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That conclusion is quite misleading, in my opinion. They write "outperforms the core performance" and the keyword here is "core". What they mean is that if one
by fxtentacle 6y ago
That conclusion is quite misleading, in my opinion.
They write "outperforms the core performance" and the keyword here is "core". What they mean is that if one had a single-core Zen3 and a single-core M1, then the M1 would win some and lose some.
But in the real world, most Zen3 CPUs will have 2x or more cores, thus they'll be 2x to 4x faster.
So what they mean to say is that they praise Apple for having amazing per-core performance. But it kind of sounds as if the M1 had competitive performance overall, which is incorrect.
- piyh 6y agoIt bodes really well for future chips with higher power budgets. The Pro seems a bit underwhelming for what it could be though.
- bonestamp2 6y agoOn performance, ya I agree. Although, they basically doubled the battery life over the previous generation so that alone might be worthwhile for some users. I think we'll see an additional higher end Macbook Pro 13" when they start to release Apple Silicon models with discrete GPUs.
- Tagbert 6y agoThat new MacBook Pro replaces the low end of the Pro line which had a slower CPU and only 2 ports. I would expect that, when Apple brings out their next iteration of chips, they would target the higher end of the Pro line with more cores and ports along with higher RAM capacities.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoI'm guessing they also want devs of tools like docker to finish porting their software before they switch the rest of the macbooks over.
- arvinsim 6y agoThey only need to add 2 ports to the Pro to differentiate it from the Air.
- d3nj4l 6y agoI feel like most people here haven't seen the SPEC benchmarks AnandTech performed (and they're partly to blame for that; their UX is awful). But the M1 is toe-to-toe with desktop Ryzen: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... E: And multi-core SPEC: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste..., where they're on par with mobile Ryzen.
- fxtentacle 6y agoI looked up multi-core Cinebench R23 and the AMD 2990WX comes in at 33,213 vs. 7,833 was given for the M1 in the article. Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing. That's why I believe it is fair to take their word and compare it against my other options for a professional video editing rig. And in that comparison, which Apple has chosen itself, the M1 comes out woefully inadequate at a mere 24% of the performance. Of course, for a notebook, the M1 is amazing. But I feel irked that Apple and Anandtech pretend that it's competitive with desktop workstations by having such a misleading conclusion about it being on par with Zen3 - which it clearly isn't.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago> Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing. That's why I believe it is fair to take their word and compare it against my other options for a professional video editing rig. That's ridiculous. Threadripper has 8 to 16 times as many cores, runs on hundreds of watts of power and such a CPU alone costs the same as several Mac Minis. Them claiming you can use it for video editing doesn't mean you can expect that a 1.5 pound notebook will measure up to literally the biggest baddest computer you can buy.
- nickpeterson 6y agoHe knows it’s ridiculous, but you’re going to see a large group of people who hate macs take this turn of fortune quite poorly. My hope is that it really puts pressure on intel to start firing on all cylinders but who knows? A MacBook Pro 16 with higher clocks and more gpu cores would be a really hard system to not buy.
- nicoburns 6y agoIIRC the biggest Zen3 mobile CPUs are 8-core. So they'll have at most 2x cores. And that's ignoring the low-power cores on the mac which probably still count for half a core each. AMD is likely to be faster in multicore overall, but not by much it seems.
- neogodless 6y agoThere are no announced or released Zen 3 mobile CPUs at this time. You are correct in that the Zen 2 mobile CPUs currently top out at 8 cores, and up to about 54W TDP - the top CPU is the "45W" Ryzen 9 4900H which can be configured up to about 54W by the OEM. We might see Zen 3 mobile early in 2021.
- msie 6y agoM1 has multiple cores. 2x-4x multiple cores does not necessarily mean 2x-4x faster.
- d3nj4l 6y agoThe M1 has a big.LITTLE design with only half of the cores being performance-oriented, so if there is a gap, it would almost always be in Ryzen's favour.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAssuming complete core saturation, yes. That’s not how CPUs actually operate though, outside of some very narrow tasks. If you actually regularly max out your CPU, you already know that and wouldn’t touch a Mac mini no matter what chip is in it.
- Uehreka 6y agoThey’ll be 2-4x faster in some multicore tasks. CPU benchmarks specifically break out single core performance as a separate metric, because as of 2020 a lot of everyday work is single core bound (stuff like 3D graphic design, video editing or compiling large codebases not considered “everyday work”). Not to mention that even in multicore tasks, you don’t usually scale perfectly linearly due to overhead. And also, the biggest Ryzen processors are usually in desktops, and Apple Silicon hasn’t entered that market yet.
- JAlexoid 6y agoFor most everyday work - Raspberry Pi is fast enough, so it's not even an argument. Raspberry Pi 8GB is 10x cheaper? There are mini desktops starting at $250 that will do everyday work. If you throw in "everyday work" - then we have passed the need for new chips altogether.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> For most everyday work - Raspberry Pi is fast enough That really stretches the meaning of 'everyday work' quite a lot. The pi is dog slow, even compared to an Intel i9 ;)
- hajile 6y agoThat's a bit of an overstatement. Booting from SSD instead of SD card has an enormous uptake in performance. I have yet to hear of a Pi 4 that couldn't overclock to 2GHz which is a pure uplift of 25%. Moving to 64-bit PiOS gives another double-digit jump in performance too. Not record-breaking, but not unusable either.
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- 314 6y agoThe Zen3 processor that they are comparing it to is the 5950x - the fastest desktop processor with a TDP of 105W. The entire system power of the M1 mini under load was 28W. What the article is pointing out is that the mobile low-power version of the M1 (as the mini is really just a laptop in a SFF box) is competitive with the top-end Zen3 chip; the benchmark gap is smaller than 2x. We don't know yet how far the M1 scales up, e.g. a performance desktop will presumably have a higher TDP and probably trade the integrated GPU space for more CPU cores. But we don't known if/how this will translate into performance gains. Previous incarnations of the Mac Pro have also used multiple CPUs so it is not yet clear if "in the real word, most Zen3 CPUs will have 2x or more cores".
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- oefrha 6y agoNot to mention 5950X alone without cooling ($799) costs almost as much as an entry level MacBook Air.
- mey 6y agoThe single core performance between the 5600x and the 5950x isn't significantly different. The charts have some interesting gaps... Edit: Putting it head to head with the 5600x would make a lot of sense for price/core/desktop space comparison.
- qz2 6y agoYes. I'd like to see a decent-ish Ryzen APUs such as the 3400G up against one of these as well. I did notice that the cinebench for the M1 is only about 10% higher than my Ryzen laptop (T495s) which is laughable as it's a 3500U and the whole thing cost me £470 new!
- alwillis 6y ago
- breakfastduck 6y agoPassively cooled first generation macbook air chip isn't quite as fast as an absolute monster grade PC Ryzen chip on its 3rd generation. Color me shocked. I think you're just trying your hardest to convince yourself that these chips aren't competitive.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoSingle thread performance still matters a lot for personal computer use. It’s not everything, normal people do benefit from some degree of parallelization, but there’s a reason all of the major PC chip designs continue to push single thread performance even as that becomes more difficult. Most end users see more benefit from those improvements than from more cores.
- ashtonkem 6y agoMost real world usages don’t max out all cores all the time.