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I wonder why the mac mini M1 seemed to sometimes underperform the macbook air M1 -- shouldn't the mac mini be outperforming the mac book air essentially across
by xt00 6y ago
I wonder why the mac mini M1 seemed to sometimes underperform the macbook air M1 -- shouldn't the mac mini be outperforming the mac book air essentially across the board due to the better thermal envelope?
- kube-system 6y agoMaybe Apple is binning the worse chips in the Mini? It is their cheapest Mac, after all.
- cromka 6y agoThey bin the worse chips as a 7-core version of M1, which is not an option when configuring Mac Mini.
- kube-system 6y agoMaybe there are some chips with 8 functional cores but only at lower frequencies? ... just spitballing.
- cromka 6y agoI mean can you imagine the uproar it would cause if Apple did that?
- kube-system 6y agoThey don't advertise clock speeds, FWIW
- cromka 6y agoSee my other response in this thread.
- mkl 6y agoThere wouldn't be any uproar if they're sold as a cheaper lower spec model. Apple could be stockpiling them for later, having led with the higher performance chips for marketing purposes.
- cromka 6y agoBut we're not speculating about what would happen if Apple did that explicitly. We're trying to understand why did the existing M1 Mini perform worse in some of those tests than the M1 Air did, while there is no known reason for it. Some speculate that they inexplicitly sell subpar/low freq chips, which would mean that they were selling an official 7-core, an official 8-core and a faster but otherwise non-advertised version of 8-core. And on top of that, the latter would be installed in Mac Air that has the worst (passive) cooling solution from all current M1 offerings... That doesn't make sense on any level and is just something Apple could not do and successfully hide from everyone, especially that they already have an explicit binning process.
- kube-system 6y agoThere has to be some reason for it. If not thermals, then what else about the hardware could explain the difference?
- pldr1234 6y agoThis is why I love HN - this comment-to-comment dialogue and thought progression is always so riveting!
- cromka 6y agoIt's funny how we immediately resort to conspiracy theories about Apple and their hardware but completely forgo a substantial chance that it's the original author's human error at cause? It is much more plausible, isn't it, especially if the test results in speech actually also contradict literally every other independent test results out there?
- hajile 6y agoThere should be chips where one GPU core is flawed, but the CPU cores are fine and the chip otherwise hit the correct frequencies and thermals.
- cromka 6y agoEspecially with 8GB of RAM less!