anonconformist

lkrupp said:

crowley said:

lkrupp said:

flydog said:

keithw said:

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to spend the extra $1k for 64 GPU cores instead of 48.  I tend to keep machines for at least 5 years (or more,) and want to "future proof" as much as possible up front. Sure, I know there will probably be an M2 "Ultra" or M3 or M4 or M5 in the next 5 years, but the "studio" is the Mac I've always wanted.  My current 2017 iMac Pro was a compromise since the only thing available at the time was the "trashcan" Mac, and it was obsolete by then.  This thing is 2-1/2 times faster than my iMac Pro in multi-core CPU tests. Howerver, it's significantly slower in GPU performance then my AMD RX 6900 XT eGPU.

An Ultra is complete waste of money, as is adding cores.  Xcode does not use the extra cores, nor does anything made by Adobe, Blender, or even Final Cut Pro.  None of those apps are significantly faster on an Ultra vs Max (or even the most recent 27" iMac). Games may see a large improvement, but even the fastest Ultra is not a gaming PC replacement (nor is it intended to be).

In real world use, my Ultra is actually slower than my old iMac in some tasks, and the actual difference in performance across the average app is more like 15-20% (not the 300-400% that the benchmarks suggest).  Xcode builts are 30% faster, and exporting a 5 minute 4k video via Final Cut Pro is about 10% faster.  Anything that uses single core (safari, word, excel) will not be any faster than a Mac Mini.  On an average workday, that $4,000 Ultra saves maybe 3 minutes.  

Most people will do just fine with a Mac mini. 

And you don’t think the developers you mention won’t soon optimize their code to take advantage of the M1 Ultra cores and GPUs? Really? This was a topic on today’s MacBreak Weekly podcast. None of the benchmark software has been optimized yet either. Wait a couple of months and your might change your tune. 

Multi core CPUs and GPUs are not a new thing. If developers haven’t managed to utilise them before what makes you think they’re going to be able to now?  Parallel processing isn’t just something you can switch on in any given app.

So what’s your point? That the M1 Ultra’s potential will never be fully realized? That the M1 Ultra is a flop that will never live up to its promise? Apple should just admit the M1Ultra is a failed attempt, stop production and go back to Intel? All hail Nvidia?

pulseimages said:

flydog said:

keithw said:

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to spend the extra $1k for 64 GPU cores instead of 48.  I tend to keep machines for at least 5 years (or more,) and want to "future proof" as much as possible up front. Sure, I know there will probably be an M2 "Ultra" or M3 or M4 or M5 in the next 5 years, but the "studio" is the Mac I've always wanted.  My current 2017 iMac Pro was a compromise since the only thing available at the time was the "trashcan" Mac, and it was obsolete by then.  This thing is 2-1/2 times faster than my iMac Pro in multi-core CPU tests. Howerver, it's significantly slower in GPU performance then my AMD RX 6900 XT eGPU.

An Ultra is complete waste of money, as is adding cores.  Xcode does not use the extra cores, nor does anything made by Adobe, Blender, or even Final Cut Pro.  None of those apps are significantly faster on an Ultra vs Max (or even the most recent 27" iMac). Games may see a large improvement, but even the fastest Ultra is not a gaming PC replacement (nor is it intended to be).

In real world use, my Ultra is actually slower than my old iMac in some tasks, and the actual difference in performance across the average app is more like 15-20% (not the 300-400% that the benchmarks suggest).  Xcode builts are 30% faster, and exporting a 5 minute 4k video via Final Cut Pro is about 10% faster.  Anything that uses single core (safari, word, excel) will not be any faster than a Mac Mini.  On an average workday, that $4,000 Ultra saves maybe 3 minutes.  

Most people will do just fine with a Mac mini. 

Then why did you buy an Ultra? 

tht said:

anonconformist said:

I’ll only address item #2: Xcode is no magic bullet to make using all these cores to useful advantage on the simplest applications, or even the most demanding ones.  It doesn’t work like that AT ALL.  Very few applications users use would be possible to make better by throwing more cores at them no matter what you do, beyond maybe a couple cores for most interactive applications, because most applications will use a single thread to handle all the GUI stuff, and then do other processing off the main GUI thread, with the observation most of those threads used off the main thread don’t run with other threads they interact with or do something truly parallel with beyond merely keeping the GUI main thread from blocking.

Question: how many threads are used for I/O?  Answer: unless it’s an embarrassingly-parallel situation, often a single user-space thread can handle multiple I/O things at once, because it’s mostly waiting.  The OS and in the user space level Grand Central Dispatch may keep more up and running, in concert with other applications, but the majority of the time, most threads in a thread pool are waiting with nothing to do.

For the vast majority of applications, there’s not even a reasonable way to use 4 threads at a time, let alone 4 cores for that application where you’d ever notice it.  Note: some of the higher-end games can and will make use of more cores, as will developer tools like compilers and build systems, things that do a lot of processing.  If you’re using something like Apple’s office suite, you’d have a hard time keeping 4 cores busy running all of those applications at the same time, let alone any single one of those applications: the most demanding application in that would be Numbers, if you push it hard enough.  Perhaps one day when I have nothing better to do, I’ll do a test and see if Numbers was written in a manner to possibly make effective sustained use of multiple cores when processing a large spreadsheet: I’d wager the answer is they have not done so.  Spreadsheet performance was a commonly used metric in the past, but it’s considered a ho-hum task these days.

Unless a user has special types of work they do that inherently uses a lot of threads and processor cores at the same time, the biggest use-case where people will bog down all the cores of an M1 Ultra involve their web browsers with a very large number of tabs open that are doing an unusual amount of computation in each one: even with a lot of ads going, it’d be very hard to use up all the cores, even though most web pages have no dependency on what other web pages are doing.  The heaviest loads of the browser for each page would be dispatching a thread per object downloaded and decoded on the page, but short of constant media streaming, this is very short-lived and leaves the machine not working hard for any given page: how many pages do people have downloading and streaming at the same time?  On average, not many!

Don't understand how the train of comments went from the Mac Studio is for people who know how to use it and can afford it, to the Mac Studio is not for most people. They really aren't saying anything different.

For the most part, people do indeed buy the things they need to do their job, up to what they care to spend. How much is really up to them and their desires. These aren't throw away items. The whole setup is going to cost $3000 to $10,000. People know what and why they are buying at those prices. The vast majority of sales are going to go to be used in content creation and STEM. They have applications and tools that will use every core, be it CPU or GPU or dedicated media hardware.

There will be a very very few that go to rich people, but we can pretty safely ignore those sales for the market that these products are in. The Mac Studio will be made or broken in the content creation and STEM markets, where its level of cost is actually pretty minor. Some of those folks have annual software licenses that cost more than the Mac Studio itself, or some other minor cost like paying a sub contractor for 2 weeks of work.

The biggest issue for Apple is going to be the usual the chicken or the egg market issue. They need properly optimized software to get more hardware sales, but software won't be properly optimized if they don't have enough hardware sales. This issue isn't cracked unless it is something else killer that sells the device and that can pull optimized software in, or they do a price/perf play which really isn't Apple.

Apple really should be making more software, instead of relying on 3rd parties. FCP sells Mac hardware. iOS app development sells Mac hardware. They are probably the biggest reason high end Mac hardware was kept alive for the past decade. They really need to have their own competitive CAD, STEM app like Matlab, and yes, their own games, to gain a foothold in more market niches, and thusly have more unit sales. Apple getting their hooks into Enterprise IT departments is also a whole other ball of wax to deal with.