5 ms·

I thought the same thing, but if you keep scrolling he did do a M1 vs M2 comparison. The M1 did end up hitting 100% on the fans, but capped out at 94˚C instead

I thought the same thing, but if you keep scrolling he did do a M1 vs M2 comparison. The M1 did end up hitting 100% on the fans, but capped out at 94˚C instead of 108˚C. It also did end up throttling slightly (dropping to 21.87W from a peek of 24W). The M2 meanwhile throttles from 29.46W to 7.3W. The time comparison was M1: 21 min 40sec, M2: 19 min 40 sec. Much less than you would except given core and spec difference. So yeah, technically the one fan isn't enough for all circumstances. Is exporting 8K footage for 20 minutes of their entry-level laptop the target use-case? And if so, how much would fixing this be worth to the average end user?

savant_penguin 4y ago
Idk I expect my computer to be able to run at 100% without some sort of death clock Blaming bad thermal design on "use case" does not make sense to me. If you'd like to run some intensive numerical programming on your laptop just because, I would find it outrageous for it to shutdown due to thermals. Can other hardware designers use that excuse too? "Oh your software use case is not covered by the cpu voltage regulators", "the power supply was not meant to be on all the time", "the power cable should not be connected for that long", "you should not use 90% of your ram for 4 hours straight, it was not designed for that use case" "Oh the average end user only uses the car 1h/day. This 5h long trip was not the expected use case, that's why it overheated"
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Duty cycle- the ratio of time a component may be powered- is really quite common. Cars can only rev the engine in the red zone for a limited duration. Lasers on CNC machines, welders, engine hoists, etc. all have specific capacities that you shouldn't exceed. Expecting your CPU to run flat-out at 100% indefinitely without reprocussion seems strange to me. Heat is the great killer of electronics, and unless your rig is water cooled I don't know that I've used a laptop before with the thermal management to withstand extended full load- either it throttles down or it damages itself.
  - perryizgr8 4y ago
    Throttling is fine in a laptop. I think the more concerning part is the oscillations. The CPU should reach a steady state where it can provide consistent performance at 100% load.
    - solardev 4y ago
      Is there a difference when averaged out over time?
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        peak heat?
        solardev 4y ago
        With modern "burstable" CPUs, aren't they always peaking for short periods of time? Aren't there different heat thresholds, some that are more dangerous than others? Like maybe you could change the throttling curve from (percent "max") 120-120-100-100-80-80-80-100-100... to a more consistent 90-90-90-90-90... but as long as the CPU knows internally when to throttle down to avoid damage, does it really matter either way? Fast-fast-slow-slow vs medium-med-med-med?
        LegitShady 4y ago
        it depends on how hot it gets in each sequence, but it seems to me the m2 laptops get hotter than the m1 laptops, and if this OP is to be believed, reach a higher peak temperature that's over 100 degrees c.
  - simoncion 4y ago
    > ...I don't know that I've used a laptop before with the thermal management to withstand extended full load- either it throttles down or it damages itself. Setting your "it damages itself" remark aside for the moment, every laptop I've ever personally owned runs flat-out indefinitely at its rated maximum speed. I make a point of choosing laptops that have properly-designed cooling systems. Electromigration is real, but that's a process that happens over many, many years. It is (_strictly speaking_) damage... but the only real way to entirely prevent it is to never use the device in question. > ...unless your rig is water cooled... In my personal experience, for mainstream (and, yes, this includes "workstation" and "server") CPUs, water cooling isn't notably better than a big-ass Noctua heatsink with a couple of their 140mm fans strapped to it. Phase change "heat pipes" are really fuckin good for rapidly transferring heat from the contact pad of these heat sinks out to their radiating fins, and the big fans that are usually paired with them are quite good at cycling enough air through the system to ensure that the heat is moved out of the radiator in a timely manner.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  Just wait until you find out about SSD write endurance
  - simoncion 4y ago
    Yeah, a year and a half of near-constant writes, adding up to (if my math is right) 5000 -> 10,000 whole-drive-writes before failure. <https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/ https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experi...> This is totally, legitimately incomparable to a CPU throttling to a fraction of its rated steady-state speed within a couple of minutes of constantly-applied workload because the laptop manufacturer decided to prioritize chassis thinness over cooling system effectiveness.
- smolder 4y ago
  This specific laptop's thermal issues aside, a cpu that throttles under constant full load can also be seen as a cpu that gives you extra performance for a limited time. That kind of "boosting" is standard now even on desktop processors, but makes the most sense for laptops, where cooling capability is restricted by size and weight concerns.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  Other products ARE designed with use cases in mind. Take your car to a track and see how many hours you can push it for before it dies. Bonus points if it’s electric. > If you'd like to run some intensive numerical programming on your laptop just because, I would find it outrageous for it to shutdown due to thermals. If you get a laptop without a fan and expect to push it like this then don’t be surprised if it can’t keep up. Again, is the thing you want to do with the laptop within the scope of that the designers meant it to be used for. That being said, I find it strange that their performance oscillates rather than hits a steady state. That part they should fix in a software update.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
> entry-level laptop Apple does not sell any entry level laptops and this one starts at 1600€.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  The Air is an entry level laptop.
  - diffeomorphism 4y ago
    No, it is not. It is their cheapest laptop, but by no means entry level.
    - argsnd 4y ago
      Your definition of entry level is different from Apple’s.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  Entry-level =/= cheap.
vegai_ 4y ago
>Is exporting 8K footage for 20 minutes of their entry-level laptop the target use-case? Macbook Pro is not an entry-level laptop. But you're right, this is hardly a typical use-case, like benchmarks almost never are. I'm sure my Asus laptop would launch itself to the moon or perhaps spontaneously invent nuclear fusion if I did a 20 minute rendering on it.
- halper 4y ago
  That seems strange to me. It doesn't seem very unusual to me to use the "pro" laptop for actual work, and running a process that takes 20 minutes does not seem like a made-up use case at all. I don't know enough about fans to understand why they can't force more air through the laptop. My MBP gets too hot to touch when I rebuild a particular Docker image while the amount of air wafting out is not particularly impressive… but at least the machine looks good ;)
NoPicklez 4y ago
To your last point, the Macbook Pro on Apple's website, directly markets being able to encode and decode both 4K ProRes and 8k ProRes video and do it quicker than before. It also sites video editing and transcoding in its comparisons to Intel chips for performance. So taking Apple's marketing literally, it seems exporting 8K footage would be a main expected use-case. It's just the classic situation Apple continuously puts itself in with building a laptop that is starved for airflow.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  But it does encode faster than the M1 right? That's what the parent comment said?
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  It does not in fact market itself for encoding and deconding 8K footage. They market it as being able to “work with more streams of 4K and 8K ProRes video”. And all of the benchmarks are with respect to transcoding, and only 4K media not 8K.
LegitShady 4y ago
>Is exporting 8K footage for 20 minutes of their entry-level laptop the target use-case? And if so, how much would fixing this be worth to the average end user? I would 100% expect to be able to benchmark this computer for longer than 20 minutes without thermal throttling. The previous iteration was more than capable of it. This is new.
throw34 4y ago
Do you know the limit for the part? If it’s 120C then the M1 is leaving 26C on the table and the M2 left only 12C. Without the specs these measurement don’t mean much.

savant_penguin 4y ago

Idk I expect my computer to be able to run at 100% without some sort of death clock Blaming bad thermal design on "use case" does not make sense to me. If you'd like to run some intensive numerical programming on your laptop just because, I would find it outrageous for it to shutdown due to thermals. Can other hardware designers use that excuse too? "Oh your software use case is not covered by the cpu voltage regulators", "the power supply was not meant to be on all the time", "the power cable should not be connected for that long", "you should not use 90% of your ram for 4 hours straight, it was not designed for that use case" "Oh the average end user only uses the car 1h/day. This 5h long trip was not the expected use case, that's why it overheated"

zdragnar 4y ago
Duty cycle- the ratio of time a component may be powered- is really quite common. Cars can only rev the engine in the red zone for a limited duration. Lasers on CNC machines, welders, engine hoists, etc. all have specific capacities that you shouldn't exceed. Expecting your CPU to run flat-out at 100% indefinitely without reprocussion seems strange to me. Heat is the great killer of electronics, and unless your rig is water cooled I don't know that I've used a laptop before with the thermal management to withstand extended full load- either it throttles down or it damages itself.
- perryizgr8 4y ago
  Throttling is fine in a laptop. I think the more concerning part is the oscillations. The CPU should reach a steady state where it can provide consistent performance at 100% load.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Is there a difference when averaged out over time?
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      peak heat?
      - solardev 4y ago
        With modern "burstable" CPUs, aren't they always peaking for short periods of time? Aren't there different heat thresholds, some that are more dangerous than others? Like maybe you could change the throttling curve from (percent "max") 120-120-100-100-80-80-80-100-100... to a more consistent 90-90-90-90-90... but as long as the CPU knows internally when to throttle down to avoid damage, does it really matter either way? Fast-fast-slow-slow vs medium-med-med-med?
        LegitShady 4y ago
        it depends on how hot it gets in each sequence, but it seems to me the m2 laptops get hotter than the m1 laptops, and if this OP is to be believed, reach a higher peak temperature that's over 100 degrees c.
- simoncion 4y ago
  > ...I don't know that I've used a laptop before with the thermal management to withstand extended full load- either it throttles down or it damages itself. Setting your "it damages itself" remark aside for the moment, every laptop I've ever personally owned runs flat-out indefinitely at its rated maximum speed. I make a point of choosing laptops that have properly-designed cooling systems. Electromigration is real, but that's a process that happens over many, many years. It is (_strictly speaking_) damage... but the only real way to entirely prevent it is to never use the device in question. > ...unless your rig is water cooled... In my personal experience, for mainstream (and, yes, this includes "workstation" and "server") CPUs, water cooling isn't notably better than a big-ass Noctua heatsink with a couple of their 140mm fans strapped to it. Phase change "heat pipes" are really fuckin good for rapidly transferring heat from the contact pad of these heat sinks out to their radiating fins, and the big fans that are usually paired with them are quite good at cycling enough air through the system to ensure that the heat is moved out of the radiator in a timely manner.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
Just wait until you find out about SSD write endurance
- simoncion 4y ago
  Yeah, a year and a half of near-constant writes, adding up to (if my math is right) 5000 -> 10,000 whole-drive-writes before failure. <https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/ https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experi...> This is totally, legitimately incomparable to a CPU throttling to a fraction of its rated steady-state speed within a couple of minutes of constantly-applied workload because the laptop manufacturer decided to prioritize chassis thinness over cooling system effectiveness.
smolder 4y ago
This specific laptop's thermal issues aside, a cpu that throttles under constant full load can also be seen as a cpu that gives you extra performance for a limited time. That kind of "boosting" is standard now even on desktop processors, but makes the most sense for laptops, where cooling capability is restricted by size and weight concerns.
_aavaa_ 4y ago
Other products ARE designed with use cases in mind. Take your car to a track and see how many hours you can push it for before it dies. Bonus points if it’s electric. > If you'd like to run some intensive numerical programming on your laptop just because, I would find it outrageous for it to shutdown due to thermals. If you get a laptop without a fan and expect to push it like this then don’t be surprised if it can’t keep up. Again, is the thing you want to do with the laptop within the scope of that the designers meant it to be used for. That being said, I find it strange that their performance oscillates rather than hits a steady state. That part they should fix in a software update.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

> entry-level laptop Apple does not sell any entry level laptops and this one starts at 1600€.

shepherdjerred 4y ago
The Air is an entry level laptop.
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  No, it is not. It is their cheapest laptop, but by no means entry level.
  - argsnd 4y ago
    Your definition of entry level is different from Apple’s.
_aavaa_ 4y ago
Entry-level =/= cheap.

vegai_ 4y ago

>Is exporting 8K footage for 20 minutes of their entry-level laptop the target use-case? Macbook Pro is not an entry-level laptop. But you're right, this is hardly a typical use-case, like benchmarks almost never are. I'm sure my Asus laptop would launch itself to the moon or perhaps spontaneously invent nuclear fusion if I did a 20 minute rendering on it.

halper 4y ago
That seems strange to me. It doesn't seem very unusual to me to use the "pro" laptop for actual work, and running a process that takes 20 minutes does not seem like a made-up use case at all. I don't know enough about fans to understand why they can't force more air through the laptop. My MBP gets too hot to touch when I rebuild a particular Docker image while the amount of air wafting out is not particularly impressive… but at least the machine looks good ;)

NoPicklez 4y ago

To your last point, the Macbook Pro on Apple's website, directly markets being able to encode and decode both 4K ProRes and 8k ProRes video and do it quicker than before. It also sites video editing and transcoding in its comparisons to Intel chips for performance. So taking Apple's marketing literally, it seems exporting 8K footage would be a main expected use-case. It's just the classic situation Apple continuously puts itself in with building a laptop that is starved for airflow.

shepherdjerred 4y ago
But it does encode faster than the M1 right? That's what the parent comment said?
_aavaa_ 4y ago
It does not in fact market itself for encoding and deconding 8K footage. They market it as being able to “work with more streams of 4K and 8K ProRes video”. And all of the benchmarks are with respect to transcoding, and only 4K media not 8K.

LegitShady 4y ago

>Is exporting 8K footage for 20 minutes of their entry-level laptop the target use-case? And if so, how much would fixing this be worth to the average end user? I would 100% expect to be able to benchmark this computer for longer than 20 minutes without thermal throttling. The previous iteration was more than capable of it. This is new.

throw34 4y ago

Do you know the limit for the part? If it’s 120C then the M1 is leaving 26C on the table and the M2 left only 12C. Without the specs these measurement don’t mean much.