4 ms·

According to Max Tech analysis here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ7WN3yome4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ7WN3yome4, the GPU seems to max out at 60-70

According to Max Tech analysis here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ7WN3yome4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ7WN3yome4, the GPU seems to max out at 60-70w at the moment for full load, even if the heat is well-managed. If Apple let it go up to 100-120w, we could see much more performance out of the GPU but for now, something is not set up correctly on macOS. So, we may have to wait to see what Apple says or if they'll unlock the full performance in future software updates. They did do this in the past with M1 hardware a few times. Same result here from another channel where it appears GPU isn't at full power atm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CUoHwMtRsE&t=1172s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CUoHwMtRsE&t=1172s

GeekyBear 5y ago
The strategy of creating a large die with lots of execution units, then running the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency has been Apple's way of doing things for a while now. >Apple has built a wide enough GPU that they can keep clockspeeds nice and low on the voltage/frequency curve, which keeps overall power consumption down. The RTX 3090, by contrast, is designed to chase performance with no regard to power consumption, allowing NVIDIA to get great performance out of it, but only by riding high on the voltage frequency curve. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17306/apple-announces-m1-ultra-combining-two-m1-maxes-for-even-more-performance https://www.anandtech.com/show/17306/apple-announces-m1-ultr... This strategy is something that Anandtech's been calling out since the iPhone 5s chip. >Brian and I have long been hinting at the sort of ridiculous frequency/voltage combinations mobile SoC vendors have been shipping at for nothing more than marketing purposes. I remember ARM telling me the ideal target for a Cortex A15 core in a smartphone was 1.2GHz. Samsung’s Exynos 5410 stuck four Cortex A15s in a phone with a max clock of 1.6GHz. The 5420 increases that to 1.7GHz. The problem with frequency scaling alone is that it typically comes at the price of higher voltage. There’s a quadratic relationship between voltage and power consumption, so it’s quite possibly one of the worst ways to get more performance. https://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2
- mikhailt 5y ago
  > The strategy of creating a large die with lots of execution units, then running the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency has been Apple's way of doing things for a while now. > This strategy is something that Anandtech's been calling out since the iPhone 5s chip. Not sure that applies to M1 Ultra that's clearly marketed as a desktop SoC, not a mobile device or laptop SoC. Optimizing for energy efficiency or battery life is not the same as optimizing for performance first, which is what M1 Ultra is designed for. Not to mention, there's a reason Windows and Linux have multiple power profiles that changes how schedulers and power loads work. macOS has "high power mode" for m1 on laptops and yet strangely, it is not even available on the Mac Studio. Keep in mind that Apple showed a graph that clearly shows the GPU was at 100-110w. Why do that if they won't run it at that wattage or even talk about 3090 in the first place? Why ruin their reputation over a silly little thing? Everyone on the planet will easily debunk that. Also, why even bother adding a high-quality cooling system that the Mac Studio clearly don't need since both CPU/GPU are going to be capped at lower power wattage? We'll find out eventually one way or another.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    > Not sure that applies to M1 Ultra that's clearly marketed as a desktop SoC, not a mobile device or laptop SoC. The M1 Ultra is using the same CPU cores and GPU cores as an iPhone, just more of them. It's long been their strategy across the board. Throw silicon die area at tons of execution units and run the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency. For example, the 2012 A5X iPad chip had about the same die area as 4 core Ivy Bridge, which was huge for a mobile device SOC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/4 Since they are selling the whole widget, they aren't as dependent on minimizing die area to maximize their profit margin.
    - addaon 5y ago
      > The M1 Ultra is using the same CPU cores and GPU cores as an iPhone, just more of them. Not only that, but it's running them at basically the same clock speeds as the rest of the M1 family, and even as the iPhone. This suggests that they're running at not far above a best efficiency point, rather than way past the elbow of the voltage curve as is traditional for desktop chips.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
> If Apple let it go up to 100-120w GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". It is extremely likely that the M1's maximum performance is attained already. Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't.
- mikhailt 5y ago
  > GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". I agree, they're not a simple "throw more power and it'll go faster" problem. However, that doesn't mean they do not go faster if you increase clock speed and give it a little more power. After all, overclocking would be utterly pointless over the past two decades and Intel/AMD wouldn't benefit from the so-called turbo boost technology. (I know M1 doesn't have turbo boost). Just to be clear, yes, there's a limit to everything of course. There's a balance where certain higher clocks would cause a bottleneck in the rest of the system since this is a SoC. In this case, I used the 100-120w number because Apple used that number in their GPU graph showing the GPU running at ~105w, why bother showing that if it can't accomplish it? Here's the graph: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-performance-01.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-p... Note that Apple shows 60w for their CPU graph (https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-performance-02.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-p...), which did actually match up and does show the double CPU pref that Apple stated. I didn't pull that number out of nowhere. If Apple used 60w in that graph, then I wouldn't be here. > Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't. That's because of two reasons: 1. There is only so much data wecan "process" within the same core, more power does not change the data itself, we can only increase the clock speed to finish it faster or widen the amount of data that can fit in the same core. Also of note that Intel Turbo Boost does actually help with single-core thread pref by boosting the single core speed beyond the base line. 2. M1 max clock speed is set to 3.2Ghz (single core), it can't go faster than this (set by Apple). Throwing more wattage here wouldn't change anything but throwing more power to allow all 16 P cores to hit 3.2 does improve performance as long as it isn't overheating. I don't think M1 Ultra does hit 3.2 on all 16 cores (it might have hit 60w max first; I might be wrong but I saw mostly just 3.0ghz in Max video but I have to go back to review it). Again, this is not about single-core performance, this is about GPU performance, which is extremely parallelizable and more comparable to the multi-core performance instead.

GeekyBear 5y ago

The strategy of creating a large die with lots of execution units, then running the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency has been Apple's way of doing things for a while now. >Apple has built a wide enough GPU that they can keep clockspeeds nice and low on the voltage/frequency curve, which keeps overall power consumption down. The RTX 3090, by contrast, is designed to chase performance with no regard to power consumption, allowing NVIDIA to get great performance out of it, but only by riding high on the voltage frequency curve. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17306/apple-announces-m1-ultra-combining-two-m1-maxes-for-even-more-performance https://www.anandtech.com/show/17306/apple-announces-m1-ultr... This strategy is something that Anandtech's been calling out since the iPhone 5s chip. >Brian and I have long been hinting at the sort of ridiculous frequency/voltage combinations mobile SoC vendors have been shipping at for nothing more than marketing purposes. I remember ARM telling me the ideal target for a Cortex A15 core in a smartphone was 1.2GHz. Samsung’s Exynos 5410 stuck four Cortex A15s in a phone with a max clock of 1.6GHz. The 5420 increases that to 1.7GHz. The problem with frequency scaling alone is that it typically comes at the price of higher voltage. There’s a quadratic relationship between voltage and power consumption, so it’s quite possibly one of the worst ways to get more performance. https://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2

mikhailt 5y ago
> The strategy of creating a large die with lots of execution units, then running the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency has been Apple's way of doing things for a while now. > This strategy is something that Anandtech's been calling out since the iPhone 5s chip. Not sure that applies to M1 Ultra that's clearly marketed as a desktop SoC, not a mobile device or laptop SoC. Optimizing for energy efficiency or battery life is not the same as optimizing for performance first, which is what M1 Ultra is designed for. Not to mention, there's a reason Windows and Linux have multiple power profiles that changes how schedulers and power loads work. macOS has "high power mode" for m1 on laptops and yet strangely, it is not even available on the Mac Studio. Keep in mind that Apple showed a graph that clearly shows the GPU was at 100-110w. Why do that if they won't run it at that wattage or even talk about 3090 in the first place? Why ruin their reputation over a silly little thing? Everyone on the planet will easily debunk that. Also, why even bother adding a high-quality cooling system that the Mac Studio clearly don't need since both CPU/GPU are going to be capped at lower power wattage? We'll find out eventually one way or another.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > Not sure that applies to M1 Ultra that's clearly marketed as a desktop SoC, not a mobile device or laptop SoC. The M1 Ultra is using the same CPU cores and GPU cores as an iPhone, just more of them. It's long been their strategy across the board. Throw silicon die area at tons of execution units and run the chip at a lower clock speed for power efficiency. For example, the 2012 A5X iPad chip had about the same die area as 4 core Ivy Bridge, which was huge for a mobile device SOC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/4 Since they are selling the whole widget, they aren't as dependent on minimizing die area to maximize their profit margin.
  - addaon 5y ago
    > The M1 Ultra is using the same CPU cores and GPU cores as an iPhone, just more of them. Not only that, but it's running them at basically the same clock speeds as the rest of the M1 family, and even as the iPhone. This suggests that they're running at not far above a best efficiency point, rather than way past the elbow of the voltage curve as is traditional for desktop chips.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

> If Apple let it go up to 100-120w GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". It is extremely likely that the M1's maximum performance is attained already. Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't.

mikhailt 5y ago
> GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". I agree, they're not a simple "throw more power and it'll go faster" problem. However, that doesn't mean they do not go faster if you increase clock speed and give it a little more power. After all, overclocking would be utterly pointless over the past two decades and Intel/AMD wouldn't benefit from the so-called turbo boost technology. (I know M1 doesn't have turbo boost). Just to be clear, yes, there's a limit to everything of course. There's a balance where certain higher clocks would cause a bottleneck in the rest of the system since this is a SoC. In this case, I used the 100-120w number because Apple used that number in their GPU graph showing the GPU running at ~105w, why bother showing that if it can't accomplish it? Here's the graph: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-performance-01.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-p... Note that Apple shows 60w for their CPU graph (https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-performance-02.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-p...), which did actually match up and does show the double CPU pref that Apple stated. I didn't pull that number out of nowhere. If Apple used 60w in that graph, then I wouldn't be here. > Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't. That's because of two reasons: 1. There is only so much data wecan "process" within the same core, more power does not change the data itself, we can only increase the clock speed to finish it faster or widen the amount of data that can fit in the same core. Also of note that Intel Turbo Boost does actually help with single-core thread pref by boosting the single core speed beyond the base line. 2. M1 max clock speed is set to 3.2Ghz (single core), it can't go faster than this (set by Apple). Throwing more wattage here wouldn't change anything but throwing more power to allow all 16 P cores to hit 3.2 does improve performance as long as it isn't overheating. I don't think M1 Ultra does hit 3.2 on all 16 cores (it might have hit 60w max first; I might be wrong but I saw mostly just 3.0ghz in Max video but I have to go back to review it). Again, this is not about single-core performance, this is about GPU performance, which is extremely parallelizable and more comparable to the multi-core performance instead.