KITA

debonbon said:

Slow news day,

There are plenty of more interesting things to report on at Computex than this.

For example, AMD's new mobile chips (Strix Point) shipping July 2024:

Just so everyone is aware, if NUVIA's performance claims are true (keep in mind the big "if"), then Qualcomm will be ahead of the M1 and more likely in a position to compete with an M2 series chip:



Given the reputation of the engineers behind NUVIA and the fact that Qualcomm paid a relatively significant sum for them to fill this exact need, it does give their claim some merit. So don't be surprised if it does end up competing with Apple's late 2022 / early 2023 offerings.

Once again though, we still have yet to see an actual product, so take this with a grain of salt until we do.

danox said:

Apple Xed said:

I look forward to 3rd-party battery test comparisons between the new Surface and MBA. In my experience, Apple's battery life claims are more accurate, but maybe MS is on the up and up here.

When the third parties get their hands on the Qualcomm device they will find that the numbers have been massaged by Qualcomm one thing that is telling is the wattage used by the Elite SOC when compared to Apples SOC, the Elite is using nearly four times more watts 80 than both M3 and the new M4 which are beasts when it comes to speed/power and low wattage. 80 watts only looks good when compared to Intel or AMD laptops.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M4-SoC-analysis-AMD-Intel-and-Qualcomm-currently-don-t-stand-a-chance.839332.0.html Apple is even using fewer cores less memory and no fan and that is just the M4 in a iPad Pro what happens when the better Apple M4 SOC'S are in a laptop?

Notice the 23 comments in the link most are crying.....  

The 80 W is not for all configurations. It just has the potential for that.

The 23 W version is what's in most devices.

From Anandtech (Oct. 2023)

"Thin and Light" version has a 23W TDP:

Aside from the absolutely wild AI + hardware features that Google just showed off (years ahead of Apple here), this is big:

An early review is quite positive for both the Surface Laptop and the latest version of Windows on Arm:

https://signal65.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NewSurfaceLaptop2024_Signal65LabInsights.pdf

It's best to read it, but here are a few highlights:

Scores shown for the M3 MacBook Air 15" relative to that of the Surface Laptop 15" (Surface Laptop = 1.00x)

CPU Single Thread: 1.15x~1.17x
CPU Multi Thread: 0.70x~0.85x
NPU Performance: 0.52x
GPU Performance: 1.29x~1.31x
Battery Life: 0.84x

"The Surface division has always seen its primary competition as the Mac, and the new Surface Laptop and the new Surface Pro tablet absolutely position the Windows ecosystem stiffly against the MacBook line. Microsoft knew that the Snapdragon X Elite and its Arm-based architecture was a pivotal part of its strategy against the Mac, both with high performance Oryon cores and an innovative NPU AI accelerator built in. The M3 is still a great chip, but the new Surface Laptop offers an amazing build quality and physical design, innovative new AI experiences that Mac hasn’t started to compete with yet, and does it all for $200 less than an equivalent MacBook Air.

Microsoft and the Surface group have created the most impressive new laptop to hit the PC market in a long time. The new Surface Laptop is managing to combine a new processor architecture, an updated emulation layer for Windows on Arm, the new highest performance PC processor for this class of laptop, an OS paradigm shift to AI, and one of the best physical keyboard and trackpad designs into a single package. It manages to be both unique and innovative but also familiar and comfortable for the modern consumer."

StrangeDays said:

KITA said:

debonbon said:

Slow news day,

There are plenty of more interesting things to report on at Computex than this.

For example, AMD's new mobile chips (Strix Point) shipping July 2024:

Raw performance is not the draw. Compute power per watt, is. How power efficient is this chip being compared to Apple Silicon? Is it fanless?

TDP = 28W
cTDP = 15W-54W

The M3 used in their testing was in a MacBook Pro 14"

Implementation by each OEM will differ (a number of devices have already been announced). I doubt it will be used in a fanless device though.

For thin and light devices, expect the 15W TDP or 28W TDP.



For larger and higher end configurations, we'll probably see this with a higher TDP and paired with a dGPU - likely NVIDIA in some devices:



Here's a laptop with it from ASUS at Computex (seen in the NVIDIA slide above), the Zephyrus G16:

- AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
- 16" 240 Hz OLED, 100% DCI-P3, NVIDIA G-Sync
- 4 lbs

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

y2an said:

Given the Surface has a fan, why compare it to the MacBook Airs rather than the MacBook Pros?

Surface Laptop 15" is $1299 for Snapdragon X Elite with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

MacBook Air 15" is $1299 for M3 with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

Microsoft doesn't mention unified memory in its marketing, so it could be DDR for the Surface which is approximately 50% as efficient as unified memory. If so, the RAM difference in this comparison is negligible. I also wonder what the SSD speed is for the Surface. The M3 MBA SSD has a read speed of 2880 and a write speed of 2108. 

8 GB of RAM is still 8 GB of RAM.



The NPU may take 8 GB of RAM just for itself at times. 16 GB was chosen as the minimum for a reason.

How do you explain this video? It compares a 16GB $2000 Mac laptop with unified memory versus a 16GB $2100 Windows laptop with DDR. If what you were saying were true, then the results could be expected to mostly similar. Instead, the Windows laptop isn't even remotely close to the performance of 16GB unified memory. There are other tests by the same channel where an 8GB unified memory system is only beaten by 10% or 11% in performance versus a 16GB DDR system. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al1OAg9Gin8

The comparison was 8 GB vs 16 GB. When the ram usage is maxed out, clearly, unified or not, it has to swap with the SSD. Hence my statement about 8 GB still being 8 GB.

If you want to pay even more for 16 GB on the Mac, that's fine, but that's not what I wrote in my earlier post, nor is what you quoted.

I'd also point out the test I listed was done by the same channel as the video you posted:

"So you guys can see that 8 GB is not the same as 16, especially when you're actually going to be using the system" 

mpantone said:

Dead_Pool said:

But I thought Macs were so efficient that they needed only 8 GBs?

It was pre-Apple Intelligence.

Many closely watching Apple’s AI efforts expect their LLM to take up around 6GB of RAM leaving little for applications. Increasing RAM to 16GB provides far more headroom which will be crucial if the user enables Apple Intelligence.

16 GB should have been the minimum when the M1 launched to provide the longevity and premium experience that Apple aims for.

It would be great if you could test the thermals and sustained performance.

Interesting. This may impact iOS/macOS gaming even further, potentially making third party developers choose to drop support of iOS/macOS or find a new game engine.

It told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic’s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms—including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy. Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas. 

If the Unreal Engine can no longer support Apple platforms, the software developers that use it will be forced to use alternatives.

Apple would lose out on Unreal Engine 5 as well it sounds like.