verne arase

Simply comparing GPU internal speeds also ignores the Wintel copy overhead.

Using the discrete GPU model, requests and data are formatted in main memory by the CPU, compressed, transmitted by the CPU over PCIe, received by the GPU into GPU memory, decompressed, then executed by the GPU. All this results in realtime clock tick loss which has nothing to do with putting pixels on screen.

Compute tasks returning results have to go through the same process in the opposite direction.

All this overhead means that despite the possibly superior speed of a discrete GPU, the actual speed can come surprisingly close the the M1's 7 or 8 cores.

This applies to all Wintel graphics workflows, no mater the internal speed of the GPU.

For integrated GPUs, the same basic process involves copying data from main memory to the GPU's memory partition, replacing the compress, transfer over PCIe, and decompress portions of the cycle.

robaba said:

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

where are people getting the idea that the M1X is going to have 12 cpu cores?  8 performance + 2 efficiency != 12

The original set of rumors stated that M1x had 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores, and that ball was picked up by CPU Monkey who computed performance levels and posted them like they'd seen benchmark tests. min.com also perpetuated these claims.

Jon Prosser and dylandkt later announced M1x would have 8 performance and 2 efficiency cores, but really they're all just leaks and rumors and we won't know for sure until October 18 when Apple makes their announcements.

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

rob53 said:

docno42 said:

My 2015 MBA is in dire need of an upgrade.  I tried the M1 MBA - and it was fantastic!  Then I made the mistake of loading some games on it - and they played fantastic too!  Well, except for Cities:Skylines - where my mod/asset addiction overpowered 16GB - it's just not enough. 

So now I eagerly await the next round.  I'm hoping for being able to get at least 64GB of RAM - and curious as to how Apple will handle RAM in the next chips.  Will it still be closely coupled for blistering speed?  I hope so - soldered on or not.  May splurge on a large SSD this time too.  Hopefully give it some extra life - not crazy the drives are soldered on - and maybe in the larger ones they won't be? 

Should be interesting to see.  My Apple Card is ready! 

What I've read is that the M-series RAM and storage work so fast together that 8GB is the new 16GB and 16GB is the new 32GB. I don't remember seeing anyone say Apple would be releasing a 64GB laptop. As for Cities:Skylines, is this a native ARM app or is it using Rosetta? Even though Apple does the conversion it's still not the same as a native ARM app making use of all the ARM-specific GPU apis. Just checked this app and it uses Steam and I've never used Steam before so not sure if it's using the Mac or an app to run the app on a Steam server. 

Dunno about that ... certainly Apple Silicon has a more economical graphics workflow, but as for the rest processing it's pretty much the same - most apps are just recompiled for universal from the Intel source code. So no, there's no magic which doubles your RAM.

If you're video editing from what I understand there are some optimizations that developers can do to speed up processing to keep things out in the GPU and render intermediate results to tile memory, but outside of the use of unified memory for both CPU and GPU everything is pretty much as it was before.

I think a lot of the talk about double the RAM effectiveness just has to do with the amazingly good implementation of virtual memory under macOS.

You guys don't understand what I'm saying or what the real differences between the ARM and Intel architectures are. I didn't say "Apple Silicon doubles your RAM", I said the lower amount when used by Apple Silicon run apps just as well as the higher (doubled) amount. Have any of you actually watched the youtube videos demonstrating this? Do any of you know how ARM is different than Intel? Do a websearch of "arm intel architecture differences" to get much more technical information. It all has to do with the huge differences between CISC (x86) and RISC (ARM). All you have to do is look at Apple's iOS devices to understand how much Apple can do with lower amounts of RAM. 

I can't wait for the day when Apple doesn't include any Mac with a HDD, everything will be solid state and most, if not all will be integrated onto the SoC or the motherboard; no replaceable RAM or storage (sorry iFixit). This is the only way to get the most speed and power out of a Mac right now. External storage will be Thunderbolt-connected, NVMe storage, single and in RAID configurations, which will blow away any HDD or Fusion Mac configuration ever made--no matter how much RAM you put into it. 

When a developer compiles their app, universal or native, there's a lot of differences between how the app actually runs. It doesn't run the same way because Apple has to encode CISC- and RISC-specific api's so it actually runs on the different hardware platforms. Apple does this within Xcode so developers don't have to make as many changes to their software as a total re-write without Apple's help. (Developers, please add to this so these people understand what's going on. Thanks) As for things simply being the same on Apple Silicon as on Intel, no it isn't!

I do understand what you're saying ... the problem is those YouTuber's are wrong too. They're fallible just like the rest of us - they can just be wrong in front of more people.

There are huge differences between RISC and CISC designs, and that results in deeper execution queue inspection and wider CPUs ... not less memory usage.

Oh ... and I think that when Apple introduced the 24" iMacs, they did retire the last computer using HDDs. You might have the ability to BTO a 20" iMac with a HDD or fusion drive, but I doubt it.

China today is kind of a disaster.

Between increasing arrogance, militarism, wolf warrior diplomacy, and territorial claims of the entire South China Sea, its increasing isolation from the world at large is leading to things like retaliatory stopping the import of Australian coal which is crippling its economy.

China was given significant economic advantages by liberal western democracies hoping that bring them into world organizations would liberalize the country and bring western values to China, but instead China has taken and used its assets and position to subjugate lesser economies through things like the Belt and Roads Initiative to export uneconomical large capital projects to poorer nations placing them in enormous debt, and bought their votes in international organizations enabling them leverage undue influence in things like the World Health Organization and United Nations committees on Human Rights despite a total suppression of freedom of the press and massive human rights violations against dissidents and minorities.

Heck, they were only narrowly averted from taking over the committee on Intellectual Property despite their IP raids on foreign companies and failure to license IP they use every  day, and counterfeit companies and products.

Their one child policy crippled its population growth in a country where there are few social support structure, and the increasingly aging population is supported by only a single offspring. The economy is rife with corruption caused by laws which require party members on any large corporation's board, with little or no accountability which means those party members loot the company's coffers - and there's no meaningful auditing of finances which leads to disasters like Lukin Coffee and Evergrande.

Xi Jinping has suppressed all dissent and through multiple purges has diminished any chance that he could be toppled, and as more and more things go wrong with the Chinese economy he's prematurely taken Hong Kong and been building his military forces and greedily eyeing prosperous Taiwan.

robaba said:

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

where are people getting the idea that the M1X is going to have 12 cpu cores?  8 performance + 2 efficiency != 12

The original rumors (and CPU Monkey and min.com) claimed 8 performance, 4 efficiency cores.

Truth is, we still really don't know at this point what M1x is going to contain.