4 ms·

The most striking benchmark for me as a developer is the disk read/write speed. Wonder why Apple didn't highlight that. Nearly 2x as fast as last year's M1 Air

by _xnmw 5y ago

The most striking benchmark for me as a developer is the disk read/write speed. Wonder why Apple didn't highlight that. Nearly 2x as fast as last year's M1 Air or Intel macs - that sounds amazing to me. As a simple web dev, I thought I would never use any of the extra power available in an M1 Pro/Max, as I never do anything GPU-intensive. However, disk speed is a noticeable factor in day-to-day workloads, even when I'm running an IDE like IntelliJ and indexing a large repo. Interesting because Apple chose to focus on the 200 vs. 400 "memory bandwidth" figure in their marketing to differentiate between the M1 Pro and Max, but as this review suggests, the 400 GB/s rate cannot be reached even in theoretical workloads, so it might as well be meaningless. Disk speed seems more important. Can anyone comment? 1) https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
I can walk out right now and get as fast an SSD and slot it into my Dell. Next year, I'll be able to put in a faster one, and the following year one that is yet faster. I am surprised that the soldered in SSD speed is merely on par. And of course, for roughly 2x the price. So maybe that's why they aren't shouting about it.
fomine3 5y ago
> However, disk speed is a noticeable factor in day-to-day workloads, even when I'm running an IDE like IntelliJ and indexing a large repo. You may want to check IOPS benchmark rather than throughput.
- _xnmw 5y ago
  Thank you, that's the term I was looking for (IOPS benchmark). Do you know how I can test the IOPS speed on a Mac? Looking for a online benchmark, can't find one.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark-macOS/ https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark-macOS/ https://www.katsurashareware.com/amorphousdiskmark/ https://www.katsurashareware.com/amorphousdiskmark/

by _xnmw 5y ago

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

I can walk out right now and get as fast an SSD and slot it into my Dell. Next year, I'll be able to put in a faster one, and the following year one that is yet faster. I am surprised that the soldered in SSD speed is merely on par. And of course, for roughly 2x the price. So maybe that's why they aren't shouting about it.

fomine3 5y ago

> However, disk speed is a noticeable factor in day-to-day workloads, even when I'm running an IDE like IntelliJ and indexing a large repo. You may want to check IOPS benchmark rather than throughput.

_xnmw 5y ago
Thank you, that's the term I was looking for (IOPS benchmark). Do you know how I can test the IOPS speed on a Mac? Looking for a online benchmark, can't find one.
- fomine3 5y ago
  https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark-macOS/ https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark-macOS/ https://www.katsurashareware.com/amorphousdiskmark/ https://www.katsurashareware.com/amorphousdiskmark/