7 ms·
M3 Max Chip Around as Fast as M2 Ultra in Early Benchmark Results
- camillomiller 3y agoApple is its own only competitor in the desktop Silicon race. Unbelievable
- keyle 3y agoLet's not forget we're also talking pretty much fanless and a lot less power consumption. I remember reading "why ARM design will rule" (simpler design) and we're seeing it in the flesh. I keep hoping to see another manufacturer, e.g. Lenovo making their own ARM machine for thinkpads... It would be incredibly popular I feel. But most likely will never happen.
- pinkgolem 3y agoI mean, they did... But no one cracked x32 on arm as good as apple, the performance under windows is horrible...
- keyle 3y agoIs it, good to know. I was hoping to get a ARM linux laptop soon...
- xhdjcic 3y agoArent there heaps of ARM laptops out there? I thought there has been for a while.
- tester756 3y agoISA does not imply performance characteristics. ARM is not some magic trick https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SllX 3y agoIt's not just desktops: https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks
- KeplerBoy 3y agoIn the mobile space, sure, but not in the desktop space. Their chips are good, no doubt, but AMD and Intel are not sleeping at the wheel. Even if Apple chips were available as CPUs and Motherboards with full Windows and Linux support, they wouldn't be the obvious choice for all use cases. The M2 Ultra is incredible, but there are workloads where it stands no chance against a threadripper.
- troupo 3y agoThey don't really have a solution for desktop. These are still mobile/laptop chips. Don't get me wrong: these are insanely brilliant paradigm-changing chips that are more than enough for the majority of people. However, despite all the marketing it still remains to be seen whether they can transition into desktop/workstation chips with these. Especially at a reasonable price.
- prmoustache 3y agodesktop/workstation is a niche market nowadays.
- xhdjcic 3y ago[dead]
- oyashirochama 3y agoNot for AAA, 4k 120 fps+. Desktop is the requirement not the exception.
- prmoustache 3y agoYes but AAA desktop game machines is a niche market, a profitable one maybe but still very small in numbers.
- seec 3y agoOne that millions of people enjoy, and more are getting into every year passing. Young people who were raised with already decent graphics will not downgrade to 10 years older graphic quality and will thus buy decent gaming PC. It is actually the market that Apple has chosen that is more niche. About 80% of Mac sales are laptops (a lot of which are status symbol/ rich executive computer type) so it really does not leave a lot of customers that are into computers. I believe they made that choice for both historical reasons and trying to maximize profits. But I think they are wrong, and it will bite them eventually. There is no reason a powerful desktop couldn't be just as good at video editing. Actually, the gaming desktops tend to be pretty good at video production too, it just does not have the software Apple has...
- diffeomorphism 3y agoEh, the comparison with current AMD chips seems rather close efficiency-wise and even apple does not claim to have better performance: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Zen4-Phoenix-is-ideally-as-efficient-as-Apple.713395.0.html#toc-6 https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Ze... Still very, very nice chips, but "only competitor" is far removed from reality. Also, mac mini with m2 pro, 32gb of ram and 1TB of storage is 2500€; the above mentioned amd one is 770€. So "better at just 3-4 times the price"... color me highly unimpressed.
- Toutouxc 3y agoAre you sure that you're up to speed with the latest developments? The M1 was a pretty good wake-up call, yes, but it's not like AMD are Intel are standing still, there are now very nice chips available from all manufacturers.
- tester756 3y agoWhat, how did you draw that conclusion? https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/multicore https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/multicore
- faeriechangling 3y agoI’m really not that impressed by geekbench because JavaScript ran fast enough on the m1’s. I feel like the m1’s are actually fast enough for basic web browsing. I don’t feel the emphasis put on it makes sense. What I’d love to see is more memory bandwidth but memory speeds have either stagnated for 3 years or regressed. Especially now that Apple is marketing this as a good computer for “transformers”. To me the interesting part of Apple Silicon’s is it’s ability to act as a high-vram low-compute low-bandwidth GPU given the cost. The one thing I was very impressed by was the m3 max having a 128gb memory limit. I did not expect that. The 128gb spec of the m3 max is very tempting as it feels like a very capable do-it-all computer.
- wtallis 3y ago> I’m really not that impressed by geekbench because JavaScript ran fast enough on the m1’s. I feel like the m1’s are actually fast enough for basic web browsing. I don’t feel the emphasis put on it makes sense. Do you think Geekbench is specifically a JavaScript or browser benchmark, or are you just saying that browser performance is all you care about for laptops and that you don't see any benefit from further performance increases for your use case?
- rewmie 3y ago> I feel like the m1’s are actually fast enough for basic web browsing. I was not expecting this type of comment on 2023 on a discussion on premium hardware marketed as the highest performant hardware on the market.
- tester756 3y ago>highest performant hardware on the market highest performant for what?
- rewmie 3y ago> highest performant for what? According to Apple, their M3 products outperform everything under the sun. As a reminder, here's a link to Apple's press release. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/apple-unveils-m3-m3-pro-and-m3-max-the-most-advanced-chips-for-a-personal-computer/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/apple-unveils-m3-m3-p...
- Sparkyte 3y agoAMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D (16 Cores) is just as fast. This means that the 8k series with twice the operation width should actually be faster than the M3 Max. https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=7945HX3D https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=7945HX... My 7840u isn't too far behind on single core perf.
- jxy 3y ago7945HX3D has TDP 55W. Not sure about M3 Max. Similar or less?
- deaddodo 3y agoNo idea where this idea has formed that the M-series competes tit-for-tat with x86 chips, let alone outcompetes them. It beats some models in Geekbench scores and some 3D benchmarks (for ones with iGPUs), sure; but multispectrum benchmarks have shown it's still generally outcompeted by most x86 chips targeted at the same market, drastically in some cases: https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m2-amd-ryzen https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m2-amd-ryzen Apple's claims have always been that it performs better per watt, which is true; and that it's more efficient for quite a few common use cases (JavaScript execution, compositing, etc), especially when battery life is a concern.
- Sparkyte 3y agoThere really isn't much of a perf difference between X86 and ARM these days. Generally CISC vs RISC argument this would devolve into but they all have instruction sets that either optimize performance or introduce ways to handle complex or reduced instructions in their own way. RISC has only the benefit of being simple out of the box if designed that way and can have a lower power draw simply because. CISC is complex out of the box so it has more draw out of the box.
- deaddodo 3y ago> There really isn't much of a perf difference between X86 and ARM these days. We're not talking ISAs here or any sort of ideological argument regarding instruction set design. We're talking concrete architectural implementations. I linked specific benchmarks that show very real differences in a wide set of benchmarks. Particularly more generalized ones than the use cases the M-series is optimized for. If we take both companies' words to heart that their architectures recieved a 20% uplift, it would carry through that the gap would be similar today. Especially with the Ryzen 8000 around the corner, which is claimed/expected to have an even stronger single-core IPC uplift than 6000->7000.
- lgkk 3y agoTangential anecdote. I would love to upgrade my personal intel MacBook. Unfortunately (mebe) I found a killer deal on a 5950x last year and now I’ve got a beast of a workstation with 128gb ram. I have actually found it hard to use my laptop anymore. Work laptop is a M1 with 64gb ram. It’s fast. But my workstation feels a lot more powerful. It’s hard to use either laptops and dealing with spinners and waiting. Anyone else in the same boat?
- 6d65 3y agoI have been tracking 5950x prices and anything over $300 seems unreasonable. And I think I'm just going to get a 7700x and a new MB and 32GB of RAM, it should be a $500-sh upgrade. It should have M3 like single threaded perf, multi threaded perf better than 5950x, slightly worse than M3 Max, better memory bandwidth than the 5950x. You're right about just having a beefier PC, but maybe a baseline M2/M3 Air to SSH into a local machine + a beefier PC is a good combination. Luckly I switched to an all in terminal dev experience with Neovim/Helix/Tmux and the advantage is that one can seamlessly mix ssh/mosh shells in this workflow. Don't even need to set up any VNC/RDPs/Moonlights. Maybe even that is not needed if your languages supports ccache like tools. I'm mostly interested in compilation speed, maybe running some programs faster on beefier hardware and I don't mind working on Linux. So to recap, a baseline Air for portability(or some light ryzen laptop) plus a medium range PC seems like a winning combination for me. Given you already have a case/psu/ssd together they can cost as an entry level m3 macbook pro with 8GB of RAM.
- gtirloni 3y agoNot really. What workloads are you running that you experience waiting on a M1 with 64GB?
- klohto 3y agowtf, you’re comparing 800W with 20W machine. No shit your workstation is more powerful, it’s a fucking workstation not a battery operated laptop. If you are troubled by loading on 64GB M1 Max, then congrats, you are doing workload that no laptop will handle.
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- _8j50 3y agoDear apple, Like burgers, make it wider, not taller. More ram not faster cpus. I dream ofna terabyte ram accessible to both gpu and cpu. I promise I will do more than just keep a few more tabs open with it.
- rsynnott 3y agoI’d expect that the M3 Ultra will be up to 256GB (based on the 128GB max) if that’s of any use to you.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38108235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38108235