Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro

[Serban55]

Yeah, when it comes to gaming, Apple silicon is actually a step back.

That's okay for Apple, they're way more interested in renting fun, quirky, ultra casual games with the Arcade to you.

All the "hardcore" games, for lack of a better word, are on x86 (PC, XBox and PS5), and with a new console release just around the corner, that will be the case for a LONG time.

M1 is on par with amd 570
Baldurus gate 3 was demo
Dev will jump on the new games for this because building even an Aaa game its easier now to make it for ipad and for mac from the start
In 10 years we will have support for arm and console the most , windowsx86 will come second

 

[Serban55]

Buy can I run chrome on it

Of course

 

[deevey]

Because god forbid Apple gives us a great facetime camera like the one in iPhone. It's not like they're asking the same starting base price for computers with fewer parts, fewer traces on the board, and chips that will be pretty darn cheap for Apple as their R&D costs are recouped.

We could get a decent camera. Just saying.

It will happen when someone manages to create a decent camera and optics that are 1.5mm thick. The iPhone camera is massive in comparison.

In the meantime we've been promised a far better webcam image using processing.

720p is all thats required for video conferencing (being the limitation of current providers), so long as its a decent quality 720p thats all that matters.

 

[Serban55]

Over 500 replies..in under 1 day ..that means users cares about the mac more than anything else , including iphones

 

[vladi]

Agree... Many in the PC world just do not understand the power of the A14 design. They think the M1 is still a "mobile" CPU and thereby couldn't possibly be anywhere close to their 125watt TDP desktop chips.

Mac has always struggled with high end configurations and it was capped big time by their own choice of hardware and software development. They've always targeted low end mobility and that's their bread and butter. That's why most power users have switched to Windows for better configurations despite OS using more resources than MacOS such as video ram etc. In order for Apple to win back those power users they need more than some single core spiking chip, they need a lot more competent chipset, on chip set of instructions and proper GPU. That is very far away now.

 

[Abaganov]

Of course

like normally or with Rosetta

 

[xserret]

Lets put it simply
INTEL == ☠️☠️ and ⚰️

 

[fiatlux]

Buy can I run chrome on it

Not for now, I’m afraid they only come with 16GB RAM max.

 

[TomOSeven]

M1 is on par with amd 570

So what, how many "hardcore" (I hate this word, I just can't think of a better description) gamers are there who want to play on Mac? Certainly not enough to port games to an entirely different architecture, even if the performance is on point.

 

[Juraj22]

Here's another perspective....who is going to buy an intel machine at this price point when a Mac is a) going to be that much more powerful and b) have a battery life of 2-3x?

Could be silicon lottery? Still the difference in scores is too high though...

That is usually caused by impatient user that is running benchmark right after setup. However, during that time a lot of processing is performed by OS. (like indexing for search, processing data from iCloud, etc..).

 

[coredev]

So what, how many "hardcore" (I hate this word, I just can't think of a better description) gamers are there who want to play on Mac? Certainly not enough to port games to an entirely different architecture, even if the performance is on point.

Studios seem willing to port to iOS, so having an easy way to also offer a game on macOS is certainly welcome.

 

[alexwmccabe]

Why does the 8GB RAM version outperform the 16GB RAM version on multi-core bench test?

 

[gnasher729]

I'll have to have a word with my boss, because that absolutely slaughters the 15" MBP that I'm using at work.

 

[coredev]

Why does the 8GB RAM version outperform the 16GB RAM version on multi-core bench test?

Mentioned in this thread several times, benchmarks can be performed with different OS beta versions and even different pre-release hardware. We will know for sure once the M1 is more widespread.

 

[benyben123]

sorry to be off topic here, but anyone found any info on whether Chrome will natively support the M1 MBA?

it happens to be that I am helping a friend getting a new MBA for school, but she won't touch Safari.

I am sure Google is on this, but anyone has any info on this?

Thx!

 

[ValO]

Apple should not have released the MacBook Pro 13 inch yet.
because it has some some disadvantages compared to the intel based MacBook Pro 13(memory only gets to 16gb instead of 32gb, less thunder old/usb ports, and just 1 external monitor).
Now the entire industry has the vibe that apple silicon will be less capable for pro consumers, or that apple will have to make compromises for the pro machines .

i don’ t think that is the case here, I see apple releasing a MacBook Pro 14 and 16 inch with apple silicon next year around may/june with a better soc , memory up to 32gb, more IO, and more cores/better gpu.

this 13 inch pro is just a stop gap between now and June , because the pro’s that want a new laptop, could have put their purchase on hold, because word about the apple silicon is spreading and reaching even the consumers that are less into specs, etc.
And if there was not a pro available, perhaps software publishers would have waited to launch their pro apps, until there was a pro machine available.

wait till next year June, and we will know what apple is really capable of in the pro segment. there are rumors about a 12 core cpu for the 16 inch, so, don’ t worry about cpu speed.

 

[gnasher729]

Told ya.

Repeatedly.

I honestly didn't expect 4+4 cores to come so close to currently shipping 8 core products. I thought they would beat existing 4 core products and be about equal with existing 6 core products.

And I'm not sure what Apple will do about low-end products, like the dual core non-retina iMac. I suppose that will be dead? Or left alone for people wanting to buy a Windows PC in an iMac package? They could put an iPhone chip in that performance wise, but I guess they will only want one 4+4 chip, and one 8+4 chip when they are ready.

BTW. That means an 8+4 chip should get very close to 16 core Intel Macs.

 

[gnasher729]

sorry to be off topic here, but anyone found any info on whether Chrome will natively support the M1 MBA?

it happens to be that I am helping a friend getting a new MBA for school, but she won't touch Safari.

I am sure Google is on this, but anyone has any info on this?

Thx!

Question one: Will Intel Chrome run? Most likely yes, and it will be fast enough. Will Google build a native ARM version? You would hope so, and it will be faster.

 

[wyrdness]

the BBC Micro was _not_ an ARM computer. It was a computer made by Acorn, which later designed the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) architecture CPU used in their Archimedes series, which later became the Advanced RISC Machine or (ARM) arch....

Initially there was an ARM co-processor for the BBC Micro. The Register has some interesting ARM history here: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/27/arm_35_year_anniversary/

 

[kcslc]

Do you think this means new Macs every year like it happens with the iPhone? Mac with M1 this year, next year the same Mac with m2, then with an m3 etc?

Yeah. And they’ll intentionally slow them down every year so you have to buy a new one.

 

[alexwmccabe]

Mentioned in this thread several times, benchmarks can be performed with different OS beta versions and even different pre-release hardware. We will know for sure once the M1 is more widespread.

Sorry I quick scanned but lots of pages and I must've missed it. Thanks for pointing it out

 

[eddjedi]

Wow, the 2020 MBA has a higher single core score than the multi-core score of my 2016 i7 MBP

 

[nikaru]

It will happen when someone manages to create a decent camera and optics that are 1.5mm thick. The iPhone camera is massive in comparison.

In the meantime we've been promised a far better webcam image using processing.

720p is all thats required for video conferencing (being the limitation of current providers), so long as its a decent quality 720p thats all that matters.

I do agree that there are definately some technical issues in sticking a better camera sensor in the lid of Macbooks and Apple has been struggling with this issue for some years now. But I dont agree that 720p is engough for video conefrencing. You definitely see the person, but the image quality is far from ideal. With fast broadband internet, broadcasting in 1080p through your webcam is something that should not be of an issue and the quality could be scaled down in case of poor connection. We are kind of used to poor webcam quality and the day Apple improves this aspect, the change would be tremendous about how we feel about the video conferencing.

 

[woocintosh]

Geek bench is Apple Silicon Native ?

 

[gnasher729]

Just want to add full comparisions tables from Geekbench site -

Air M1 vs MBP 16 - https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4653108?baseline=4648107

Air M1 vs HP Envy on AMD Ryzen 7 4700 U - https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4653177?baseline=4648107

Seems AMD and Intel are equally finished by Apple cheapest fanless laptop, at least for now.

That's why Apple says "faster than 98% of all laptops sold". PCWorld apparently wasn't happy with this statement and listed some models that were faster and said therefore Apple was lying. I'd say these faster models are quite expensive and will not have more than 2% market share.