5 ms·

Seems like for things that are: 1. Perfectly parallel 2. Not accelerated by some of the other stuff that's on the Apple Silicon SoC's ...it will be a toss-up.

Seems like for things that are: 1. Perfectly parallel 2. Not accelerated by some of the other stuff that's on the Apple Silicon SoC's ...it will be a toss-up. Threadripper 3990X get about 25k in Geekbench Multicore [1] M1 Max gets about 12.5k in Geekbench Multicore, so pretty much exactly half [2] Obviously different tasks will have _vastly_ different performance profiles. For example it's likely that the M1 Ultra will blow the Threadripper out of the water for video stuff, whereas Threadripper is likely to win certain types of compiling. There's also the upcoming 5995WX which will be even faster: [3] [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-threadripper-3990x https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-threadrip... [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=apple+m1+max https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q... [3] https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-pro-5995wx https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-threadripper-p...

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Also of note is that half of the Mac Studio's case is dedicated to cooling. Up to this point, all M1 Max benchmarks are within laptops while all Threadripper benchmarks are in desktops. The M1 Max in the Mac Studio will probably perform better than expected.
- tacLog 5y ago
  This is sound logic and probably be the case but I wonder if this effect will be less than what we have seen in the past because of the reduced TDP of the M1 processors in general. Maybe the cooling and power delivery difference between laptop formfactors and PC formfactors will be less with these new arm based chips.
- ip26 5y ago
  Maybe; every chip hits a point where feeding in more power doesn’t make it go any faster. If I was to guess, the increased cooling probably helps the Studio sustain similar boost clocks as the laptops, but for longer. Although it’s possible these are on N4x, which might increase the attainable boost.
Teknoman117 5y ago
Something is seriously fishy about those geekbench results. 24-core scores 20k, 32-core scores 22.3k, and 64-core score 25k. Something isn't scaling there.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Probably it's the thermals that don't scale. The more the cores, the lower the the peak performance per core.
- enneff 5y ago
  Yeah, it’s the real world tasks that GeekBench tries to simulate that don’t tend to scale linearity with processor count. A lot of software does not take good advantage of multiple cores.
  - fivea 5y ago
    > A lot of software does not take good advantage of multiple cores. It sounds pointless to come up with synthetic benchmarks which emulate software that is not able to handle hardware, and then use said synthetic benchmarks to evaluate the hardware performance.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      It has a very specific point: communicating performance to people who don't know hardware. Most consumers are software aware, not hardware aware. They care what they will use the hardware for, not what they can use it for. To that end, benchmarks that correlate with their experience are more useful than a tuned BLAS implementation.
  - Teknoman117 5y ago
    That's certainly true. But if that's your workload you shouldn't be buying a 64-core CPU... I use a few 32 and 64 core machines for build servers and file servers, and while the 64-core EPYCs are not twice as fast as the 32-core ones due to lower overall frequency, they're 70% or so faster in most of the things I throw at them.
kllrnohj 5y ago
Geekbench is extremely sensitive to the OS. Like the same CPU on Windows & Linux score wildly different on Geekbench. For example the 3990X regularly hits 35k multicore geekbench when run on Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11237183 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11237183

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Also of note is that half of the Mac Studio's case is dedicated to cooling. Up to this point, all M1 Max benchmarks are within laptops while all Threadripper benchmarks are in desktops. The M1 Max in the Mac Studio will probably perform better than expected.

tacLog 5y ago
This is sound logic and probably be the case but I wonder if this effect will be less than what we have seen in the past because of the reduced TDP of the M1 processors in general. Maybe the cooling and power delivery difference between laptop formfactors and PC formfactors will be less with these new arm based chips.
ip26 5y ago
Maybe; every chip hits a point where feeding in more power doesn’t make it go any faster. If I was to guess, the increased cooling probably helps the Studio sustain similar boost clocks as the laptops, but for longer. Although it’s possible these are on N4x, which might increase the attainable boost.

Teknoman117 5y ago

Something is seriously fishy about those geekbench results. 24-core scores 20k, 32-core scores 22.3k, and 64-core score 25k. Something isn't scaling there.

mrtksn 5y ago
Probably it's the thermals that don't scale. The more the cores, the lower the the peak performance per core.
enneff 5y ago
Yeah, it’s the real world tasks that GeekBench tries to simulate that don’t tend to scale linearity with processor count. A lot of software does not take good advantage of multiple cores.
- fivea 5y ago
  > A lot of software does not take good advantage of multiple cores. It sounds pointless to come up with synthetic benchmarks which emulate software that is not able to handle hardware, and then use said synthetic benchmarks to evaluate the hardware performance.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    It has a very specific point: communicating performance to people who don't know hardware. Most consumers are software aware, not hardware aware. They care what they will use the hardware for, not what they can use it for. To that end, benchmarks that correlate with their experience are more useful than a tuned BLAS implementation.
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  That's certainly true. But if that's your workload you shouldn't be buying a 64-core CPU... I use a few 32 and 64 core machines for build servers and file servers, and while the 64-core EPYCs are not twice as fast as the 32-core ones due to lower overall frequency, they're 70% or so faster in most of the things I throw at them.

kllrnohj 5y ago

Geekbench is extremely sensitive to the OS. Like the same CPU on Windows & Linux score wildly different on Geekbench. For example the 3990X regularly hits 35k multicore geekbench when run on Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11237183 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/11237183