3 ms·

A laptop that can match the best of the competition's desktop is pretty big advantage IMHO. Don't forget that this M3 Max chip is measured inside a laptop that

by mrtksn 3y ago

A laptop that can match the best of the competition's desktop is pretty big advantage IMHO. Don't forget that this M3 Max chip is measured inside a laptop that can run at the same performance on battery. Apple's desktop systems already match the greatest offerings of the competition with it's previous gen chip and with the constraints on size and cooling system noise. I wonder what Apple can do in its labs when pushing their silicons to the limits without constraints on cooling. Every now and then a fringe geekbench score will pop-up, maybe from those lab experiments.

jeswin 3y ago
> A laptop that can match the best of the competition's desktop is pretty big advantage IMHO. 7945HX3D (a 5nm 55W laptop part) scores 15-16k on GB6. M3 Max 3nm is just a little better. Almost all of which can be attributed to TSMC 3nm.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Sure, if you define "a bit" to be %30 then you can say that. Not everyone will agree with the "a bit" definition though, how many years took AMD to hit a %30 improvement? Also, the high performance laptops with that chip appear to be %50 heavier than 16" Macbook Pro. According to reviews, those laptops can do 4 hours of general usage(not gaming) at best - so terrible battery life. Also, significant drop in performance when unplugged. Overall, those machines are optimised for one thing only and apparently they can do it about %30 worse than a Macbook and everything else much, much worse.
  - jeswin 3y ago
    > Sure, if you define "a bit" to be %30 then you can say that. 30% is roughly the difference to be expected between N5 -> N5P/N4 -> N3. That was the original argument - "TSMC". About laptop battery life etc, that's a different discussion.
    - skavi 3y ago
      > 30% is roughly the difference to be expected between N5 -> N5P/N4 -> N3. That was the original argument - "TSMC". Not true according to TSMC’s own messaging. Keep in mind that predicted power and performance improvements keep the other factor constant. https://www.anandtech.com/show/18833/tsmc-details-3nm-evolution-n3e-on-schedule-n3p-n3x-deliver-five-percent-gains https://www.anandtech.com/show/18833/tsmc-details-3nm-evolut...
  - atoav 3y ago
    For how long can the macbook do the 30% more? Because in my experience as someone who renders animations for multiple days or even weeks on machines, the newer Apple designs are good for burst loads, but don't shine when it comes to continous loads where the thermals start to kick in.
atoav 3y ago
In theory at least. When rendering a blender animation my i7/rtx2040 notebook outperformed the back then strongest M1/Metal laptop easily by a factor of 2. My suspicion is that during long workloads (more than a hour max load) something like a macbook tapers off into thermal throttle. In the studio we have a bunch of m2 Mac Minis, they are good for the price, but also with them I am unsure about thermals under continous load.

by mrtksn 3y ago

jeswin 3y ago

> A laptop that can match the best of the competition's desktop is pretty big advantage IMHO. 7945HX3D (a 5nm 55W laptop part) scores 15-16k on GB6. M3 Max 3nm is just a little better. Almost all of which can be attributed to TSMC 3nm.

mrtksn 3y ago
Sure, if you define "a bit" to be %30 then you can say that. Not everyone will agree with the "a bit" definition though, how many years took AMD to hit a %30 improvement? Also, the high performance laptops with that chip appear to be %50 heavier than 16" Macbook Pro. According to reviews, those laptops can do 4 hours of general usage(not gaming) at best - so terrible battery life. Also, significant drop in performance when unplugged. Overall, those machines are optimised for one thing only and apparently they can do it about %30 worse than a Macbook and everything else much, much worse.
- jeswin 3y ago
  > Sure, if you define "a bit" to be %30 then you can say that. 30% is roughly the difference to be expected between N5 -> N5P/N4 -> N3. That was the original argument - "TSMC". About laptop battery life etc, that's a different discussion.
  - skavi 3y ago
    > 30% is roughly the difference to be expected between N5 -> N5P/N4 -> N3. That was the original argument - "TSMC". Not true according to TSMC’s own messaging. Keep in mind that predicted power and performance improvements keep the other factor constant. https://www.anandtech.com/show/18833/tsmc-details-3nm-evolution-n3e-on-schedule-n3p-n3x-deliver-five-percent-gains https://www.anandtech.com/show/18833/tsmc-details-3nm-evolut...
- atoav 3y ago
  For how long can the macbook do the 30% more? Because in my experience as someone who renders animations for multiple days or even weeks on machines, the newer Apple designs are good for burst loads, but don't shine when it comes to continous loads where the thermals start to kick in.

atoav 3y ago

In theory at least. When rendering a blender animation my i7/rtx2040 notebook outperformed the back then strongest M1/Metal laptop easily by a factor of 2. My suspicion is that during long workloads (more than a hour max load) something like a macbook tapers off into thermal throttle. In the studio we have a bunch of m2 Mac Minis, they are good for the price, but also with them I am unsure about thermals under continous load.