MacBook Air with M1 chip outperforms 16-inch MacBook Pro in benchmark testing

24

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 78
    I’m personally most concerned about soldered SSD’s. They only last 5 years or so and that renders the computer useless, whereas I would like to be able to replace it.
    williamlondon9secondkox2
  • Reply 22 of 78
    XedXed Posts: 2,850member
    I’m personally most concerned about soldered SSD’s. They only last 5 years or so and that renders the computer useless, whereas I would like to be able to replace it.
    Where did you get 5 years?
    chiawilliamlondonaderuttercornchipwatto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 78
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,453member
    cloudguy said:
    All right. I will eat crow. I have long claimed that there was no way that Apple Silicon would match the Core i7 at launch and would probably be in line with the Core i3 or at best Core i5. I was wrong. I shall go sit in the corner with my dunce cap on now. 

    But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

    Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously. Apple only reached this performance with an octacore chip that was specifically designed for use in personal computers - not mobile devices - that requires more cores, more power and dissipate more heat. We have always known that this was possible, as modern (meaning a ARM Holdings design base and not the Sun Sparc and other early RISC servers that go back to the 1980s) Linux-based ARM workstations and servers have existed since at least 2011 (the year after the A4 was released). Ubuntu has had official ARM releases since 2012, and HP - the venerable Wintel manufacturer - has been selling them to data centers since 2014. 

    So I was absolutely right about Apple not being able to build a MacBook Pro or iMac with a 6 core chip that had 128kb/8MB caches (the M1 is octacore with 192kb/12MB caches). As lots of people on this site and elsewhere were indeed claiming that the 4 and 6 core low power/low heat iPhone chips could absolutely be put in a MacBook Pro and work as good or better ... yeah those people were as wrong as I was and even more so. 

    Now in the corner of shame I go, sucking my thumb in the process. But you folks who claimed that this would have been possible with the iPhone chips need to go to corners of their own.
    FFS,

    Apple explicitly stated that they would build a series of SoC's specifically for the Mac, over a period of two years. That fact that jokers like you wouldn't acknowledge that doesn't get you off the hook.

    You were just plain wrong, GasBagGuy...
    edited November 2020 DuhSesameanonconformistargonautRenderdogwilliamlondonaderutterchiarandominternetpersonpscooter63techconc
  • Reply 24 of 78
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    a hawkins said:
    People are arguing about number, technical, history, etc would miss the most important point: Apple just make it works.
    Most users don't care wether it uses ARMs, Intel, AMD, that architecture, this technology, etc. They care only that they can actually use it.
    It does not matter that Apple made any technological advancement or anything. If people can buy it at reasonable price and use in everyday life. It's the end of story. The rest are just nerd chat.

    I have 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro and 2018 iMac for work use.
    I also just built a custom PC with Core i7 Gen10, 64GB 3200 RAM, NVMe Drive, and a 3080.
    That PC blue screened me twice in a month - unrecoverable and need to reformat drive. I've never seen my Mac crash at that level in my 10 years in this platform.

    If I can play a game at 4K 144Hz in my iMac I would not even bother touch a PC again. I bought that because Apple cannot do that. I don't care if I have integrated Intel graphic or Apple Silicon or nVidia 9090 or whatever inside that I would not even see it.
    Except we’re talking about the processor, which is about numbers and speed.
    tmaywatto_cobra
  • Reply 25 of 78
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    tmay said:
    cloudguy said:
    All right. I will eat crow. I have long claimed that there was no way that Apple Silicon would match the Core i7 at launch and would probably be in line with the Core i3 or at best Core i5. I was wrong. I shall go sit in the corner with my dunce cap on now. 

    But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

    Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously. Apple only reached this performance with an octacore chip that was specifically designed for use in personal computers - not mobile devices - that requires more cores, more power and dissipate more heat. We have always known that this was possible, as modern (meaning a ARM Holdings design base and not the Sun Sparc and other early RISC servers that go back to the 1980s) Linux-based ARM workstations and servers have existed since at least 2011 (the year after the A4 was released). Ubuntu has had official ARM releases since 2012, and HP - the venerable Wintel manufacturer - has been selling them to data centers since 2014. 

    So I was absolutely right about Apple not being able to build a MacBook Pro or iMac with a 6 core chip that had 128kb/8MB caches (the M1 is octacore with 192kb/12MB caches). As lots of people on this site and elsewhere were indeed claiming that the 4 and 6 core low power/low heat iPhone chips could absolutely be put in a MacBook Pro and work as good or better ... yeah those people were as wrong as I was and even more so. 

    Now in the corner of shame I go, sucking my thumb in the process. But you folks who claimed that this would have been possible with the iPhone chips need to go to corners of their own.
    FFS,

    Apple explicitly stated that they would build a series of SoC's specifically for the Mac, over a period of two years. That fact that jokers like you wouldn't acknowledge that doesn't get you off the hook.

    You were just plain wrong, GasBagGuy...
    Some people just never learn.
    tmaywilliamlondonchialkruppwatto_cobrarazorpit
  • Reply 26 of 78
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Check out the Geekbench browser for MacMini9,1 & MacBookPro17,1 or just search Apple Silicon.

    I’m liking the iGPU compute scores too, on a par with Radeon Pro 560m, last gen dGPU.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 27 of 78
    Sorry if the quote thing below was messed up. Anyway.. I don’t know if people he thought that, but I always assumed these chips would be custom built for their computer line. I always used the iPad Pro as an example- it’s pretty powerful especially for video editing. The 2017 iPad Pro is able to edit 4K footage with no problem while my old 2011 iMac couldn’t even try. For the longest time, that’s how I did all my editing (on LumaFusion). 

    Anyway. Wait until the M1X comes out next year. And yeah that’s my guess on what it’ll be called.  

    cloudguy said:
    But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

    Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously.

    Now in the corner of shame I go, sucking my thumb in the process. But you folks who claimed that this would have been possible with the iPhone chips need to go to corners of their own.

    watto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 78
    Again.. sorry about the quote thingy. 

    If Apple didn’t think they could make better, ground breaking devices with Apple Silicon. Then they shouldn’t have switched. 

    But these are baseline. They aren’t even high end devices yet. That’s coming in the next few years.



    cloudguy said:
    joguide said:
    kpom said:
     DuhSesame said:
    I wonder how much difference we’ll see for the Air vs. the Pro.

    I assume it’s just the long-term performance.
    I agree, but this is still very impressive. Something like Cinebench will be better for judging the difference in sustained CPU tasks. 
    This is an industry changing moment.  Base MBA with no fan, just crushed the laptop world as we knew it. 
    Huh? Samsung released a $999 fanless Chromebook with an Intel i5 CPU (in Linux mode a great development and otherwise productivity device, and oh yeah is quite good for Linux apps and PWAs too), 2-in-1 design, AMOLED 13' 4K touchscreen with built-in stylus way back in April. The Google Pixelbook is a fanless device with configurations that include an Intel i7 CPU,13' 4K screen and a 16 GB of RAM that was released way back in 2018. (The Pixelbook 2 was delayed to 2021 so that it will have Whitechapel - the SOC jointly designed by Google and Samsung and manufactured by Samsung for smartphones and Chromebooks - instead of a 10th gen Intel CPU in it.) Who cares about ChromeOS? You should as it surpassed macOS in market share this year - and it surpassed MacBooks in market share years ago - and as these devices are going to start featuring much better AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs starting in 2021 due to Google and its various OEMs promoting them as development and productivity devices, it is going to increase. Google in particular is already positioning Chromebooks to replace MacBooks that will no longer be able to virtualize Windows among enterprise companies and has already attracted their first (small) batch of buyers.

    But as for right now, there are already plenty of fanless Windows 10 - and I mean real Windows, not Windows on ARM that tries and fails to emulate x86! - laptops out there. Consider the Acer Switch 7: 16 GB of RAM and Intel i7 processor. There are also a couple of Dell XPS fanless laptops and a couple of Asus ones in addition to more Acer ones.

    Get this: folks are kicking around the idea that the new Intel Tiger Lake CPUs with integrated Iris XE graphics will allow fanless gaming laptops to become a thing (because Tiger Lake is Intel's low heat/low power design and Iris XE GPU - which is integrated in all Tiger Lake Core i5 and higher chips - is supposed to provide gaming performance on the caliber of the Nvidia MX350).

    So seriously, you guys need to pay attention to the wider tech world more. If you are thinking that Apple Silicon is going to result in these magical devices that the rest of the tech world can't comprehend let alone compete with that is going to result in Apple quadrupling or more its market share and influence, prepare to be sadly mistaken. The tech media might not know this - as Apple devices are all that they use and as a result truly cover - but actual consumers do. 

    watto_cobra
  • Reply 29 of 78
    I’m personally most concerned about soldered SSD’s. They only last 5 years or so and that renders the computer useless, whereas I would like to be able to replace it.
    Well, someone probably forgot to tell to my MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012 that his SSD is 3 years over due...
    williamlondontmayaderutterchiajeffharristhtcornchipwatto_cobraroundaboutnowrundhvid
  • Reply 30 of 78
    riverko said:
    I’m personally most concerned about soldered SSD’s. They only last 5 years or so and that renders the computer useless, whereas I would like to be able to replace it.
    Well, someone probably forgot to tell to my MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012 that his SSD is 3 years over due...
    This is not Blade Runner where there’s a fixed lifespan engineered.
    tmaywilliamlondonrandominternetpersontht
  • Reply 31 of 78
    Are there any tests on the GPU speed already? I saw it’s 2.6 teraflops and that suggests sitting right below the 5300M Pro which is a very modest speed, however that doesn’t always translate to real world power. It could be that this GPU outperforms others in specific tasks or the other way around.
  • Reply 32 of 78
    I frequently run compute intensive workloads, each one different, and often written in a high level language like Python for expediency as these are typically write once, run once apps, many running overnight or over a couple of days. 

    I run these on multi-core cloud instances and sometimes on my MBP (1.5 year old). 

    Recently I started running these on my iPad Pro and to my surprise the exact same code on the iPad Pro runs about 1.3 times faster. The battery drain goes up somewhat (partly because Pythonista prevents the display from sleeping) but the iPad remains cool to the touch. 

    I for one am looking forward to these ARM-based Macs. Now if someone would write about how effective the new Rosetta is...
    williamlondonchiawatto_cobraMplsP
  • Reply 33 of 78
    If the M2 in the yet to be announced high end MBP and low end iMacs have 4 efficiency and 8 power cores that would be double the power cores of the M1, so a significant jump up. (Yes the GPU will need a boost too).

    I am now even more tempted by the M1 Macs, but the low 16GB RAM and smaller screen size make me pause... Incredible new Macs for lower end users though.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 34 of 78
    Oh, and the SSD in my 2013 15” MBP is running perectly fine on a daily basis. 
    williamlondonjeffharriswatto_cobra
  • Reply 35 of 78
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    I’m personally most concerned about soldered SSD’s. They only last 5 years or so and that renders the computer useless, whereas I would like to be able to replace it.
    5 years? Really? Where did you get that from? I have a late 2013 iMac with a 1TB Fusion drive. DriveDx (a respected disk health monitor app) reports the 128GB SSD portion of the Fusion drive is 100% good and has 67% of its life left. So after 7 years all is well and predicted to function well for more years still.

    So, really, where did you come up with this bullshit number?
    williamlondonmike1pscooter63watto_cobra
  • Reply 36 of 78
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    big_fan said:
    Again.. sorry about the quote thingy. 

    If Apple didn’t think they could make better, ground breaking devices with Apple Silicon. Then they shouldn’t have switched. 

    But these are baseline. They aren’t even high end devices yet. That’s coming in the next few years.



    cloudguy said:
    joguide said:
    kpom said:
     DuhSesame said:
    I wonder how much difference we’ll see for the Air vs. the Pro.

    I assume it’s just the long-term performance.
    I agree, but this is still very impressive. Something like Cinebench will be better for judging the difference in sustained CPU tasks. 
    This is an industry changing moment.  Base MBA with no fan, just crushed the laptop world as we knew it. 
    Huh? Samsung released a $999 fanless Chromebook with an Intel i5 CPU (in Linux mode a great development and otherwise productivity device, and oh yeah is quite good for Linux apps and PWAs too), 2-in-1 design, AMOLED 13' 4K touchscreen with built-in stylus way back in April. The Google Pixelbook is a fanless device with configurations that include an Intel i7 CPU,13' 4K screen and a 16 GB of RAM that was released way back in 2018. (The Pixelbook 2 was delayed to 2021 so that it will have Whitechapel - the SOC jointly designed by Google and Samsung and manufactured by Samsung for smartphones and Chromebooks - instead of a 10th gen Intel CPU in it.) Who cares about ChromeOS? You should as it surpassed macOS in market share this year - and it surpassed MacBooks in market share years ago - and as these devices are going to start featuring much better AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs starting in 2021 due to Google and its various OEMs promoting them as development and productivity devices, it is going to increase. Google in particular is already positioning Chromebooks to replace MacBooks that will no longer be able to virtualize Windows among enterprise companies and has already attracted their first (small) batch of buyers.

    But as for right now, there are already plenty of fanless Windows 10 - and I mean real Windows, not Windows on ARM that tries and fails to emulate x86! - laptops out there. Consider the Acer Switch 7: 16 GB of RAM and Intel i7 processor. There are also a couple of Dell XPS fanless laptops and a couple of Asus ones in addition to more Acer ones.

    Get this: folks are kicking around the idea that the new Intel Tiger Lake CPUs with integrated Iris XE graphics will allow fanless gaming laptops to become a thing (because Tiger Lake is Intel's low heat/low power design and Iris XE GPU - which is integrated in all Tiger Lake Core i5 and higher chips - is supposed to provide gaming performance on the caliber of the Nvidia MX350).

    So seriously, you guys need to pay attention to the wider tech world more. If you are thinking that Apple Silicon is going to result in these magical devices that the rest of the tech world can't comprehend let alone compete with that is going to result in Apple quadrupling or more its market share and influence, prepare to be sadly mistaken. The tech media might not know this - as Apple devices are all that they use and as a result truly cover - but actual consumers do. 

    We’re sorry. Did the M1 trigger you? It looks like it has triggered more than few trolls living under the AppleInsider bridge.  
    williamlondonmike1ricmaccornchipwatto_cobra
  • Reply 37 of 78
    This all sounds extremely promising! Exciting times ahead!

    I guess now it’s watch and wait for developers to produce versions of their software that runs on Apple Silicon.
    It looks like I may be hanging onto my 2019 i9 MacBook Pro for awhile.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 38 of 78
    My guess is that the MacBook Pro 16” and the iMac that are likely up next for a transition to ARM, are probably not going to be much faster CPU wise, but probably mostly differentiate in GPU specs.
    Perhaps we’ll see a 2X difference there in GPU speed, with perhaps only a CPU of 12 cores vs 8 or so.
    More PCIe lanes/IO. More CPU cores perhaps clocked a little higher. More GPU cores. Seems pretty obvious that some of these are going to happen. More PCIe lanes is almost a given. I can’t imagine Apple shipping a 16” with less than 4 TB3/USB4 ports. 
    CheeseFreezewatto_cobra
  • Reply 39 of 78
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,838member
    That is mighty impressive. Looking forward to what the M1 Macbook Pro can do and especially the desktops.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 40 of 78
    cloudguy said:
    But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

    Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously. Apple only reached this performance with an octacore chip that was specifically designed for use in personal computers...
    Well duh. And I think you just setup a straw man so you could knock it down. A lot of people--including myself--were wondering what Apple could do if they designed a chip specifically for a notebook or for a desktop. The fact that they put the A12z into the development Mac minis simply showed that they could use the same chip from a tablet, not that they would.

    And you might have also noticed that Apple's SINGLE core speed pretty much blows everything away as well. 
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
Sign In or Register to comment.