPU benchmarks. Is it a synthetic benchmark or not?
- 205g0 6y agoStill impressed by M1's overall performance. If the M1 could only drive 3 displays (eg 2 external + 1 internal in a Macbook) and not just 2.
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoI think more relevant is last gen macbook pro's integrated graphics compared with M1: https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=65142191&os1=OS+X&api1=metal&hwtype1=GPU&hwname1=Intel%28R%29+Iris+Plus+Graphics+655&D2=Apple+M1 https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=651421...
- brailsafe 6y agoSeems to blow it out of the water. Those are pretty compelling numbers, so much so that once the second iteration is out, it might be worthwhile to replace my 2019 MBP 13".
- unsigner 6y agoThis is significant because the NVIDIA 1050Ti, while way slower than the state of the art, is still the meaningful practical minimum discrete GPU. There’s no 2050 or 3050 - if you go about looking for the cheapest PC suitable for gaming, you might buy a 1050Ti. It is head and shoulders above the integrated GPUs (yes, even the AMD Vega ones), and comparable in power to last-gen (as of last week) consoles, the PS4 and Xbox One S. This in turn means that every PC and console game created up until now, and probably for the next year or so, will comfortably run on a 1050Ti, even with compromises (“medium” settings, middling resolution like 1080p). For the first generation of Apple’s Mac GPU, running at 10W, this is a great result. This means, Apples idiosyncrasies aside, there will be no technical problems in porting games to macOS. (Metal is less of a problem than you’d think - if you use Unreal, Unity, DirectX 11/12 or Vulkan for graphics, the work needed will be on the order of a few man/months, which is small change in game development budgets.)
- diminish 6y ago> NVIDIA 1050Ti, while way slower than the state of the art, is still the meaningful practical minimum discrete GPU Not at all - I'm using it now. It's 5 years old and not adequate for most games & renders.
- faxfax 6y agoReally, I find that surprising. I use a GTX 1070 and it's still capable of playing a decent number of recent games at 4K with the settings turned down. Seems like the GTX 1050 Ti should still cut it for some moderate 1080p gaming.
- russli1993 6y agoRight now m1 is on macbook air and pro 13 inch. At 13 inchs 1080 render resolution for games is enough.
- ulfw 6y agoSlight correction. It came out October 25, 2016. So four years old.
- maverickmax90 6y agoWhat are the temperatures? Dont see any data on that; Frames/sec means very little if your macbook becomes hot leading to throttling...