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Impressive but unbelievably expensive considering what will actually be run on it. I kind of want one, but the 5800x for example is about 10x less expensive th
by mhh__ 5y ago
Impressive but unbelievably expensive considering what will actually be run on it.
I kind of want one, but the 5800x for example is about 10x less expensive than a specced out MacBook Pro
- megablast 5y agoAre you comparing the price of a chip to a laptop??
- mhh__ 5y agoYes. If I bought one of these it would never actually move so I don't actually mind the comparison all that much for my personal use case, obviously it isn't apples to oranges but my point is that this performance is not free.
- hwita 5y agoThen perhaps you may want to wait for Apple to release a desktop-class processor to make the comparison, perhaps early next year?
- lostmsu 5y agoPerhaps. AMD should also release 5nm processors by then too.
- yazaddaruvala 5y agoIts not clear to me that Apple will make a desktop-class processor. The unit economics likely don't make sense for them. All of Apple's innovation seems to be towards better and cheaper AR/VR hardware. Desktop-class processors would be a distraction for them. And with all of the top cloud players building custom silicon these days, there is little room for Apple to sell CPUs to the server market even if they were inclined (which they are not). The only strategic Apple vertical that might align with desktop-class CPUs is the Apple Car initiative and specifically self-driving. Dedicated audio/image/video processing and inference focused hardware could better empower creatives for things like VFX or post-processing or media in general. However, its not clear to me that is enough of a market for Apple's unit economics compared with more iDevice / MacBook sales.
- Closi 5y agoIMO it's obvious that there will need to be a desktop version - and all the rumours are pointing towards a Mac Pro release with silly specs - i.e. an SOC with something like 40/64+ cores. Why would Apple want to give up their portion of the high-power desktop market to Windows? What's the alternative? That they release another Mac Pro with intel, despite their stated intention to move everything away from x86, or that they release a Mac Pro with just a laptop chip inside? Let's remember that Apple has an annual R&D budget of c$20 billion, so it won't be totally shocking if they diverted a small fraction of that to build out a desktop processor.
- sudosysgen 5y agoWell, those are rumors assuming a chiplet architecture, which Apple has never tried before and would require very significant modifications to the layout. Simply quadrupling the die isn't really feasible, the price increases exponentially.
- Closi 5y agoWell analysts have estimated the cost of the M1 at $40 to $50 per chip, so even if they double the size of the chip which quadruples the cost, that would still be completely feasible for the Mac Pro which retails at c$5,000+ Even if the SOC was $500 cost price they would still have plenty of room to pay for everything else and hit the $5k price point. I mean, they could even use separate highly integrated chips to get that number of cores too, although I suspect they will want to do it on a single chip assuming cooling is OK.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThis wouldn't be doubling the size of the M1, it would be quadrupling the size of the M1 Max, so more like 1500$ for the chip. What you're talking about at the end is chiplets and it takes a lot of work to get it to operate, just ask AMD.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
- vinculuss 5y agoA boxed CPU is an odd comparison without considering motherboard, ram, GPU, cooler, SSD, display in that calculation as well.
- ddlutz 5y agoNot just an odd comparison. I don't think it's a valid comparison at all.
- whynotminot 5y agoWhat is it with the M1 series of chips that causes people to bring completely disingenuous comparisons to the fray with a straight face.
- LegitShady 5y agocan't really get it any other way. The issue to me is that because apple is the only one who can put these in computers this will have no real effect on PC component pricing. Apple makes, apple puts in apple computers, can't run windows, if you're in another ecosystem it's not even a real option.
- jchw 5y agoPeople are probably going to be reading your comparison as an objective comparison rather than an opportunistic one. For example, if you are choosing between upgrading AM4 processors on your desktop versus buying a new Macbook Pro, then of course it makes sense to compare the cost in those terms. However, the price of the M1 chip is obviously probably not that bad. Since you can’t meaningfully buy it on its own, I guess there is no fair comparison to make here anyways.
- Osiris 5y agoExactly. For me, I can upgrade my existing desktop by spending $560 on a Ryzen 5900X. I have all the other parts so there's no additional cost. I also don't need portability nor a fancy display because I use all external monitors and keyboard/mouse. Fan noise is irrelevant because I wear noise cancelling headphones. For me, it's not worth spending the $2500 on a MacBook when I can get similar/better performance with a much cheaper upgrade.
- mhh__ 5y agoThe M1 chip is actually probably extremely expensive. The top of the line one is literally 60 BILLION transistors! My current machine has like 10 billion (GPU + CPU)
- jchw 5y ago60 billion is obviously a metric ton, but 10 billion is not that ridiculous for an SoC to clear; there are snapdragons at higher transistor counts. The AMD 5950X clears 19 billion, and it is just a CPU with no GPU or integrated RAM. I’ve got to guess the M1 transistor count is inflated a fair bit by RAM. I suppose it’s not likely we’ll know the actual price of the M1, but it would suffice to say it’s probably a fair bit less than the full laptop.
- smiley1437 5y agoNot sure if these numbers can believed, but apparently a 300mm wafer at the 5nm node costs about $17000 for TSMC to process https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmcs-wafer-prices-revealed-300mm-wafer-at-5nm-is-nearly-dollar17000 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmcs-wafer-prices-reveale... Since the M1 is 120 mm2 and a 300mm wafer is about 70695 mm2, you could theoretically fit 589 M1 chips on a wafer. Subtract the chips lost at the edge and other flaws, you might be able to get 500 M1 off a wafer? (I know nothing about what would be a reasonable yield but I'm pretty sure a chip won't work if part of it is missing) Anyways, that would be $17000/500, or $34 per M1 chip - based just on area and ignoring other processing costs.
- ribit 5y agoWorkstation laptops are expensive. These new Macs are priced quite competitively. E.g. the 14“ with the full M1 Pro is $2.5k and is faster, more portable and has a much better display than a 2.7k Dell Precision 5560…
- mhh__ 5y agoVery True although I note that I wouldn't be able to actually work on one for the day job because of windows. Still might buy one, I want an arm box to test my work on compilers on.
- TheBigSalad 5y agoAren't Dells usually pricer than retail because they include some kind of service plan?
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoNo, service plan is an extra $300+, as is applecare (and both are definitely worth it).
- neogodless 5y agoThe 10-core (8 performance) M1 Max starts around $2700 in the 14" form factor. It's hard to compare to laptops, but since we started the desktop comparison, a Ryzen 7 5800X is $450 MSRP, or about $370 current street price. Motherboards can be found for $100, but you'll more likely spend $220-250 for a good match. 32GB RAM is $150, 1TB Samsung 980 Pro is a bit under $200. Let's assume desktop RTX 3060 for the graphics (which is probably slightly more powerful than the 32-core GPU M1 Max) for MSRP $330 but street price over $700. So we're at about $1670 for the components, before adding in case ($100), power supply ($100) and other things a laptop includes (screen, keyboard...).
- Osiris 5y agoMost of if not an of those components are reusable, such as case, power supply, monitors, peripherals, RAM, etc. In my case I'm reusing everything and just upgrading the CPU for $560. The end result will be similar or better performance than the MacBook. If you don't own any desktop computer parts at all then, yes, one can easily spend $2500 building a machine with similar performance.
- jshier 5y agoM1 Pro has the same CPU cores as the M1 Max, just half the GPU cores (and video coding cores). So you can get the same CPU performance in the 14" for as little as $2499.