5 ms·

Snarky and incorrect. This should compare very favorably (performance and efficiency) with Apple's M3 chip. Slightly worse CPU ( https://browser.geekbench.com/

by phonon 2y ago

Snarky and incorrect. This should compare very favorably (performance and efficiency) with Apple's M3 chip. Slightly worse CPU ( https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7483669?baseline=5221398 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7483669?baselin... ), much better GPU and NPU, similar/slightly worse efficiency, 33% more RAM capacity.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>Snarky and incorrect That's like 80% of comments in the thread. Unfortunately HN his is not the place for sane discussion. It's a place for people to vent their Intel hate.
- KingOfCoders 2y ago
  HN has changed significantly. Some years ago I quoted The Last Psychatrist and we had a discussion about the points. Lately I quoted TLP and was insulted and downvoted. People are not interested in learning new things, but following whatever cult they believe in.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    The question is, how do you treat this sickness in society? Truth doesn't work, so what's the answer?
    - KingOfCoders 2y ago
      I think there are waves in society, the pendulum will swing back. I don't think there is a treatment.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      That's not society issue but a community issue. The issue is solved when the community devolves over time and gets shitty enough to the point that members that care for informative conversations leave for greener pastures to new communities, leaving the dross behind to stay in their cult echo chamber. It happens to every social media platform and it's happening to HN.
      - ruthmarx 2y ago
        It's a society issue as well.
dmnmnm 2y ago
> much better GPU and NPU I don't know about the Apple ecosystem, but have you seen ANYTHING using the NPU on PC? I have not. I own an AMD laptop with an NPU (Ryzen 9 8945HS) and the NPU has never seen a single percentage of utilization since the laptop was unboxed and put to use. And I actually have an interest in local AI, but all the stuff I use (like Ollama or ComfyUI) run on the GPU, even if they had support for the NPU (I do not think they do) I would not run that stuff on the NPU because it's just not competitive with the nvidia gpu that's also on my laptop. To me, seeing intel and AMD include this sort of useless thing is anger inducing. I am paying for this. I want every inch of that silicon to be useful. Not detrimental waste of space, like the NPU. Seeing "better NPU" in a sentence meant to market a CPU doesn't elicit positive emotions. In the windows world, the one thing that might end up using an NPU is also the thing most people do not want: Windows Recall. And that feature, for now, is exclusive to Qualcomm ARM PCs, current x86-64 NPU owners can't get it.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > seeing intel and AMD include this sort of useless thing is anger inducing. I am paying for this. So don't pay for it. No one is making you. Wait for a model that doesn't have an NPU, or buy an older model that doesn't. It's not like it won't still be fast enough.
  - dmnmnm 2y ago
    >Wait for a model that doesn't have an NPU How many years from now? There isn't any high end CPU in laptops without those useless things now. > buy an older model that doesn't I don't think you've ever shopped for laptops, or you're lucky and live in a country that is particularly plentiful for choices in PCs. Looking for the specific combination of having 32gb of ram, 1tb of SSD, an AMD CPU (with Intel's current manufacturing woes I was not willing to gamble), an NVIDIA GPU with a minimum of 8 gb of vram took far more efforts than I am normally to spend doing activities like shopping. And now you tell me "do all that while looking for a model that predates NPUs"? Of course I could order online from god knows where but I like buying from retailers that are known to honor their warranty well and good since there's always the possibility of buying lemons and I don't feel like wasting time shipping crap myself when I could just exchange it in place if it happened.
dagmx 2y ago
Where are you getting better GPU benchmarks from? Afaik there’s not been public graphics benchmarks and Intel didn’t compare against Apple. Apples GPUs have generally been class leading for integrated graphics. I’d be surprised if Intel improved dramatically here, as their iGPU has been quite anaemic till recently. Intel’s NPU is better but as noted in a thread higher up their average package wattage is a little over double (37 vs 15W) for a 20% performance claim.
- phonon 2y ago
  You can start here... https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-bench_11 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-bench_11 M3 is around 3.5 TeraFLOPS, Lunar Lake is 5.2-6.5 TeraFLOPS. I'm sure more detailed benchmarks will be coming up soon, but realistically, there is no way to make up that gap. Apple here says the Macbook Pro has 18 TOPS (compared to Lunar Lake's 48 TOPS)...it's not really in the same league. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
  - dagmx 2y ago
    You can’t directly compare teraflops for GPU performance between different architectures unless you really only care about a single precision throughput, which is not a good metric. You do actually need real world graphics benchmarks to compare GPUs. You also can’t compare NPU TOPs without knowing the baseline data type. Apple for the M3 uses FP16 whereas Intel uses INT8. You have to double the Apple number to get the raw data throughput (ignoring any other efficiencies for operations in different types). It’s ~36 vs 48. So closer to 33% more for 100% more power use (impossible to measure just the NPU use though). The more comparable SOC for power use would be the M3 Pro
    - phonon 2y ago
      Gaming is essentially all done with FP32...so it's by far the best figure of merit (excluding issues with say RDNA3 dual issue which is rarely achieved in practice). You will see gaming benchmarks come out soon, and Lunar Lake will be about 50% faster than the M3. (A secondary issue of course is how few latest gen games run on macOS....) True, that's FP16, but it's not clear if M3's Neural Engine even supports INT8. I'm sure M4 will make this much more competitive, but right now, Lunar Lake is overall a much more balanced architecture that most people would prefer, ceteris paribus....

by phonon 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago

>Snarky and incorrect That's like 80% of comments in the thread. Unfortunately HN his is not the place for sane discussion. It's a place for people to vent their Intel hate.

KingOfCoders 2y ago
HN has changed significantly. Some years ago I quoted The Last Psychatrist and we had a discussion about the points. Lately I quoted TLP and was insulted and downvoted. People are not interested in learning new things, but following whatever cult they believe in.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  The question is, how do you treat this sickness in society? Truth doesn't work, so what's the answer?
  - KingOfCoders 2y ago
    I think there are waves in society, the pendulum will swing back. I don't think there is a treatment.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    That's not society issue but a community issue. The issue is solved when the community devolves over time and gets shitty enough to the point that members that care for informative conversations leave for greener pastures to new communities, leaving the dross behind to stay in their cult echo chamber. It happens to every social media platform and it's happening to HN.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      It's a society issue as well.

dmnmnm 2y ago

> much better GPU and NPU I don't know about the Apple ecosystem, but have you seen ANYTHING using the NPU on PC? I have not. I own an AMD laptop with an NPU (Ryzen 9 8945HS) and the NPU has never seen a single percentage of utilization since the laptop was unboxed and put to use. And I actually have an interest in local AI, but all the stuff I use (like Ollama or ComfyUI) run on the GPU, even if they had support for the NPU (I do not think they do) I would not run that stuff on the NPU because it's just not competitive with the nvidia gpu that's also on my laptop. To me, seeing intel and AMD include this sort of useless thing is anger inducing. I am paying for this. I want every inch of that silicon to be useful. Not detrimental waste of space, like the NPU. Seeing "better NPU" in a sentence meant to market a CPU doesn't elicit positive emotions. In the windows world, the one thing that might end up using an NPU is also the thing most people do not want: Windows Recall. And that feature, for now, is exclusive to Qualcomm ARM PCs, current x86-64 NPU owners can't get it.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> seeing intel and AMD include this sort of useless thing is anger inducing. I am paying for this. So don't pay for it. No one is making you. Wait for a model that doesn't have an NPU, or buy an older model that doesn't. It's not like it won't still be fast enough.
- dmnmnm 2y ago
  >Wait for a model that doesn't have an NPU How many years from now? There isn't any high end CPU in laptops without those useless things now. > buy an older model that doesn't I don't think you've ever shopped for laptops, or you're lucky and live in a country that is particularly plentiful for choices in PCs. Looking for the specific combination of having 32gb of ram, 1tb of SSD, an AMD CPU (with Intel's current manufacturing woes I was not willing to gamble), an NVIDIA GPU with a minimum of 8 gb of vram took far more efforts than I am normally to spend doing activities like shopping. And now you tell me "do all that while looking for a model that predates NPUs"? Of course I could order online from god knows where but I like buying from retailers that are known to honor their warranty well and good since there's always the possibility of buying lemons and I don't feel like wasting time shipping crap myself when I could just exchange it in place if it happened.

dagmx 2y ago

Where are you getting better GPU benchmarks from? Afaik there’s not been public graphics benchmarks and Intel didn’t compare against Apple. Apples GPUs have generally been class leading for integrated graphics. I’d be surprised if Intel improved dramatically here, as their iGPU has been quite anaemic till recently. Intel’s NPU is better but as noted in a thread higher up their average package wattage is a little over double (37 vs 15W) for a 20% performance claim.

phonon 2y ago
You can start here... https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-bench_11 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-bench_11 M3 is around 3.5 TeraFLOPS, Lunar Lake is 5.2-6.5 TeraFLOPS. I'm sure more detailed benchmarks will be coming up soon, but realistically, there is no way to make up that gap. Apple here says the Macbook Pro has 18 TOPS (compared to Lunar Lake's 48 TOPS)...it's not really in the same league. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
- dagmx 2y ago
  You can’t directly compare teraflops for GPU performance between different architectures unless you really only care about a single precision throughput, which is not a good metric. You do actually need real world graphics benchmarks to compare GPUs. You also can’t compare NPU TOPs without knowing the baseline data type. Apple for the M3 uses FP16 whereas Intel uses INT8. You have to double the Apple number to get the raw data throughput (ignoring any other efficiencies for operations in different types). It’s ~36 vs 48. So closer to 33% more for 100% more power use (impossible to measure just the NPU use though). The more comparable SOC for power use would be the M3 Pro
  - phonon 2y ago
    Gaming is essentially all done with FP32...so it's by far the best figure of merit (excluding issues with say RDNA3 dual issue which is rarely achieved in practice). You will see gaming benchmarks come out soon, and Lunar Lake will be about 50% faster than the M3. (A secondary issue of course is how few latest gen games run on macOS....) True, that's FP16, but it's not clear if M3's Neural Engine even supports INT8. I'm sure M4 will make this much more competitive, but right now, Lunar Lake is overall a much more balanced architecture that most people would prefer, ceteris paribus....