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I don't really understand your point. The impressiveness of M1/Pro/Max is what they do holistically for the power draw. The CPU + GPU + other accelerators combi

I don't really understand your point. The impressiveness of M1/Pro/Max is what they do holistically for the power draw. The CPU + GPU + other accelerators combined and across the board approach what powerful desktops can do even with discrete power guzzling components. This is not about a single aspect of the silicon. So sure, you can cherry pick one part of the SoC, match it up against one aspect of Chip X and try to make a point. OK, you win that one. I'm talking about what the SoC as a whole does while running near-silently off a battery. Yes, a desktop gives you the ability to have more CPU cores. I'm sure that's what we'll get from whatever Apple decides to ship for its true Pro desktops.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
The point is that we already had this. Both the CPU and GPU are competitive with existing CPUs and GPUs. Which is a first in a long time for anybody outside of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. But "competitive" and "dramatically better" are not the same thing. People were primarily comparing it to desktop CPUs because of where we were in the release cycle. How does it compare to Zen 3? Well, Zen 3 laptops were still a few months away when the M1 was released, but Zen 2 desktops were only a single digit percentage faster than Zen 2 laptops, so how does it compare to Zen 3 desktops? Meanwhile the primary real advantage of the M1 is that it uses less power. Compared to PC laptops, it's a somewhat less power. There are already PC laptops with 9+ hours of battery life (and no matter how little the CPU uses, you still have to run the screen and everything else), so the practical impact of this isn't enormous, but it's there. But if you compare the power consumption to PC desktops, OMFG! Except that nobody really cares about the power consumption of PC desktops. That's why they triple the power consumption to eek out 8% more performance. A lot of this is also attributable to how good Apple's marketing is. I don't know if they did this on purpose, but people keep publishing SPEC benchmarks for comparison with PCs. Part of this is that a lot of the ordinary benchmark software either doesn't run on Mac at all or there was no native ARM version available yet. But SPEC was put together by a consortium of server vendors. Their incentive is show that their POWER and Xeon processors are worth the fat premium over regular desktop CPUs. So the suite skews heavy to benchmarks limited by memory bandwidth, because big servers will have like 16 times more memory channels than a desktop. Then Apple shows up with this SoC that has a ton of memory bandwidth because it's necessary to feed the GPU and it stomps all over those specific benchmarks. Then it's OMFG again even though those results aren't actually typical because most workloads aren't limited by memory bandwidth. It's not a bad chip. The level of hype is just extraordinary.
- whynotminot 5y ago
  If you don't like SPEC then look at workload benchmarks like video rendering or code compilation. The M series chips acquit themselves quite well. > There are already PC laptops with 9+ hours of battery life Not when they're actually doing anything. To compete with what the M series chips bring, you need a discrete GPU and a very hungry CPU. Such a machine does not get 9+ hours of battery life. > The point is that we already had this. Both the CPU and GPU are competitive with existing CPUs and GPUs. Which is a first in a long time for anybody outside of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. But "competitive" and "dramatically better" are not the same thing. Right, you already had something like this in multiple discrete components that consume a huge amount of battery life when cobbled together into one system. My entire point has been that the impressiveness of the M series chips comes from their efficiency and what they are able to do holistically in a single SoC. > A lot of this is also attributable to how good Apple's marketing is Sigh. Alright I know what I'm dealing with now. Good day to you sir!
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > If you don't like SPEC then look at workload benchmarks like video rendering or code compilation. The M series chips acquit themselves quite well. Then you get results that are equivalent rather than superior. > Not when they're actually doing anything. Yes, when they're actually doing anything. The M1 Macbooks get around 16 hours. Under the same kind of load a similarly performing PC laptop might get around 10 hours. Other PC laptops will get 16 hours (or more) by having a lower TDP and then being slower, especially on multi-threaded workloads. This obviously only matters to people who care about not just long, but very long battery life, and very high performance, and aren't willing to make the weight trade off of getting one with a bigger battery. > My entire point has been that the impressiveness of the M series chips comes from their efficiency and what they are able to do holistically in a single SoC. It has very little to do with being in a single SoC. The CPU being able to use the memory bandwidth which is there for the GPU is a neat parlor trick but it only matters if memory bandwidth is the bottleneck, which it usually isn't. > Sigh. Alright I know what I'm dealing with now. You don't think that Apple has excellent marketing? They've done this for decades. They make a competitive product and then convince their customers that alternatives are dramatically inferior by pointing to narrow edge cases.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

The point is that we already had this. Both the CPU and GPU are competitive with existing CPUs and GPUs. Which is a first in a long time for anybody outside of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. But "competitive" and "dramatically better" are not the same thing. People were primarily comparing it to desktop CPUs because of where we were in the release cycle. How does it compare to Zen 3? Well, Zen 3 laptops were still a few months away when the M1 was released, but Zen 2 desktops were only a single digit percentage faster than Zen 2 laptops, so how does it compare to Zen 3 desktops? Meanwhile the primary real advantage of the M1 is that it uses less power. Compared to PC laptops, it's a somewhat less power. There are already PC laptops with 9+ hours of battery life (and no matter how little the CPU uses, you still have to run the screen and everything else), so the practical impact of this isn't enormous, but it's there. But if you compare the power consumption to PC desktops, OMFG! Except that nobody really cares about the power consumption of PC desktops. That's why they triple the power consumption to eek out 8% more performance. A lot of this is also attributable to how good Apple's marketing is. I don't know if they did this on purpose, but people keep publishing SPEC benchmarks for comparison with PCs. Part of this is that a lot of the ordinary benchmark software either doesn't run on Mac at all or there was no native ARM version available yet. But SPEC was put together by a consortium of server vendors. Their incentive is show that their POWER and Xeon processors are worth the fat premium over regular desktop CPUs. So the suite skews heavy to benchmarks limited by memory bandwidth, because big servers will have like 16 times more memory channels than a desktop. Then Apple shows up with this SoC that has a ton of memory bandwidth because it's necessary to feed the GPU and it stomps all over those specific benchmarks. Then it's OMFG again even though those results aren't actually typical because most workloads aren't limited by memory bandwidth. It's not a bad chip. The level of hype is just extraordinary.

whynotminot 5y ago
If you don't like SPEC then look at workload benchmarks like video rendering or code compilation. The M series chips acquit themselves quite well. > There are already PC laptops with 9+ hours of battery life Not when they're actually doing anything. To compete with what the M series chips bring, you need a discrete GPU and a very hungry CPU. Such a machine does not get 9+ hours of battery life. > The point is that we already had this. Both the CPU and GPU are competitive with existing CPUs and GPUs. Which is a first in a long time for anybody outside of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. But "competitive" and "dramatically better" are not the same thing. Right, you already had something like this in multiple discrete components that consume a huge amount of battery life when cobbled together into one system. My entire point has been that the impressiveness of the M series chips comes from their efficiency and what they are able to do holistically in a single SoC. > A lot of this is also attributable to how good Apple's marketing is Sigh. Alright I know what I'm dealing with now. Good day to you sir!
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > If you don't like SPEC then look at workload benchmarks like video rendering or code compilation. The M series chips acquit themselves quite well. Then you get results that are equivalent rather than superior. > Not when they're actually doing anything. Yes, when they're actually doing anything. The M1 Macbooks get around 16 hours. Under the same kind of load a similarly performing PC laptop might get around 10 hours. Other PC laptops will get 16 hours (or more) by having a lower TDP and then being slower, especially on multi-threaded workloads. This obviously only matters to people who care about not just long, but very long battery life, and very high performance, and aren't willing to make the weight trade off of getting one with a bigger battery. > My entire point has been that the impressiveness of the M series chips comes from their efficiency and what they are able to do holistically in a single SoC. It has very little to do with being in a single SoC. The CPU being able to use the memory bandwidth which is there for the GPU is a neat parlor trick but it only matters if memory bandwidth is the bottleneck, which it usually isn't. > Sigh. Alright I know what I'm dealing with now. You don't think that Apple has excellent marketing? They've done this for decades. They make a competitive product and then convince their customers that alternatives are dramatically inferior by pointing to narrow edge cases.