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Why 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
by quelsolaar 6y ago
Why 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/
- chrischen 6y agoNot all Pro people need to run PUBG at 144hz on their ultra portable machine, in fact I'd even go as far to say that it's not a requirement for Pro.
- rsynnott 6y agoIt’s far faster than the crap ol’ Intel GPU found in current 13” pros.
- pertymcpert 6y agoAnandTech ran SPEC2006 on A14, and M1 should be faster.
- kushan2020 6y agoHow is comparing an internal GPU with a dedicated external 3090 RTX GPU fair ?
- threeseed 6y agoBecause M1 is their entry-level, laptop class offering. It makes zero sense to compare them to high-end desktop CPUs and GPUs.
- banachtarski 6y ago1050 Ti is below entry level at this point though.
- mikepurvis 6y agoThe 1050 Ti was the premium discrete GPU option in the XPS 15 in 2018. That only got upgraded to the 1650 last year. Maybe that's as much a ding on Dell as anything else, but either way, lots of us are still rocking those laptops and they're hardly "below entry level".
- duncanawoods 6y agoNah. I have this laptop too and at the time, the 1050TI was considered underwhelming but "well this laptop isn't for gaming, it's a business laptop". The contemporary Surface Book 2 had a 1060 with almost double the performance and people were kind of pissed.
- fastball 6y agoThe Surface Book 2 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD: $2499. The new MacBook Air with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD: $1399. Geekbench: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4679429?baseline=4648107 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4679429?baselin...
- duncanawoods 6y agoWell thanks for posting CPU benchmarks in a discussion about GPUs.
- 6y ago
- dmlittle 6y ago> If you want to convince me about the graphics/ML capabilities, compare it to a 3090 RTX using running Vulkan/Cuda. You can't really compare a laptop SoC with a dedicated graphics cards like the 3090 RTX. One is using a battery on a laptop and the other is plugged in to a power source with dedicated cooling. Yes, Apple is claiming this is a better solution but that's mostly for laptops. While they did release a Mac mini, they still haven't released an Apple SoC Mac Pro or iMac. Those would be fair game for such comparison.
- phoobahr 6y agoProbably because the announced hardware is clearly entry level. The only model line that gets replaced is the MacBook Air which has been, frankly, cheap-is and underpowered for a long time. So you have a platform that is (currently) embodied by entry level systems that appear to be noticeably faster than their predecessors. Apple has said publicly that they plan to finish this transition in 2 years. So more models are coming - and they'll have to be more performant again. It seems pretty clear that the play here runs "Look here's our entry level, it's better than anyone else's entry level and could be comparable to midlevel from anyone else. But after taking crap for being underpowered while waiting for intel to deliver we cn now say that this is the new bar for performance at the entry level in these price brackets."
- ta76893547 6y agoIt would be interesting to see the comparison to a Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U, you can find that in a ThinkPad P14s for $60 less than the cheapest macbook air (same amount of ram and ssd size) so that seems like a fair comparison
- spockz 6y agoIt’s just a shame that the screens in the Lenovo AMD devices doesn’t hold a candle to the MacBooks.
- toolz 6y agoin what way? I've got a levono ideapad with ryzen7 4800u that outperforms my macbook pro 2019 16" by a long shot
- eyelidlessness 6y agoWhat screen performance are you referencing? Refresh rate? Pixel density? Color space? Color accuracy? Backlight bleed? Dead/stuck pixels? Nits? Size?
- 6y ago
- toiletfuneral 6y agoThis comment doesn't seem serious
- Zetto 6y agoAlso Ryzen only got better on its 3rd gen release last year. Back in 2017, the R7 1700x can't compete with the 8700k on single thread performance.
- Zetto 6y agoDon't know why this is getting downvoted but it's actually true https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html (Ctrl+F 1700x then 8700k)
- klelatti 6y agoI'm sure you understand the performance differences between a 10W part with integrated graphics designed for a fanless laptop and a desktop part with active cooling and discrete graphics. This article from Anandtech on the M1 is helpful in understanding why the M1 is so impressive. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
- jl6 6y agoThis is true, but I think a lot of folk are assuming that a future M2 or M3 will be able to scale up to higher wattage and match state-of-the-art enthusiast-class chips. That assumption is very much yet to be proven.
- pwthornton 6y agoThere seems to be no evidence that Intel will be able to keep up with Apple. The early geek bench results show the M1 laptops beating even the high end Intel Mac ones. And that's with their most thermally constrained chip. Apple will be releasing something like a M1X next, which will probably have way more cores and some other differences. But this M1 is incredibly impressive for this class of device. Intel has nothing near it to compete in this space. The bigger question is how well does Apple keep up with AMD and Nvidia for GPUs and will they allow discrete GPUs.
- klelatti 6y agoIndeed, but given they are on TSMC 5nm and the apparent strength of the architecture and their team I think most will be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Actually biggest worry might be the economics - given their low volumes at the highest end (Mac Pro etc) how do they have the volumes to justify investing in building these CPUs?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoI suspect the plan is to redefine computing with applications that integrate GPU (aka massively parallel vector math), plain old Intel-style integer and floating point, and some form of ML acceleration. So multiple superfast cores are less important for - say - audio/video if much of the processing is being handled by the GPU, or even by the ML system. This is a difference in kind not a difference in speed, because plain old x86/64 etc isn't optimal for this. It's a little like the next level of the multimedia PC of the mid-90s. Instead of playing video and sound the goal is to create new kinds of smart immersive experiences. Nvidia and AMD are kinda sorta playing around the edges of the same space, but I think Apple is going to try to own it. And it's a conscious long-term goal, while the competition is still thinking of specific hardware steppings and isn't quite putting the pieces together.
- rowanG077 6y agoHow is it relevant how it stacks upto a thread ripper and 3090 rtx? You are comparing an ultra book with a large high performance workstation pc then. That makes absolutely no sense.
- grecy 6y ago> If you want to convince me about the graphics/ML capabilities, compare it to a 3090 RTX using running Vulkan/Cuda. You're seriously suggesting we should compare the integrated graphics in a fanless bottom-of-their-line laptop that starts at $999 to a $1,500 graphics card ? (Let's be brutally clear - that graphics card can do precisely squat on it's own. No CPU, no RAM, no PSU, no display, no keyboard, etc. etc. etc.) Surely that makes no sense in any universe.
- fastball 6y agoDo you see a lot of laptops with threadripper CPUs and 3090 RTX graphics cards? I sure don't. "Best-in-class" isn't a weasel word – it's recognition that no, this $1000 laptop is not going to be the fastest computer of all time. Just faster than other products similar to it.
- sschueller 6y agoIt's a gift from God alright. It's the start of a full lock down. You no longer own your device. God does.
- marta_morena_28 6y ago> If you want to convince me about the graphics/ML capabilities, compare it to a 3090 RTX using running Vulkan/Cuda. Woot? So you are buying a new Fiat Punto and compare it to the latest spec of a Koenigsegg? What are you even doing? What we need to know is how these perform against previous MacBooks and potentially Microsoft Surface and Dell XPS. those are competitors.
- romanoderoma 6y agoWell, you can tweak a Fiat Punto to go as fast as 300km/h, you can't mess with Apple HW in any way though You're stuck with what you bought :) (in the article: Fiat Uno - 30 years old Fiat model - with Lamborghini engine runs at 320km/h) https://www.automotorinews.it/2020/05/27/fiat-uno-motore-lamborghini-bolide-300-km-h-video/ https://www.automotorinews.it/2020/05/27/fiat-uno-motore-lam...
- nix23 6y agoWhen both of them have nearly the same price...i take a Tesla not the Punto
- romanoderoma 6y agoIs there a Tesla that lasted 20 years and after 500 thousand Kms is still functioning with little or no maintenance? Switching to Apple has a cost, switching to Apple with Apple silicon has an even higher cost. It all depends what you use your computer for, if you buy a Tesla you probably don't depend on your car, people buying entry level hw are people who don't need something fancy, they need a tool and good enough it's enough. To reverse your analogy, if they have the same price, I take a computer that I can upgrade and actually own over an Apple
- nix23 6y ago>Is there a Tesla that lasted 20 years and after 500 thousand Kms is still functioning with little or no maintenance? Whe dont know yet. >To reverse your analogy, if they have the same price, I was thinking that Apple is the Punto, Apple never had a Koenigsberg.
- runjake 6y agoThe M1 is a mobile chip. Why compare it against the high-end? It seems pretty ridiculous to put the 10 watt M1 CPU up against big time GPUs that require several hundred watts. Regardless, all the benches anyone desires will be out next week.
- Dahoon 6y agoIf it will only be available in phones then it should clearly be compared to phone SoCs. If it will be in laptops too it should be compared to laptops/PC too of course.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoEven in phones, even those phones offered by a single vendor, there’s a pretty wide performance range targeting a generally accepted (if evolving) set of market/form factor/use case categories. “Phone” is so broad a category as to be meaningless for comparison. “Laptop” as well. It’s just as silly to compare an ultraportable to a 17” 7lb gaming laptop as to compare an upscale ultraportable to a budget Chromebook.
- runjake 6y agoI don’t know of any laptops with an RTX 3090 GPU or a Threadripper, let alone in a MacBook Air thin form factor running on 10 watts with 15 hour battery life.
- girvo 6y agoWhat laptop runs a 3090 with a Threadripper at 10W?
- breakfastduck 6y agoAlso missing the fact it's manufactured by the same company that manufacture Ryzen. It's good stock.
- robertoandred 6y agoThis is how you know that Apple haters are running scared.
- Dahoon 6y agoPlease don't do that on HN.
- quelsolaar 6y agoI'm not a Apple hater. I used to run a Mac. And I'm not scared, I'm sad. I would love to have 3 or more open competitive desktop/laptop platforms (Windows, Linux and MacOS) but my view is that the release of the M1 makes that not very likely. The M1 is almost identical to the A14, a great chip that was designed for mobile devices. It is designed to run one application at a time, don't do much compute or graphics, have a fixed set of memory and no hardware attachments. It does that brilliantly. The problem is that a chip designed for a computer have different priorities. The need for low power consumption is less important. Even in a laptop, after 10h, Id rather take performance then more battery time. In a Computer you want more threads, expandable memory, PCI Gen 4.0, discreet graphics, GPU Compute, Raytracing, support for fast networking (the Mac Mini used to have 10Gig lan), multiple display support, expandable storage, and in a stationary computer preferably you want to be able to upgrade parts. If we look at the M1 compare it to the A14, we can see that Apple has made almost no modifications to the architecture to make it fit in a computer rather then a mobile device. They didn't add more cores, they didn't add support for PCI, GPUs, Ethernet, or anything else that makes it more like a Computer CPU. Maybe this is besides the point, but to me it was very telling that they didn't update the physical design of any of the 3 computers. The thermal envelope of the M1 Should make it possible to make some much sexier designs, then the old designs we where given. It tells me a lot about how Apple allocates its resources. This paired with Apples messaging, tells me that Apple is not interested in making Macs that are competitive with PCs on the things that make you choose to use a computer over a mobile device. It feels to me like Apple has moved to Apple Silicon on the mac because its convenient for them to have a single platform, rather than it being the right design for the products. Apple have neglected the mac and especially the pro segment for a long time. There was always a chance they would get their act together and build reasonably priced, top speced machines, that could compete with Linux and Windows boxes, but with this move, I cant see them put the resources behind their silicon to compete with AMD, nVidia, and Intel when it comes to Performance and features. So, no I'm not scared, I'm sad that Apple has taken themselves out of the running.
- paulpan 6y ago> So its faster then a 3 generations old budget card, that doesn't run nVidia optimized drivers This is a key point. Nvidia GPUs have not been supported in macOS since Mojave, so this seems like an apples-oranges comparison. Unless the benchmark for M1 was also run on Mojave (unlikely), then there's 3 years worth of software optimization potentially unaccounted for. Possibly a more realistic comparison is between the M1 and the AMD Radeon 5300M. Shows between a 10-40% deficit in performance: https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=79877526&os1=OS+X&api1=metal&hwtype1=dGPU&hwname1=AMD+Radeon+Pro+5300M&D2=Apple+M1 https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx50&did1=798775... That said still an impressive showing given the TDP and the fact it's an integrated GPU vs. a dedicated GPU. It seems to hint that with enough GPU cores and a better cooling solution, it's not unreasonable to see these replacing the AMD Radeon 5500M/5600M next year in the MBP 16 and iMac lineups. EDIT: pasted wrong compare link
- moogleii 6y agoHey, take a breather if it helps. No one here is responsible for convincing you of anything. But you sound a little upset. If it helps, take into consideration performance:power ratios. None of your scenarios are fair otherwise, and I personally haven't seen anyone here claim the M1 will outperform everything. Hence, "in its class." Maybe you saw some errant comments on PCMag.com claiming the M1 was the be all end all of computing? Good luck.
- breakfastduck 6y agoSuch a close minded view. You think a fair comparison is a passively heated MacBook Air compared to a top spec PC cpu? It absolutely destroys it’s competition in performance (low end light notebooks) - why would you think comparing it to a 3090rtx is anything like fair. Like calling a dell XPS 13 a piece of shit because it can’t keep up with a thread-ripper Titan pc desktop. The fact you’re even in a place (where the benchmarks destroy in class competition) to complain about how it’s not being put up against top spec pc hardware is testament to how powerful it is.
- mirthflat83 6y agoLmao, well said. The bias against Apple in HN is strong
- benhurmarcel 6y ago> low end light notebooks The Macbook Air isn't low end in price.
- breakfastduck 6y agoIt’s a premium device though. It just comes down to if it’s value for the purchaser. If you’re looking for a passive thin laptop that’s powerful enough to run pro apps it’s a good option if you have the money to spend.
- mlindner 6y ago1050 Ti is a high end graphics GPU...
- omikun 6y agoSure let's compare. Let's see how fast a 3090 is on 10W.
- breakfastduck 6y agoBrilliant response. It's a passively cooled laptop that's super thin and can crunch through 4k video editing and serious audio workflows. We'd have shit our pants about this kind of leap 10 years ago. It really is impressive stuff.
- reason-mr 6y agoRight answer here. I am pretty excited about a passively cooled device power efficient device that performs on-par, or better than, a 3-year-old, super heavy, gamer laptop like an Alienware r2/3. Those machines are still capable of running relatively impressive PC-VR, way ahead of what we see today in the standalone Oculus Quest2. Stick one (or preferably 2) of these things in a VR headset please Apple.
- hyperpallium2 6y agoSeems pretty obviously to show what mainstream GPU it is closest to in performance. Especially for the first benchmark, the figures are suspiciously close. It seems amazing that Apple can make its own desktop chips now - imagine if the origin Apple had an apple chip instead of a 6502! OTOH, everyone used to design their own CPUs, like Sun and Acorn. Wozniak too.
- DRW_ 6y ago> 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. These are chips for their low end, entry level products. Why on earth would you think that would be an appropriate comparison? That's absolutely absurd. They aren't putting these in iMacs or Mac Pros. They aren't putting these in their high end MacBook Pros (they put it in their low end 13" pro, which has always been only a minor step up from the Air - the higher end 13" pro was more powerful, which they haven't replaced yet.) Apple's "faster than 98% of laptops sold" line is obviously nonsense, like I'm sure it's technically correct - most laptops sold are cheap, low end things - but that's not a particularly huge achievement. I'm not sure why this line in particular is inviting people to make such ridiculous statements in response though.
- elheffe80 6y agoTry changing it to compare the M1 against a 2080. This is only one generation behind yes? If I could just paste a pic in I would, but I will let you do the work yourself. It is similar. Amazing IMO, and I am no longer an apple fan.
- mhh__ 6y ago> Amazing IMO Apple could nearly buy Nvidia with their cash in hand alone, is it that surprising? I'd be more surprised if they fucked it up completely. That they have actually chose to do it is impressive, although highly worrying to me from a software freedom perspective. What are the odds of Apple releasing drivers for any of their hardware?
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoThe M1 is clearly the low-end Apple Silicon chip, given the computers that Apple is putting it in: the MacBook Air, the Mac mini, and the two-port MBP. Why in the world should we demand that this chip be able to blow the doors off a "top of the line Ryzen"? This is a mobile CPU that's holding it own against CPUs like that in single-core performance. "Yeah, but I bet a 64-core Ryzen would just blow it away in multi-core, so who is Apple kidding? Pshaw." Really?
- locusm 6y agoI guess then you'll be demanding that we pit Japan's Fugaku against the best of Threadripper too huh?
- socialdemocrat 6y agoExactly, but I am not surprised. It has always been this deep seated suspicion and denial of Apple achievements by Apple haters. I remember debating with someone claiming the iPhone was not innovation by Apple because they had not made the touch sensor. It was like “they just got lucky”
- bhauer 6y agoI'd like to see someone run our framework benchmarks project [1] on M1 versus something like an Asus G14 (Ryzen 4900HS). It's not graphics, but the ability to run web frameworks is of interest to me. [1] https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/wiki/TechEmpower-Performance-Rating-(TPR) https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/wiki/Tech...
- ummonk 6y agoCome on man, a 1050TI was a reasonably powerful graphics card. It's amazing that we now have an integrated graphics processor in a low power chip that can match its performance.
- StreamBright 6y agoI need a HDMI port on my mbp more than I need more raw cpu performance. Maybe it is only me.
- keymone 6y agoSo when Apple m1 goes toe to toe with top cpus you all scream “apples to oranges” but when it comes to INTEGRATED GPU ON 10WATTS OF POWER it suddenly makes total sense for you to compare it to 350watt dedicated products? Like.. what the hell were you thinking typing this comment?
- headeffects 6y agoWhat was “old” about the previous MacBook Air? It was ice lake. Also, the new one is even more “thermally constrained” because it doesn’t have a fan. What’s your point? It seems odd to be so cynical about a drastic performance increase yoy and a breakthrough in performance per watt. I bet if it wasn’t Apple you would be a little more excited.
- BearOso 6y ago> that doesn't run nVidia optimized drivers I think that’s the important point to consider. Nvidia is non grata with Apple, and that rift happened way way before Metal. These drivers have no chance of performing representatively.