5 ms·

Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

• thot_experiment 7mo ago
  "When you measure, include the measurer" - MC Hammer
  • Finnucane 7mo ago
    When you are MC Hammer, everything is an MC nail.
• phoronixrly 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • JoshTriplett 7mo ago
    Phoronix is terrible in terms of clickbait and deliberate ragebait, and its comment section is a toxic cesspool, but its benchmarks generally seem sound. What issues have you observed with their benchmark suite?
    • wtallis 7mo ago
      Given the username of the account you're replying to, and the implausibility of a Phoronix reader being unaware of Tom's Hardware, I think you may have been baited by a troll.
      • phoronixrly 7mo ago
        I just didn't know their methodology was worse than Phoronix'.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo ago
      What clickbait and ragebait? Example?
      • phoronixrly 7mo ago
        Off the top of my head -- any systemd-related article.
      • JoshTriplett 7mo ago
        Some examples: > sudo-rs Breaks Historical Norms With Now Enabling Password Feedback By Default "Let's tell you exactly how to feel about this, commenters" > Linux 7.0 Officially Concluding The Rust Experiment "...by declaring it successful, but if we said that in the headline it wouldn't be clickbait" (In fairness, LWN did this too, but by accident rather than to provoke clicks.) > GNOME Mutter Now "Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend" > systemd 260 Dropping System V Service Script Support "And has dozens of other features and improvements, but let's cherry-pick the one we want you to yell about in our comments section." > The Linux Kernel Looks To 'Bite The Bullet' In Enabling Microsoft C Extensions "Oh no, look at the poor kernel developers reluctantly dealing with Microsoft extensions...that they deliberately sought out and used because they prefer them over standard C, not being forced by any external factor." They know their comments section, they know what gets them posting, and they optimize for provoking comment.
    • phoronixrly 7mo ago
      Where the definition of 'benchmarks' is actually slapping an OS, then proceeding to run the so called Phoronix Test Suite promptly followed by an apples to oranges comparison... My favourites were the comparisons of FreeBSD and Linux coming to the conclusion that FreeBSD is slower. Until you look under the hood and see that both are tested in a configuration with a desktop environment. Or the good old ZFS tests that were coming up with nonsensical results because of gross misconfiguration and/or total lack of understanding how the FS works... But hey, the click/ragebait is on point in both these cases!
• SOTGO 7mo ago
  Anyone who treats Geekbench as a meaningful benchmark (i.e. not without a huge disclaimer or with other more meaningful datapoints) is not to be trusted. You can only really trust it for inter-generational comparisons within a single architecture.
  • skavi 7mo ago
    Since Geekbench 5, the single threaded benchmark scores have aligned pretty well with those from the industry standard SPEC benchmark.
  • osti 7mo ago
    Not true. Geekbench, especially single threaded benchmark, is probably the best we got, it has a bunch of workloads, unlike many other benchmarks like cinebench for example. And they publish all the results on their website, so you can dig into each individual workload and find the ones that apply to you. And like the other poster mentioned, it correlates well with SPEC, so it's basically a easily accessible SPEC. These days the only benchmark I use to quickly judge some CPU is geekbench.
    • dkechag 7mo ago
      May I suggest the one I use (I wrote it), which also correlates well with SPEC & Geekbench 5, but also runs the benchmarks on all cores if you want to so you get both max single-thread and max multi-thread: https://github.com/dkechag/dkbench-docker https://github.com/dkechag/dkbench-docker . You basically run 'docker run -it --rm dkechag/dkbench'.
      • osti 7mo ago
        I took a look, it's not bad but it seems to contain too many micro benchmarks like regex or primes. Geekbench at least has clang which is a subscore that I always look at.
        • dkechag 7mo ago
          The primes one is my least favourite one indeed, I left it in just because I happened to include it in the very first version and I am thinking it just counts for 5% in the end... The regex ones are "micro" yet quite important, dkbench it's a Perl (and C)-based benchmark (reflects our main code), and the regex engine is the most highly optimized part of the language so regex speed is a good representation of text processing speed in Perl. As I said, the overall score correlates well to SPEC/Geekbench so as a suite it works well. For compiler comparisons I usually compile a language like python or perl as a test, but I did not want to add something like that, to keep it fast with many smaller benchmarks.
• Aurornis 7mo ago
  GeekBench probably made the right choice to optimize for more realistic real-world workloads than for the more specific workloads that benefit from really high core counts. GeekBench is supposed to be a proxy for common use case performance. High core count CPUs are only useful for specific workloads and should not be purchased as general purpose fast CPUs. Unless you’re doing specific tasks that scale by core count, a CPU with fewer cores and higher single threaded throughput would be faster for normal use cases. The callout against the poor journalism at Tom’s Hardware isn’t something new. They have a couple staff members posting clickbait all the time. Some times the links don’t even work or they have completely wrong claims. This is par for the site now. To be fair, the Tom’s Hardware article did call out these points and the limitations in the article, so this SlashDot critique is basically repeating the content of the Tom’s Hardware article but more critically https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/apples-18-core-m5-max-destroys-96-core-ryzen-threadripper-pro-9995wx-in-geekbench-gpu-performance-is-much-less-impressive https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/apples-18-co...
  • refulgentis 7mo ago
    I think this actually concedes the main criticism. If Geekbench 6 multicore is primarily a proxy for “common use case performance” rather than for workloads that actually use lots of cores, then it shouldn’t be treated as a general multicore CPU benchmark, and it definitely shouldn’t be the basis for sweeping 18-core vs 96-core conclusions. That may be a perfectly valid design choice. But then the honest takeaway is: GB6 multicore measures a particular class of lightly/moderately threaded shared-task workloads, not broad multicore capability. The criticism isn’t “every workload should scale linearly to 96 cores.” It’s that a benchmark labeled “multicore” is being used as if it were a general multicore proxy when some of its workloads stop scaling very early, including ones that sound naturally parallelizable.
    • wtallis 7mo ago
      Geekbench 6 isn't really marketed as a one-size-fits-all benchmark. It's specifically aimed at consumer hardware. The first paragraph on geekbench.com reads: > Geekbench 6 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your system's performance with the press of a button. How will your mobile device or desktop computer perform when push comes to crunch? How will it compare to the newest devices on the market? Find out today with Geekbench 6. And further down, > Includes updated CPU workloads and new Compute workloads that model real-world tasks and applications. Geekbench is a benchmark that reflects what actual users face on their mobile devices and personal computers.
• wtallis 7mo ago
  You're seriously posting to HN a link to your Slashdot post linking to your year-old blog post complaining about Geekbench 6's multi-threaded test without ever mentioning Amdahl's Law? Pretending that everything a CPU does is an embarrassingly parallel problem is heinous benchmarking malpractice. Yes, Geekbench 6 has its flaws, and limitations. All benchmarks do. Geekbench 6 has valid uses, and its limitations are defensible in the context of using it to measure what it is intended to measure. The scalability limitations it illustrates are real problems that affect real workloads and use cases. Calling it "broken" because it doesn't produce the kind of scores a marketing department would want to see from a 96-core CPU reflects more poorly on you than it does on Geekbench 6.
  • refulgentis 7mo ago
    Amdahl’s Law is descriptive, not exculpatory. It explains why a workload with a large serial/contended fraction won’t scale. It does not prove that the workload’s serial fraction is representative of the category it claims to stand in for. So when a benchmark’s “text processing” test over ~190 files barely gets past ~1.3x on 8 cores, that’s not some profound demonstration that CPUs can’t parallelize text work. It’s mostly a demonstration that this benchmark’s implementation has a very large serial bottleneck. That would be fine if people treated GB6 multicore as a narrow benchmark of specific shared-task client workloads. The problem is that it is labelled as a general multicore CPU metric, and is used as such, including for 18-core vs 96-core comparisons. That’s the misuse being criticized. TL;DR: Amdahl’s Law explains the ceiling; it does not justify treating an avoidably low ceiling as a general measure of multicore CPU capability. EDIT: Also, submitter, I'm not sure why parent is upset that you submitted. Thanks for sharing. I've been wondering for years why GeekBench was obviously broken on multicore. (comes up a lot in Apple discussions, as you know)
  • ThrowawayR2 7mo ago
    Possibly the underlying reason for the indirection is because that particular domain is banned on HN; check https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dev.to with showdead turned on.
    • 7mo ago
• grg0 7mo ago
  The real meat from the article: https://dev.to/dkechag/how-geekbench-6-multicore-is-broken-by-design-44ig https://dev.to/dkechag/how-geekbench-6-multicore-is-broken-b... First plot really says it all.
  • wtallis 7mo ago
    Compare to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/AmdahlsLaw.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/AmdahlsL...
    • wmf 7mo ago
      The article is probably right about text processing though. It sounds like they took an inherently parallel task with no communication and (accidentally?) crippled it.
      • wtallis 7mo ago
        I'm not sure what's going on with that subtest, and the lack of scaling is certainly egregious. But we've all encountered tasks that in theory could scale much better but in practice have been implemented in a more or less serial fashion. That kind of thing probably isn't a good choice for a multi-core test suite, but on the other hand: given that Geekbench has both multi-core and single-core scores for the same subtests (though with different problem sizes), it would be unrealistic if all the subtests were highly scalable. Encountering bad scalability is a frequent, everyday part of using computers.
• ddtaylor 7mo ago
  The strategy is to make outlandish claims and then have people "engaging" to "disprove" all of the claims. This strategy works as long as people are too apathetic and/or stupid to hold liars accountable. It works currently because journalism has significantly less value than tabloid drama to many people, some of which are just narrative shopping for a fun curated list of ideas (not facts) that fit their personalized echo chamber.
• doener 7mo ago
  TIL: Slashdot still exists. And it looks exactly as horrible as 20 years ago.
  • Razengan 7mo ago
    I mean so does HN
    • glimshe 7mo ago
      HN is minimalist, not horrible. And the content is good!
      • leptons 7mo ago
        Well this particular comment thread isn't "good". If you think so, then maybe you should try reddit.
      • Razengan 7mo ago
        All that VC money couldn't buy an accessibility expert apparently
• eointierney 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• eointierney 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• pengaru 7mo ago
  people already "destroy" the many-core threadrippers with gaming-oriented ryzens on appropriately suited workloads, this is clickbait
• yieldcrv 7mo ago
  I'm really confused by the self-aggrandizing here, muddying up the discussion how good is the M5 Max in comparison to a 96-core threadripper? what's the tl;dr, where are the broader assortments of benchmarks I just want to see some bargraphs that say "lower is better" or "higher is better"
  • wmf 7mo ago
    Since M5 Max hasn't been released yet there's only one leaked benchmark so far which is Geekbench and everybody is (over)analyzing that score. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/apples-18-core-m5-max-destroys-96-core-ryzen-threadripper-pro-9995wx-in-geekbench-gpu-performance-is-much-less-impressive https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/apples-18-co...
• Fnoord 7mo ago
  Claim: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper? Fact: Geekbench on Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroys” Geekbench on a 96-Core Threadripper.