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Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Thaxll 2y ago"in Geekbench 6."
- ceejayoz 2y ago"8 too long", says HN.
- eigenspace 2y agoI'll admit to some reflexive skepticism here. I know GeekBench at least used to be considered an entirely unserious indicator of performance and any discussion relating to its scores used to be drowned out by people explaining why it was so bad. Do those criticisms still hold? Are serious people nowadays taking Geekbench to be a reasonably okay (though obviously imperfect) performance metric?
- whynotminot 2y agoYou’re not the only one — but just curious where this skepticism comes from. This is M4 — Apple has now made four generations of chips and each one were class leading upon release. What more do you need to see?
- LeafItAlone 2y agoI don’t think they are skeptical of the chip itself. Just asking about the benchmark used. If I was reviewing cars and used the number of doors as a benchmark for speed, surely I’d get laughed at.
- whynotminot 2y agoRight but we keep repeating this cycle. A new M series chip comes, the geekbench leaks and its class leading. Immediately people “but geEk BeNcH” And then actual people get their hands on the machines for their real workloads and essentially confirm the geekbench results. If this was the first time, then fair enough. But it’s a Groundhog Day style sketch comedy at this point with M4.
- philistine 2y agoI blame it on the PC crowd being unconsciously salty the most prestigious CPU is not available to them. You heard the same stuff when talking about Android performance versus iPhone. There is a lot to criticize about Apple's silicon design, but they are leading the CPU market in terms of mindshare and attention. All the other chipmakers all feel like they're just trying to follow Apple's lead. It's wild.
- MBCook 2y agoI was surprised and disappointed to see that the industry didn’t start prioritizing heat output more after the M1 generation came out. That was absolutely my favorite thing about it, it made my laptop silent and cool. But anyway, what is it you see to criticize about Apple‘s Apple Silicon design? The way RAM is locked on package so it’s not upgradable, or something else? I’m kind of surprised, I don’t hear a lot of people suggesting it has a lot to be criticized for.
- lispm 2y agoIt was wild to see the still ongoing overclocking Ghz competition, while suddenly one could use a laptop with good performance, no fans, no noise and while using it mobile.
- philistine 2y agoThe lack of multiple display support early on. The M2 generation produced much more heat than the M1, but that could be the new Macbook Air. GPU weakness with the bigger chips.
- eigenspace 2y agoIf that's all we cared about we wouldn't be discussing a Geekbench score in the first place. The OP could have just posted the statement without ever mentioning a benchmark. I was just curious if people had experience with how reliable Geekbench has been at showing relative performance of CPUs lately.
- nabakin 2y agoIn power efficiency maybe, but not top performance
- whynotminot 2y agoLiterally yes top single core performance. (And incidentally also efficiency)
- nabakin 2y agoI stand corrected, that's incredible. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_si... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
- whynotminot 2y agoI don’t see the M4 on any of these charts
- nabakin 2y agoWhy would that be necessary to prove the series has top performance?
- sangnoir 2y ago> Apple has now made four generations of chips and each one were class leading upon release. Buying up most of TSMC's latest node capacity certainly helps. Zen chips on the same node turn out to be very competitive, butAMD don't get first dibs.
- rowanG077 2y agoI disagree with the wording "AMD don't get first dibs". It's more like "AMD won't pay for first dibs"
- whynotminot 2y agoI don’t think a lot of people fully understand how closely Apple works with TSMC on this, too. Both in funding them, holding them accountable, and providing the capital needed for the big foundry bets. It’s kind of one of those IYKYK things, but Apple is a big reason TSMC actually is the market leader.
- stouset 2y agoIt’s more like Apple fronts the cash for TSMC’s latest node. But regardless, in what way does that detract from their chips being class-leading at release?
- fragmede 2y agoBecause the others can't use that node, there are no others in that same class. If there was a race, but one person is on foot, and the other is in a car, it's not surprising if the person in the car finishes first.
- whynotminot 2y agoEventually Apple moves off a node and the others move on. People pretend like this isn’t a thing that’s already happened, and that there aren’t fair comparisons. But there are. And even when you compare like for like Apple Silicon tends to win. Line up the node, check the wattages, compare the parts. I trust you can handle the assignment.
- gamblor956 2y agoAs demonstrated by the M1-M3 series of chips, essentially all of that lead was due to being the first chips on a smaller process, rather than to anything inherent to the chip design. Indeed, the Mx series of chips tend to be on the slower side of chips for their process sizes.
- whynotminot 2y agoShow your work. Most people who say things like this tend to deeply misunderstand TDP and end up making really weird comparisons. Like high wattage desktop towers compared to fan-less MacBook Airs. The process lead Apple tends to enjoy no doubt plays a huge role in their success. But you could also turn around and say that’s the only reason AMD has gained so much ground against Intel. Spoiler: it’s not. Process node and design work together for the results you see. People tend to get very stingy with credit for this though if there’s an Apple logo involved.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 2y agoI'd be reflexively skeptical if I didn't have a M1 Mac. It really is something.
- eigenspace 2y agoI'm not skeptical of Apple's M-series chips. They have proven themselves to be quite impressive and indeed quite competitive with traditional desktop CPUs even at very low wattages. I'm skeptical of Geekbench being able to indicate that this specific new processor is robustly faster than say a 9950x in single-core workloads.
- selectodude 2y agoIt's robustly faster at the things that Geekbench is measuring. You can find issue with the test criteria (measures meaningless things or is easy to game) but the tests themselves are certainly sound.
- zamadatix 2y agoIt's by no means a be all end all "read this number and know everything you need to know" benchmark but it tends to be good enough to give you a decent idea of how fast a device will be for a typical consumer. If I could pick 1 "generic" benchmark to base things off of I'd pick PassMark though. It tends to agree with Geekbench on Apple Silicon performance but it is a bit more useful when comparing non-typical corner cases (high core count CPUs and the like). Best of all is to look at a full test suite and compare for the specific workload types that matter to you... but that can often be overkill if all you want to know is "yep, Apple is pulling ahead on single thread performance".
- TiredOfLife 2y agoYou are thinking of AnTuTu.
- llm_nerd 2y agoGeekbench is an excellent benchmark, and has a pretty good correlation with the performance people see in the real world where there aren't other limitations like storage speed. There is a sort of whack-a-mole thing where adherents of particular makers or even instruction sets dismiss evidence that benefits their alternatives, and you find that at the root of almost all of the "my choice doesn't win in a given benchmark means the benchmark is bad" rhetoric. Then they demand you only respect some oddball benchmark where their favoured choice wins. AMD fans long claimed that Geekbench was in cahoots with Intel. Then when Apple started dominating, that it was in cahoots with ARM, or favoured ARM instruction sets. It's endless.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoAny proprietary benchmark that's compiled with the mystery meat equivalent of compiler/flags isn't "excellent" in any way. SPECint compiled with either the vendor compiler (ICC, AOCC) or the latest gcc/clang would be a good neutral standard, though I'd also want to compare SIMD units more closely with x265 and Highway based stuff (vips, libjxl). And how do you handle the fact that you can't really (yet) use the same OS for both platforms? Scheduler and power management counts, even for dumb number crunching.
- janwas 2y agoGood points. gemma.cpp can also be an interesting benchmark, it also uses Highway.
- llm_nerd 2y agoGeekbench is a highly regarded benchmark because it effectively reflects the overall performance of various platforms as experienced by the average user. By "platform," we mean the combination of hardware and software—how systems are actually used in day-to-day scenarios. Specint, on the other hand, is useful for assessing specific tasks if you plan to run identical workloads. However, its individual test results vary widely. For example, Apple Silicon chips generally perform well in Specint but might match a competing chip in one test and be three times faster in another. These tests focus on very narrow tasks that can highlight the unique strengths of certain instructions or system features but are not representative of overall real-world performance. The debate over benchmarks is endless and, frankly, exhausting, as it often rehashes the same arguments. In practice, most people accept that Geekbench is a reliable indicator of performance, and I maintain it’s an excellent benchmark. You might disagree, but my stance stands.
- trynumber9 2y agoIt'll still be at the top of SPECint 2017 which is the real industry standard. Geekbench 6.3 slightly boosted Apple Silicon scores by adding SME - a very niche instruction set extension which is never used in SPECint workloads. So the gap may not be as wide as GB6.3 implies.
- mhh__ 2y agoDoes SPECint cover heavily memory bound pointer chasing stuff? Not up to date.
- trynumber9 2y agoYes, yes it does. https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/overview.html#Q13 https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/overview.html#Q13
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoIf it shows a good result for Apple then it's perfectly accurate, otherwise it's flawed.
- jwr 2y agoI verified Geekbench results to be very tightly correlated with my use case and workloads (JVM, Clojure development and compilation) as measured by my wall times. So yes, I consider it to be a very reliable indicator of performance.
- stogot 2y agoCurious how you verified that? I should possibly do thesame
- qeternity 2y agoRun Geekbench on a sample of hardware. Run your workload along same hardware. Regress.
- m00x 2y agoThat's not very scientific at all. With how close the CPUs are, how would you compare the tiny differences?
- jwr 2y agoRun my compilation on a CPU, note down the time it took and the Geekbench score for that CPU. Run the compilation on another CPU, note down the time it took and the Geekbench score for that CPU. Now look at the ratios — if Geekbench scores implied the faster CPU was, say, 20% faster, is my compilation 20% faster? I'm looking at my notes and without digging too much, I can see two reasonably recent cases: 30% faster compilation (Geekbench said 30%), and another one: 40% faster compilation (Geekbench said 38%). So yes, I do consider Geekbench to be a very reliable indicator of performance.
- m00x 2y agoDid no one check the scores? They're not the top consumer CPU by quite a range. It's probably the best power per watt, but not the most powerful CPU.
- jocaal 2y agoThe performance-per-watt isn’t necessarily the best. These scores are achieved when boosted and allowed to draw significantly more power. Apple CPUs may seem efficient because, most of the time, computers don’t require peak performance. Modern ARM microarchitectures have been optimized for standby and light usage, largely due to their extensive use in mobile devices. Some of MediaTek and Qualcomm's CPUs can offer better performance-per-watt, especially at lower than peak performance. The issue with these benchmarks is that they overlook these nuances in favor of a single number. Even worse, people just accept these numbers without thinking about what they mean.
- m00x 2y agoM4 is also an ARM architecture, why would Qualcomm's be more efficient?
- skavi 2y agoGB6 is great. Older versions weren’t always very representative of real workloads. Mostly because their working data sets were way too small. But GB6 aligns pretty well with SPEC2017.
- quitit 2y agoBenchmarking itself is of limited usefulness, since in reality it is only an internally-relevant comparison. Translating these scores into the real world is problematic. There are numerous examples of smart phones powered by Apple chips versus Qualcomm chips having starkly different performance with actual use. This is in spite of the chips themselves scoring similarly in benchmarks. The interesting thing here isn't really how high it's scored against other chip brands, but how it outperformed the M2 Ultra. There was some hum of expectation on HN that the differences between M1, M2, M3 etc would be token and that Apple's chips devision is losing its touch. Yet the M2 Ultra in the Mac Studio was released in June 2023, and the M4 Pro in the mini now for November 2024. That is quite the jump in performance over time and a huge change in bang for buck.
- carlgreene 2y agoI have been out of the PC world for a long time, but in terms of performance efficiency, is Apple running away from the competition? Or are AMD and Intel producing similar performing chips at the same wattage?
- api 2y agoThere have always been higher performing x64 chips than the M series but they use several times more power to get that. Apple seems to be reliably annihilating everyone on performance per watt at the high end of the performance curve. It makes sense since the M series are mobile CPUs on ‘roids.
- MBCook 2y agoIrony being that’s the same thing Intel learned from the P4. They gave it up for Core, grown from their low power chips, which took them far further with far less power than the P4 would have used.
- api 2y agoSince power is the limiting factor due to heat, optimize for power first then scale up.
- LorenDB 2y agoAMD's latest Strix Point mobile chips are on par with M3 silicon: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z8WKR0VHfJw https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z8WKR0VHfJw
- radicalbyte 2y agoI was looking into this recently as my M1 Max screen suddenly died out of the blue within warranty and Apple are complete crooks wrt honouring warranties. The AMD mobile chips are right there with M3 for battery life and have excellent performance only I couldn't find a complete system which shipped with the same size battery as the MBP16. They're either half or 66% of the capacity.
- hanniabu 2y agoGood enough to be used for gaming? Really want Apple to get into that because dealing with Windows sucks.
- whynotminot 2y agoThey’ve always been good enough for gaming. The problem has just been whether or not publishers would bother releasing the games. It’s unfortunate that Apple can’t seem to really build enough momentum here to become a gaming destination.
- yalogin 2y agoI think they will get there in time. They like to focus on things and not spread themselves thin. They always wanted to get the gaming market share but AI is taking all their time now.
- macintux 2y agoI'm not sure how many chances they'll get to persuade developers that this time they really mean it. It sounds like Apple Arcade is a flop.
- samatman 2y agoIs this one of those cases where "flop" means "this product would have a billion dollar market cap if it was a company, but since it's Apple, it's a flop". It is isn't it. https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/234969/apple-arcade-user-volume-nearly-matches-nintendo-switch-online-and-steam-players https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/234969/apple-arca...
- rswail 2y agoGiven that a Mac mini with an M4 is basically the same size and shape as an Apple TV, they could make a new Apple TV that was a gaming console as well. Why is the Apple TV only focused on passive entertainment?
- post_break 2y agoWhat's crazy is that the M4 Pro is in the Mac mini, something so tiny can handle that chip. The Mac Studio with the M4 Max will be awesome but the Mini is remarkable.
- carlgreene 2y agoI am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.
- cloudking 2y agoM3 Pro user here, agree with the same points. It's nice to be able to actually have your laptop on your lap, without burning your legs.
- mh- 2y agoHey, I can have my Intel MBP on my lap without burning my legs (or making me feel nauseated). As long as I don't open Chrome, Safari, Apple Notes, or really any other app...
- Etheryte 2y agoSometimes even not opening any apps is not enough if Spotlight decides that now is the time to update its index or something similar. Honestly nuts looking back at it.
- 0x457 2y agoI remember when macOS switched to evented way of handling input and for some reason decided that dropping keyboard events is okay...anyway if spotlight was updating its index, then unlocking your laptop with a password was impossible.
- 2y ago
- xbenjii 2y agoI'm confused. They're claiming "Apple’s M4 Max is the first production CPU to pass 4000 Single-Core score in Geekbench 6." yet I can see hundreds of other test results for single core performance above 4000 in the last 2 years?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- api 2y agoCould those be overclockers? I often see strange results on there that looks like either overclockers or prototypes. Maybe they mean this is the fastest general purpose single core you can buy that is that fast off the shelf with no tinkering.
- ceejayoz 2y agoAre those production results? https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/1962935 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/1962935 says it was running at 13.54 GHz. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4913899 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4913899 looks... questionable.
- xbenjii 2y agoYeah that's fair lol
- zeroonetwothree 2y agohttps://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7531877 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7531877 seems fine?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- grahamj 2y agoSo Ultra used to be the max but now Max is max… until Ultra goes past the max and Max is no longer the max. Until the next Max that goes beyond Ultra!
- fnikacevic 2y agoCan't wait until there's an M4 Ultramax too!
- grahamj 2y agoWill that me the maximum Ultra or the Ultimate Max?
- moffkalast 2y agoUntil there's an Ultramax+ Pro 2
- Keyframe 2y agoPersonally, I'm waiting for Panamax edition.
- allenrb 2y agoAnd these CPUs will be available in… max!
- lancesells 2y agoApple has gotten into Windows and PC territory with their naming for chips and models. Kind of funny to see the evolution of a compact product line and naming convention slowly turn into spreadsheet worthy comparison charts. That all said, I only have an M1 and it's still impressive to me.
- piva00 2y agoI think they're still keeping it somewhat together, agree it got ever more confusing with the introduction of more performance tiers but after 3 generations it's been easy to keep track of: Mx (base) -> Pro -> Max -> Ultra. Think it's still quite far away from naming conventions of PC territory. Now I got curious on what naming scheme could be clearer for Apple's performance tiers.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014791
- hyperjeff 2y agoDifferent chips though, and different links. (Also, it’d be nice if we stopped linking directly to social media posts and instead used an intermediary that didn’t require access or accounts just to follow discussions here.)
- ChrisArchitect 2y agowhoops, Related: Mac Mini with M4 Pro is the fastest Mac ever benchmarked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014791
- LorenDB 2y agoHow many people does this actually affect? Gamers are better off with AMD X3D chips, and most productivity workloads need good multicore performance. Obviously MR is great silicon and I don't want to downplay that, but I'm not sure that best singlecore performance is an overly useful metric for the people who need performance.
- smith7018 2y agoIt affects the millions of people that buy the machine by way of longevity.
- Salgat 2y agoUsually when I see advances, it's less about future proofing and more about obsoletion of old hardware. A more exaggerated case of this was in the 90s, people would upgrade to a 200 MHz p1 thinking they were future proofing but in a couple years you had 500Mhz P2s.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoPeople who browse the web and want that fastest javascript performance they can get.
- nicce 2y agoOr users of Slack, Spotify, Teams.. you name it. But I don't want to make an excuse that Electron-like frameworks should be encouraged to be used even more if we have super single core computers available.
- MBCook 2y agoEven if we ignore them, most tasks people do on a computer end up being heavily influenced by single threaded performance. Amdahl's law is still in control. For a great mini users single threaded performance is extremely important.
- nottorp 2y ago
- asmvolatile 2y agoAll I want is a top of the line MBP, with all it’s performance and insane battery life, but running a Linux distro of my choice :(
- iJohnDoe 2y agoAgreed, but probably getting a Lenovo Legion will be your best bet in the near term.
- _hyn3 2y agoI'm driving a 2022 XPS. Lots of people will (and should) disagree, but I've completely shifted over from Thinkpads to Dell XPS (or Precision) for my laptops.
- volkandkaya 2y agoGood choice, shocked that Dell haven't decided to create their own linux version or invest heavily into Ubuntu for software/hardware.
- totalhack 2y agoRunning a 2024 xps 13 with Ubuntu for work and it's been solid. Had a Lenovo before this which was great bang for the buck but occasional issues with heating up during sleep. Would consider trying a Framework next.
- whalesalad 2y agoasahi linux
- jeffbee 2y agoAnybody got a Speedometer 3.0 result from the M4 Max? It seems more relevant to "consumer computing".
- johnklos 2y agoIt has to be at least 50 times the speed of a fast m68030 ;)
- jeffbee 2y agoThere's a 20x spread in Speedometer results on OpenBenchmarking, just including modern Intel Core CPUs, so yeah I would not be surprised if an M4 outran a 68030 by anywhere from 50x to 1000x
- johnklos 2y agoI'm getting the impression that we're not talking about this Speedometer 3: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/speedometer-3x https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/speedometer-3x
- NightlyDev 2y ago[flagged]
- HumblyTossed 2y agoBoth of those chips cost more than an mac mini. 170W !!!!! The mac is, what, 20W?
- selectodude 2y agoAlso it's comparing the lowest end M4 out of an iPad with the highest end Intel and AMD CPUs. It's a ludicrous comparison.
- NightlyDev 2y agoThe CPUs aren't cheap, but they don't cost more than the Mac mini. The Mac mini will definitely draw more than 20W. TDP numbers can also not be compared between manufacturers at all. And last but not least, for a single core test, maximum power consumption is irrelevant.
- rsynnott 2y ago> The CPUs aren't cheap, but they don't cost more than the Mac mini. OEM price for the Intel one is $599, same cost as an M4 Mini. The AMD one is $649.
- _hyn3 2y agoThank you for that link, it's eye-opening!
- NavinF 2y agoReally? Comparing the slowest mobile M4 to the fastest desktop CPUs is eye opening? This thread is about the fastest M4
- bhouston 2y agoThis confuses me because I thought all of the Mx series chips in the same generation ran at the same speed and has the same single-core capabilities? The main thing that caused differential single-core CPU performance was just throttling under load for the devices that didn't have active cooling, such as the MacBook Air and iPad Pros. Based on this reasoning, the M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max in active cooled devices, the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, should have the same single-core performance ratings, no?
- jsheard 2y agoIt might be down to the memory latency, the base M4 uses LPDDR5X-7500 while the bigger models use LPDDR5X-8533. I think that split is new this generation, and the past gens used the same memory across the whole stack.
- bhouston 2y agoAh, interesting. I didn't catch that change.
- wmf 2y agoThe Pro and Max have more cache and more memory bandwidth. Apple also appears to be crippling the frequency by a percent or two so that the Max can be the top.
- mattlondon 2y agoFor how long? There are a lot of superlatives ("simply incredible" etc) - when some new AMD or Intel CPU beats this score, will that be "simply incredible" too? New chips are slightly faster than previous ones. I am not incredulous about this. Were it a 2x or 3x or 4x improvement or something, sure. But it ain't - it's incremental. I note how even in the Apple marketing they compare it to generations 3 or 4 chips ago (e.g. comparing increases against i7 performance from years ago etc, not against the M3 from a year or so ago because then it is "only" 12% - still good, but not "simply incredible" in my eyes).
- ssijak 2y agoWhy is so hard for people to understand why apple did that? They want the people who are still clinging to intel mac to convert finally. And as for m1 comparisons, people are not changing laptops every year and that is the cohort of m users that is the most likely to upgrade. It's smart to do what apple did.
- mattlondon 2y agoI get that argument, but it comes across as hugely disingenuous to me especially when couched with so much glitz and glamour and showmanship. They're aim is to present these things as huge quantum leaps in performance and it's only if you look into the details that it's clear that they're not and they're fudging the figures to make them look better than they are. "New Car 2025 has a simply incredible top speed 30x greater than previous forms of transport!* (* - previous form of transport slow walk at 4mph)" It's marketing bullshit really let's be honest. I don't accept that their highly-polished entire marketing spiel and song and dance is aimed 100% only at people who have 3 or 4 generation old Mac already. They're not spending all this time and money and effort just to try and get people to upgrade. If you believe that, then you are in the distortion field.
- philistine 2y agoYet you do not propose an alternative theory that makes sense. Our point: Apple is laser-focused on comparing with laptops that are 4-5 year old. That's usually when Mac users start thinking about upgrading. They're building their marketing for them. It causes issues when directly trying to compare with the last generation. Your point: Apple shouldn't be glamorous and a good showman when marketing their products because they know the only true marketing is comparing directly with your very last chip. Any other type of marketing is bullshit.
- crazymoka 2y agounfortunately I could only afford the M4 Pro model MBP lol
- daft_pink 2y agoCan’t wait for the Mac Studio/Pro to be released.
- silvestrov 2y agoSo what is the role of the Mac Studio now? It only has: - faster memory and up to 192 GB. - 1 ekstra Thunderbolt port. That is not much for such a large price difference: Mac Mini (fastest CPU, 64 GB ram, 1 TB SSD, 10 GbE): $2500 Mac Studio (fastest CPU, 64 GB ram, 1 TB SSD, 10 GbE): $5000
- 015a 2y agoThe GPU difference might be material. But it is obviously a bad time to invest in a Mac Studio.
- fckgw 2y agoThe Mac Studio hasn't been updated yet. The equation changes once it's also on the M4 Max and Ultra.
- eastbound 2y agoDoes it? What can it do better than M4 / 128GB…
- burnerthrow008 2y agoWell, judging by the M1 and M2, the M4 Ultra will support 256GB of memory, so there's that. And it will have 2x the GPU and 2x the CPU cores...
- geerlingguy 2y agoAnd the port assortment is overall nicer in terms of not requiring an External TB4 hub for production environments (I literally have something plugged into every port on my M1 Max Mac Studio, even on the front!)
- burnerthrow008 2y ago> Mac Mini (fastest CPU, 64 GB ram, 1 TB SSD, 10 GbE): $2500 > Mac Studio (fastest CPU, 64 GB ram, 1 TB SSD, 10 GbE): $5000 In those configurations, the Studio would have roughly 2x the GPU power of the Mini, with equivalent CPU power. It also has twice as many Thunderbolt ports (albeit TB4 instead of TB5), and can support more monitors.
- bee_rider 2y agoThis is almost certainly a dumb question, but has anybody tried using these for scientific computing/HPC type stuff? I mean no Infiniband of course, but how bad would a cluster of these guys using Thunderbolt 5 for networking be? 80Gbps is not terrible…
- wmf 2y agoPeople are using Thunderbolt clustering for AI inference. Historically Thunderbolt networking has been much slower than you'd expect so people didn't bother trying HPC.
- whalesalad 2y agoWild. It absolutely shits on my 13900K - https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7692643?baseline=8593555 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7692643?baselin...
- SushiHippie 2y agoSame, I have a Ryzen 9 7950X and it has 130-140% better performance (according to Geekbench) https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8593555?baseline=6126001 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8593555?baselin... Though a MacBook Pro 16" with M4 Max(that's what achieved this geekbench score), but the same amount of memory (64GB) and the same amount of storage (4TB) as my PC, would cost 6079€. That is roughly twice as much as my whole PC Build did cost, and I'm able to expand Storage and upgrade my CPU and GPU in the future (for way less than buying a new Mac in a few years)
- abhinavk 2y agoIf they release a Studio without increasing prices next year, these specs will cost you 4500€. That's more comparable to your build (sans the upgrade options of course).
- MBCook 2y agoApple’s upgraded are famously expensive, it’s how they get their giant margins. As an Apple enthusiast, yeah it sucks. Anyway, they made an Ultra version of the M1 and M2 that was even better than the Max versions by having significantly more cores. If they do that again (Mac Pro?) it will be one hell of a chip.
- rubslopes 2y agoI have a M1 MacBook Air that I use for Docker, VSCode, etc. And it still runs very smoothly. Interestingly, the only times it slows down is when opening Microsoft Excel.
- tacker2000 2y agoExcel performance on Mac is a disaster, and I dont understand why. Everytime I paste something it lags for 1-2 seconds… so infuriating!!
- Matheus28 2y agoDon’t worry, it’s bad on Windows too
- abhinavk 2y agoWhenever it's open, system animations are very janky.
- MBCook 2y agoIt was originally a Mac app before Microsoft bought it too, wasn’t it?
- seec 2y agoYou got it all wrong. It was developed for Macs first because Microsoft is in the business of selling software and Windows wasn't such a big thing back then, in fact it barely existed as Windows, it was mostly MS-DOS still. Microsoft definitely didn't buy something they created themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history
- MBCook 2y agoOh. I got the Mac part right but not who made it. It looks like I was conflating it with PowerPoint, which was Mac first and made by a 3rd party MS bought. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint
- QuiEgo 2y agoIt’s so refreshing after the normal “here’s today’s enshitification of this thing you used to love” threads to read threads like this.
- hulitu 2y ago> Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing Single taskink OSs are long gone. Single core performance is irrelevant in the world of multitasking/multithreading/ preemtible threads.
- timbit42 2y agoThere are lots of apps that only run in a single thread. If you want them to run fast, you need fast single-core performance.
- guhidalg 2y agoIf that were true, why isn't my GPU running my UI loop or running my JS event-loop? Single-core performance is still king for UI latency and CPU-bound tasks.
- wtallis 2y agoAmdahl's law has not actually been overturned.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y agoToo bad it's still sluggish for latest tech game dev with engines like UE :( It'd be great to ditch the Windows ecosystem, at least at dev time.
- miohtama 2y agoGame performance is often GPU bound, not CPU bound.
- jrockway 2y agoIt depends on the game. If there are a lot of game simulation calculations to do for every frame, then you're going to be CPU constrained. If it's a storybook that you're walking through and every pixel is raytraced using tons of 8000x8000 texture maps, then it's going to be GPU constrained. Most games are combinations of the two, and so some people are going to be CPU limited and some people are going to be GPU limited. For games I play, I'm often CPU limited; I can set the graphics to low at 1280 x 720, or ultra at 3840 x 2160 and get the same FPS. That's CPU limiting.
- rbanffy 2y ago> If there are a lot of game simulation calculations Why not move at least some of that into the GPU as well? Lots of different branchy code paths for the in-game objects?
- TinkersW 2y agoLatency of communication with GPU is too large, and GPUs suck at things CPUs are good at.
- rbanffy 2y agoWouldn’t the latency be because of no shared memory and game context data having to go over the PCIe bus? GPUs suck at branchy code, but is that the case with this simulation data? I can see why it’d suck for NPC simulation, but not physics.
- ggernov 2y agoCan't wait to see if / when they release the m4 ultra.
- rbanffy 2y agoI bet the Studio and the Pro will have that option. I'm hoping the Pro has more versatile PCIe slots as well.
- gigel82 2y agoWas this verified independently? Because people can submit all sorts of results for Geekbench scores. Look at all these top scorers (most of which are obviously fake or overclocked chips): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore
- dwayne_dibley 2y agoHow impressed should I be. In terms of Apples history of manufacturing chips compared to, say, intel. This is their 4th generation of the M chip and it seems to be so far ahead of intel, a company with significant bigger history of chip production.
- quink 2y agoThey were in the PowerPC consortium starting in 1991, co-developed ARM6 starting in the late 80s and the M series chips are part of the Apple Silicon family that goes back to at least 2010's Apple A4 (with non-Apple branded chips before then). They've been in the chip designing business for a while.
- comboy 2y ago> back to at least 2010's Apple A4 basically Jim Keller happened, I think they are still riding on that architecture
- starspangled 2y agoActually difficult to know if it was Keller. Apple bought PA Semi which is where he came from. But he came on as a VP after it was founded by other engineers who had worked on the Alpha chips a year before that. Did he make the difference? Who knows. What does seem to be constant is that the best CPU designs have been touched by the hands of people who can trace their roots to North Eastern US. Maybe the correlation doesn't exist and the industry is small and incestuous enough that most designs are worked on by people from everywhere, but sometimes it seems like some group at DEC or Multiflow stumbled on the holy grail of CPU design and all took a drink from the cup.
- amarshall 2y agoIt’s not quite a fair comparison, given Intel has their own fab, while Apple uses TSMC—and pays them a lot to get exclusive access to new nodes before anyone else.
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- SamAsEnd 2y agoAm I missing something? I don't know where this informations came from, but you can check out GeekBench v6 single-core benchmarks here. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore
- dialup_sounds 2y agoSomething is fishy when the top two claim to be Android phones running Ryzen chips, and the third is allegedly a 13GHz Core i3.
- alpaca128 2y agoFollowed by an i9 with 5 cores and a multicore benchmark score of zero.
- solardev 2y agoProbably crashed before it could complete the test.
- solardev 2y agoGosh, back in my day, we were lucky to squeeze out a few extra MHz. The overclockers today must be really skilled.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 2y agoThis is a short and fascinating peek into that world: https://youtu.be/qr26jxPIDm0 https://youtu.be/qr26jxPIDm0
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- tester756 2y ago"Do not trust any benchmarks you did not fake yourself"
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- linotype 2y agoIntel should be utterly embarrassed.
- jchw 2y agoWell, firstly, it isn't. There are higher Geekbench 6 CPU scores, even forgetting the ones that appear to be fake or at least broken. But secondly, that would absolutely not indicate that it is the "fastest single-core performer in consumer computing". That would indicate that it is the highest scoring Geekbench 6 CPU in consumer computing. Whether or not that's actually a good proxy for the former statement is up to taste, but in my opinion it's not. It gives you a rough idea of where the performance stands, but what you really need to be able to compare CPUs is a healthy mix of synthetic benchmarks and real-world workloads. Things like the time it takes to compile some software, scores in video game benchmarks, running different kinds of computations, time to render videos in Premiere or scenes in Blender, etc. In practice though, it's hard to make a good Apples-to-Intels performance comparison, since it will wind up crossing both OS boundaries and CPU architecture boundaries, which adds a lot of variables. At least real world tests will give an idea of what it would be like day-to-day even if it doesn't necessarily reveal truisms about which CPU is the absolute best design. Of course it's reasonable to use Geekbench numbers to get an idea of where a processor stands, especially relative to similar processors, but making a strong claim like this based off of Geekbench numbers is pretty silly, all things considered. Still... these results are truly quite excellent. It would suffice to say that if you did take the time to benchmark these processors you would find the M4 processor performs extremely well against other processors, including ones that suck up more juice for sure, but this isn't too surprising overall. Apple is already on the TSMC N3E process, whereas AMD is currently using TSMC N4P and Intel is currently using TSMC N3B on their most cutting edge chips. So on top of any advantages they might have for other reasons (like jamming the RAM onto the CPU die, or simply better processor design) they also have a process node advantage.
- GeekyBear 2y agoSPEC has been the industry standard benchmark for comparing the performance of systems using different instruction sets for decades now. Traditionally, Anandtech would have been the first media outlet to publish the single core and multicore integer and floating point SPEC test results for a new architecture, but hopefully some trusted outlet will take up the burden. For instance, Anandtech's Zen 5 laptop SKU results vs the M3 from the end of July: > Even Apple's M3 SoC gets edged out here in terms of floating point performance, which, given that Apple is on a newer process node (TSMC N3B), is no small feat. Still, there is a sizable deficit in integer performance versus the M3, so while AMD has narrowed the gap with Apple overall, they haven't closed it with the Ryzan AI 300 series. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370... Zen 5 beat Core Ultra, but given that Zen 5 only edged out the M3 in floating point workloads, I wouldn't be so quick to claim the M4 doesn't outperform Zen 5 single core scores before the test results come out.
- Rapzid 2y agoThe perf and power use is nice but I don't need the dual architecture stuff in my professional life. Been extremely happy with Windows and WSL last couple years, so happy to be a node or two behind on AMD laptops. Otherwise I use a workstation primarily anyway.
- haccount 2y agoAnd priced as the rest of them together.
- DeathArrow 2y agoI don't trust Geekbench.
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- rldjbpin 2y agobesides the usual caveat of unreleased hardware leak, relying on geekbench as a metric for performance is as useful as userbenchmark. semantics rant: on another note, where is the line between "consumer" and "prosumer"/"enthusiast" hardware in terms of pricing? over 3000 usd before taxes seems well in the latter camp in my books. on other hand, most enterprise hardware is not optimized for single-core performance. even to my knowledge, the configurations for algo-trading machines are comparable to consumer hardware, if not slower.
- necovek 2y agoObviously, it's not all about the power: I see a lot of comments here about heat, fans and comfort. And everyone is comparing against old Intel Macs, but if that's what you cared about, the benchmark must have been the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. And Macs still can't match that with their crappy keyboards, case strength and ergonomics (no sharp edges), spill-protection and non-glossy screens (remember, these are laptops to be used out and about — though I've only used M1/M2 Airs, M1 Max Pro 14 and M2 Pros 13/14, so maybe the newer ones are better). X1 Carbons have mostly moved to higher performing Intel chips, and thus lost those silent & cool characteristics, but other than the obvious (performance vs comfort), they are still my preferred choice in laptops.