7 ms·

Hasn't there been enough coverage for this already? The M1 chip is ahead in the performance/wattage, which makes them a significant upgrade to most other lapto

Hasn't there been enough coverage for this already? The M1 chip is ahead in the performance/wattage, which makes them a significant upgrade to most other laptops - as these are always constrained by power and cooling. Though Intel has since improved their mobile chips and the difference is likely to be much less with the new laptops this year.

lelanthran 5y ago
> Hasn't there been enough coverage for this already? I don't think I've seen any bang-per-buck comparisons; of course I have not looked very hard, so there's something for me to do later :-) > The M1 chip is ahead in the performance/wattage, I don't care. OP posted about performance with no regard to power efficiency, so I was wondering about the performace with no regard to power efficiency. As long as the laptop lasts 3 hours or so it's enough. I'm not going to spend 8 hours huddled over a small screen that I am squinting into, using a reduced keyboard with limited navigation keys. I can't see myself spending even 3 hours doing that, TBH. My neck hurts after only an hour using a laptop without an external monitor or keyboard. Since the thing is going to be plugged in for 99.9% of its use, I'm more interested in what performance difference I expect by going with the M1 over a similarly-priced Intel/AMD setup.
kalleboo 5y ago
The consensus results I've been seeing appear to be - Intel Alder lake has vastly better idle and low-performance task power draw than before but still not quiiite as good as M1. It can boost to slightly faster peak speeds but at a MASSIVE power draw disadvantage, like 4x more power then M1 to reach 5% more performance - AMD which is on more comparable TSMC processes gets comparable power/performance draw, but AMD have not yet cracked idle power draw and it's still worse than even Intel And Apple is about to release M2
schaefer 5y ago
Remember, this is about running Linux on the M1. So if we’re going to talk about the 12th Gen Intel laptop chips expected later this year we also have to talk about Linux support on that chip. I hope I’m wrong, but last I heard the Linux scheduler hasn’t caught up with 12th gen performance and efficacy cores. —- Then there’s the whole other topic that some of us would prefer to be on arm over x86. I’m keeping an eye out for native Linux support for the latest snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 laptops that are coming out (ThinkPad X13s and friends). So far I’ve heard nothing. Which might suggest that M1 might stay ahead of the curve in terms of the community hacking to support these boards.
- schaefer 5y ago
  The forthcoming Linux kernel 5.18 will include initial support for intel's Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI) [1]. This may bring linux performance on intel 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors to par with their performance on Windows 11. It will be fun to see how quickly HFI support finds it's way into Hypervisors like Xen. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-HFI-For-Linux-5.18 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-HF...
codedokode 5y ago
I don't understand why we should compare performance in artificial benchmarks to power consumption. Electricity is cheap and I assume that most laptop users have a wall socket nearby. Instead, it makes sense to compare typical user performance (not CPU instruction count) versus price. For example, let's say CPU A has 32 cores each capable to perform 1B instructions and costs $1000, and CPU B has 4 cores with same speed, but costs $100. Let's say typical task for a machine is browsing social network sites. If this task uses only 4 cores and a user can browse same number of web pages per unit time then effectively both A and B have the same performance, but CPU A has 10 times worse typical performance per dollar. A metric in this case should be not the count of executed instructions, but for example, a count of web pages viewed by user per unit time, or share of time spent actually viewing pages (and not waiting for them to load). Of course, you can make similar metrics for other uses - for example, a time taken by illustrator to draw a picture, or count of written lines of code per unit time for a programmer. All divided by hardware cost. That's the type of comparison I would like to see. Would Apple be winning in such fair and realistic benchmark is an open question. I doubt that.
- pmontra 5y ago
  > Electricity is cheap Ugh, not in Europe, especially not now https://euenergy.live/ https://euenergy.live/ And even in the USA it seems it depends from where you live https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    Maybe he meant "Cheap" compared to the extra cost of an M1 over a similarly performing AMD/Intel laptop? What's the break-even point where your savings from electricity offsets the extra cost of an M1? A year? Two years?
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > I don't understand why we should compare performance in artificial benchmarks to power consumption. Electricity is cheap Battery life, fan noise, and throttling due to excess heat are all reasons to care about power consumption.

lelanthran 5y ago

> Hasn't there been enough coverage for this already? I don't think I've seen any bang-per-buck comparisons; of course I have not looked very hard, so there's something for me to do later :-) > The M1 chip is ahead in the performance/wattage, I don't care. OP posted about performance with no regard to power efficiency, so I was wondering about the performace with no regard to power efficiency. As long as the laptop lasts 3 hours or so it's enough. I'm not going to spend 8 hours huddled over a small screen that I am squinting into, using a reduced keyboard with limited navigation keys. I can't see myself spending even 3 hours doing that, TBH. My neck hurts after only an hour using a laptop without an external monitor or keyboard. Since the thing is going to be plugged in for 99.9% of its use, I'm more interested in what performance difference I expect by going with the M1 over a similarly-priced Intel/AMD setup.

kalleboo 5y ago

The consensus results I've been seeing appear to be - Intel Alder lake has vastly better idle and low-performance task power draw than before but still not quiiite as good as M1. It can boost to slightly faster peak speeds but at a MASSIVE power draw disadvantage, like 4x more power then M1 to reach 5% more performance - AMD which is on more comparable TSMC processes gets comparable power/performance draw, but AMD have not yet cracked idle power draw and it's still worse than even Intel And Apple is about to release M2

schaefer 5y ago

Remember, this is about running Linux on the M1. So if we’re going to talk about the 12th Gen Intel laptop chips expected later this year we also have to talk about Linux support on that chip. I hope I’m wrong, but last I heard the Linux scheduler hasn’t caught up with 12th gen performance and efficacy cores. —- Then there’s the whole other topic that some of us would prefer to be on arm over x86. I’m keeping an eye out for native Linux support for the latest snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 laptops that are coming out (ThinkPad X13s and friends). So far I’ve heard nothing. Which might suggest that M1 might stay ahead of the curve in terms of the community hacking to support these boards.

schaefer 5y ago
The forthcoming Linux kernel 5.18 will include initial support for intel's Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI) [1]. This may bring linux performance on intel 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors to par with their performance on Windows 11. It will be fun to see how quickly HFI support finds it's way into Hypervisors like Xen. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-HFI-For-Linux-5.18 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-HF...

codedokode 5y ago

I don't understand why we should compare performance in artificial benchmarks to power consumption. Electricity is cheap and I assume that most laptop users have a wall socket nearby. Instead, it makes sense to compare typical user performance (not CPU instruction count) versus price. For example, let's say CPU A has 32 cores each capable to perform 1B instructions and costs $1000, and CPU B has 4 cores with same speed, but costs $100. Let's say typical task for a machine is browsing social network sites. If this task uses only 4 cores and a user can browse same number of web pages per unit time then effectively both A and B have the same performance, but CPU A has 10 times worse typical performance per dollar. A metric in this case should be not the count of executed instructions, but for example, a count of web pages viewed by user per unit time, or share of time spent actually viewing pages (and not waiting for them to load). Of course, you can make similar metrics for other uses - for example, a time taken by illustrator to draw a picture, or count of written lines of code per unit time for a programmer. All divided by hardware cost. That's the type of comparison I would like to see. Would Apple be winning in such fair and realistic benchmark is an open question. I doubt that.

pmontra 5y ago
> Electricity is cheap Ugh, not in Europe, especially not now https://euenergy.live/ https://euenergy.live/ And even in the USA it seems it depends from where you live https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- lelanthran 5y ago
  Maybe he meant "Cheap" compared to the extra cost of an M1 over a similarly performing AMD/Intel laptop? What's the break-even point where your savings from electricity offsets the extra cost of an M1? A year? Two years?
GeekyBear 5y ago
> I don't understand why we should compare performance in artificial benchmarks to power consumption. Electricity is cheap Battery life, fan noise, and throttling due to excess heat are all reasons to care about power consumption.