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The M2 has been a bit underwhelming in general through all of its iterations: Apple jumped into such a lead with the M1 [1], so it was disappointing when they s

The M2 has been a bit underwhelming in general through all of its iterations: Apple jumped into such a lead with the M1 [1], so it was disappointing when they slowly iterated while Intel and AMD have made enormous strides catching up. Everyone keeps citing TDP, but given that we're talking about desktops that just isn't a huge factor. Having said that, the 7950X was released late February, and the 13900KS was released in mid January. Both of this year. Both are their premiere available chips right now in the segment. Referring to them like they're last year's junk is rather silly. [1] Though fun fact with the M1, I remember super disappointing Geekbench results leaking before its release. People do know how low trust the site is, right? The computer identifiers on the claimed "M2 Ultra" devices claim to be Macbook Pro 14" devices....which aren't getting M2 Ultras for obvious reasons. In all likelihood someone is making guesses and posting nonsense.

birdyrooster 3y ago
With power in city downtowns (eg San Jose) at $0.50+/kWh it’s definitely becoming a huge factor. My Mac uses almost an order of magnitude less power than the PC and I keep the PC powered off.
- theevilsharpie 3y ago
  > My Mac uses almost an order of magnitude less power than the PC and I keep the PC powered off. Either you are not measuring power consumption correctly, or there is something very wrong with your PC.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    Or it's an AMD desktop. Their chiplet design really isn't good for idle power.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Seriously, even when doing nothing whatsoever (and cores themselves idling at 1.3W) the package is taking 20W.
      - Kubuxu 3y ago
        Disable memory overclock or undervolt the memory and SoC. You will see the power drop down like crazy.
  - llm_nerd 3y ago
    I believe they're saying they keep it powered off because it uses a magnitude more power. And it's an entirely believable statement. A Mac Mini uses between 5w - 20w. Many PCs idle at >50W, and under use hit 500W+.
    - betaby 3y ago
      Perhaps, but those would be the very different PCs. Also while exist, 500W+ desktops are rare, and their performance are not comparable to Mac Minis.
    - yyyk 3y ago
      That's not a fair comparison. We should be comparing Mac Mini to NUCs if power consumption is the relevant factor. Plenty of NUCs are rated for 15w.
      - alphabettsy 3y ago
        And those NUCs don’t match the performance.
- yyyk 3y ago
  Very likely any difference was already paid for with the Apple premium.
spiderfarmer 3y ago
Desktop pcs requiring a ludicrous amount of power and cooling is absolutely problematic. The amount of people willing to put up with big honking machines is dwindling.
- BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
  AMD and Intel are jacking up the default power settings to absurd levels because it gives marketing bigger numbers to to throw around. You can drastically reduce the power you supply to desktop chips with BIOS settings. You'll generate far less heat, can use a smaller power supply and form factor, while still getting great performance. If Intel/AMD get to a level where their chips rival M1/M2 while power throttled, things get interesting.
  - jerrygenser 3y ago
    In general both on my own benchmarks and from what I've read/seen youtube videos, it's about a 5% performance loss multithreaded with full core saturation and 0-1% performance haircut on single threaded -- since on single threaded you are generating lower enough heat not to go near the high end. For me this was going from 105W to 65W on my 7700X and my results were similar. Not sure how it would look or work with Intel though.
  - Lapha 3y ago
    Both companies are juicing up the default power limits which absolutely matters if you're concerned about total Wh for sustained loads, thermal considerations, PSU rating, noise, etc, as you mentioned, but to be fair to AMD here they've released an eco mode on the 7000 series which does lower the default power limit quite substantially. You could do this before with manual adjustments to voltage and clock speeds, but now it's a simple toggle. Another point is that in terms of power efficiency AMD are absolutely mopping the floor with Intel, where even older high power R9s are consistently outperforming Intel's lower power i5 and i7s by a wide margin. This sort of discussion is often left out of reviews which only look at TDP or peak wall power. It's still not ARM levels of efficiency, but x86 vs ARM or even desktop vs laptop efficiency is an entirely separate conversation.
  - 3y ago
Demmme 3y ago
How does that not matter on a fair comparison? It's a no brainer anyway to get more performance from desktop and non apple much cheaper due to apples pricing. Apple has a huge advantage price / performance wise with the cheap m based Mac book air. The comparison with a Mac book pro which costs 2-3k is slightly less so.
- zamalek 3y ago
  > Apple has a huge advantage price / performance wise My 7950x machine cost, excluding the enthusiast GPU, $3000. That's less than half the cost of the M2 Ultra.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    You spent $3000 before gpu on a custom PC!?
    - zamalek 3y ago
      It was the height of the pandemic and shortages. I guess it could be a lot cheaper today.
    - sgtnoodle 3y ago
      $350 motherboard, $800 CPU, $200 RAM, $150 NVME, $100 cooler, $150 PSU, $200 case. $1750 + CA tax is about $1900. You could easily add another $1K by going crazy with RAM and NVME storage.
      - brailsafe 3y ago
        $2000 I could see, but I do think more people are overspending on CPU for gaming PCs by probably double. Maybe not overspending if you're getting a tangible productive value out of it, but I suppose they didn't specify gaming. For gaming specifically I'd probably try and balance the useful GPU power I need with the minimum necessary CPU to prevent bottlenecking. Part of the reason I haven't upgraded my intel macbook pro, is just because I think the cost all-in seems outrageous, even for someone who exclusively works on mac. I can't rationalize $500/16gb of ram or w/e. I haven't upgraded my gaming PC much, because the cost of GPUs very quickly overwhelms the performance improvement I'd get value out of compared to my severely out of date gear that I found by the roadside.
wmf 3y ago
The computer identifiers on the claimed "M2 Ultra" devices claim to be Macbook Pro 14" devices I think you're confusing Mac14,14 which is the internal designation for the Mac Studio with a MacBook Pro 14". The leak if anyone's interested: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/21305974?baseline=21311279 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/21305974?baseli...
kitsunesoba 3y ago
IMO driving down power consumption should still be a goal even for desktop machines. It means that the overwhelming majority of users get cooler, quieter, less bulky machines, while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. This also pushes more "desktop like" performance to both ultraportable and reasonably portable laptops, allowing these machines to fully replace desktops for the overwhelming majority without all of the caveats that come with "desktop replacement" laptops (workstation laptops, heavy duty gaming laptops, etc). A lot of people who previously wouldn't have seen laptops as capable of being their primary machines are doing exactly that with M1/M2 Pro MBPs.
- automatic6131 3y ago
  >while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. This is actually the case! The 7950X and 13900K come in non-X and non-K variants, which have vastly reduced power footprints and overall consumption, and you can even take your X or K variant and... Enforce that exact same power envelope in BIOS, for minimal loss in performance. But the purchasers of desktop X and K SKUs are the overclocking fringe (by and large). I will admit though, a lot of laptops are sold with with i|r7|9 +HX variants that shouldn't be purchased because big number means easier upsell.
- ilyt 3y ago
  > IMO driving down power consumption should still be a goal even for desktop machines. It means that the overwhelming majority of users get cooler, quieter, less bulky machines, while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. It is the goal (after all more efficiency also means fitting more powerful cores into the thermal envelope) but given the choice most desktop users would be fine with "just a bit bigger box" rather than sacrifice performance for the price.
jerrygenser 3y ago
> Having said that, the 7950X was released late February, and the 13900KS was released in mid January. Both of this year. Both are their premiere available chips right now in the segment. Referring to them like they're last year's junk is rather silly. 7950X was released September, 2022. It's quite literally last year's chip and given that AMD release cycle is typically about 2 years, we're roughly halfway between last release and 9000 series release. You might be getting it confused with the Non-X versions that were released earlier in 2023 -- those are basically the same chip but power limited and maybe slightly worse selections of silicon. Of those Non-X versions it was 7600, 7700, 7900 but non-X of 7950 was released. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors
- wtallis 3y ago
  I think he was getting the 7950X confused with the 7950X3D, the latter of which was released in late February.
BirAdam 3y ago
From what I understand, the M2 was released due to TSMC struggling with yields on their N3 process. Apple had to do something with the N5 node to keep hardware available to consumers, and M2 was the result.

birdyrooster 3y ago

With power in city downtowns (eg San Jose) at $0.50+/kWh it’s definitely becoming a huge factor. My Mac uses almost an order of magnitude less power than the PC and I keep the PC powered off.

theevilsharpie 3y ago
> My Mac uses almost an order of magnitude less power than the PC and I keep the PC powered off. Either you are not measuring power consumption correctly, or there is something very wrong with your PC.
- wtallis 3y ago
  Or it's an AMD desktop. Their chiplet design really isn't good for idle power.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Seriously, even when doing nothing whatsoever (and cores themselves idling at 1.3W) the package is taking 20W.
    - Kubuxu 3y ago
      Disable memory overclock or undervolt the memory and SoC. You will see the power drop down like crazy.
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  I believe they're saying they keep it powered off because it uses a magnitude more power. And it's an entirely believable statement. A Mac Mini uses between 5w - 20w. Many PCs idle at >50W, and under use hit 500W+.
  - betaby 3y ago
    Perhaps, but those would be the very different PCs. Also while exist, 500W+ desktops are rare, and their performance are not comparable to Mac Minis.
  - yyyk 3y ago
    That's not a fair comparison. We should be comparing Mac Mini to NUCs if power consumption is the relevant factor. Plenty of NUCs are rated for 15w.
    - alphabettsy 3y ago
      And those NUCs don’t match the performance.
yyyk 3y ago
Very likely any difference was already paid for with the Apple premium.

spiderfarmer 3y ago

Desktop pcs requiring a ludicrous amount of power and cooling is absolutely problematic. The amount of people willing to put up with big honking machines is dwindling.

BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
AMD and Intel are jacking up the default power settings to absurd levels because it gives marketing bigger numbers to to throw around. You can drastically reduce the power you supply to desktop chips with BIOS settings. You'll generate far less heat, can use a smaller power supply and form factor, while still getting great performance. If Intel/AMD get to a level where their chips rival M1/M2 while power throttled, things get interesting.
- jerrygenser 3y ago
  In general both on my own benchmarks and from what I've read/seen youtube videos, it's about a 5% performance loss multithreaded with full core saturation and 0-1% performance haircut on single threaded -- since on single threaded you are generating lower enough heat not to go near the high end. For me this was going from 105W to 65W on my 7700X and my results were similar. Not sure how it would look or work with Intel though.
- Lapha 3y ago
  Both companies are juicing up the default power limits which absolutely matters if you're concerned about total Wh for sustained loads, thermal considerations, PSU rating, noise, etc, as you mentioned, but to be fair to AMD here they've released an eco mode on the 7000 series which does lower the default power limit quite substantially. You could do this before with manual adjustments to voltage and clock speeds, but now it's a simple toggle. Another point is that in terms of power efficiency AMD are absolutely mopping the floor with Intel, where even older high power R9s are consistently outperforming Intel's lower power i5 and i7s by a wide margin. This sort of discussion is often left out of reviews which only look at TDP or peak wall power. It's still not ARM levels of efficiency, but x86 vs ARM or even desktop vs laptop efficiency is an entirely separate conversation.
- 3y ago

Demmme 3y ago

How does that not matter on a fair comparison? It's a no brainer anyway to get more performance from desktop and non apple much cheaper due to apples pricing. Apple has a huge advantage price / performance wise with the cheap m based Mac book air. The comparison with a Mac book pro which costs 2-3k is slightly less so.

zamalek 3y ago
> Apple has a huge advantage price / performance wise My 7950x machine cost, excluding the enthusiast GPU, $3000. That's less than half the cost of the M2 Ultra.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  You spent $3000 before gpu on a custom PC!?
  - zamalek 3y ago
    It was the height of the pandemic and shortages. I guess it could be a lot cheaper today.
  - sgtnoodle 3y ago
    $350 motherboard, $800 CPU, $200 RAM, $150 NVME, $100 cooler, $150 PSU, $200 case. $1750 + CA tax is about $1900. You could easily add another $1K by going crazy with RAM and NVME storage.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      $2000 I could see, but I do think more people are overspending on CPU for gaming PCs by probably double. Maybe not overspending if you're getting a tangible productive value out of it, but I suppose they didn't specify gaming. For gaming specifically I'd probably try and balance the useful GPU power I need with the minimum necessary CPU to prevent bottlenecking. Part of the reason I haven't upgraded my intel macbook pro, is just because I think the cost all-in seems outrageous, even for someone who exclusively works on mac. I can't rationalize $500/16gb of ram or w/e. I haven't upgraded my gaming PC much, because the cost of GPUs very quickly overwhelms the performance improvement I'd get value out of compared to my severely out of date gear that I found by the roadside.

wmf 3y ago

The computer identifiers on the claimed "M2 Ultra" devices claim to be Macbook Pro 14" devices I think you're confusing Mac14,14 which is the internal designation for the Mac Studio with a MacBook Pro 14". The leak if anyone's interested: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/21305974?baseline=21311279 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/21305974?baseli...

kitsunesoba 3y ago

IMO driving down power consumption should still be a goal even for desktop machines. It means that the overwhelming majority of users get cooler, quieter, less bulky machines, while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. This also pushes more "desktop like" performance to both ultraportable and reasonably portable laptops, allowing these machines to fully replace desktops for the overwhelming majority without all of the caveats that come with "desktop replacement" laptops (workstation laptops, heavy duty gaming laptops, etc). A lot of people who previously wouldn't have seen laptops as capable of being their primary machines are doing exactly that with M1/M2 Pro MBPs.

automatic6131 3y ago
>while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. This is actually the case! The 7950X and 13900K come in non-X and non-K variants, which have vastly reduced power footprints and overall consumption, and you can even take your X or K variant and... Enforce that exact same power envelope in BIOS, for minimal loss in performance. But the purchasers of desktop X and K SKUs are the overclocking fringe (by and large). I will admit though, a lot of laptops are sold with with i|r7|9 +HX variants that shouldn't be purchased because big number means easier upsell.
ilyt 3y ago
> IMO driving down power consumption should still be a goal even for desktop machines. It means that the overwhelming majority of users get cooler, quieter, less bulky machines, while the fringe who need raw power at all costs can overclock to the moon if they really want to. It is the goal (after all more efficiency also means fitting more powerful cores into the thermal envelope) but given the choice most desktop users would be fine with "just a bit bigger box" rather than sacrifice performance for the price.

jerrygenser 3y ago

> Having said that, the 7950X was released late February, and the 13900KS was released in mid January. Both of this year. Both are their premiere available chips right now in the segment. Referring to them like they're last year's junk is rather silly. 7950X was released September, 2022. It's quite literally last year's chip and given that AMD release cycle is typically about 2 years, we're roughly halfway between last release and 9000 series release. You might be getting it confused with the Non-X versions that were released earlier in 2023 -- those are basically the same chip but power limited and maybe slightly worse selections of silicon. Of those Non-X versions it was 7600, 7700, 7900 but non-X of 7950 was released. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors

wtallis 3y ago
I think he was getting the 7950X confused with the 7950X3D, the latter of which was released in late February.

BirAdam 3y ago

From what I understand, the M2 was released due to TSMC struggling with yields on their N3 process. Apple had to do something with the N5 node to keep hardware available to consumers, and M2 was the result.