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

[aknabi]

I can't wait (and hope) for a $999 12" MacBook form factor (hopefully with a 13" display stuffed in ala Dell XPS)... you'd basically see the AS MBA with say 12 hour batter life (which is fine)... what a sweet machine that would be for the couch, bouncing around... of course that then would be a minus on iPad Pro sales (I far prefer using my 12 MB over my iPad Pro, even with the Magic Keyboard)

 

[bklement]

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.

I'd definitely love to. My plan until now was getting a preferably 12" macbook and build a zen 3 workstation/gaming pc. But zen 3 pricing and m1 performance made me think. I could ditch the pc and buy instead a series s for less than the cpu cost, but half of my games are grand strategies like Stellaris, which don't have decent console versions, but Intel macs can run them. They are cpu bound anyway, so
they'd be fine with the gpu. Probably I could live with Rosetta2 too, if they'd promise to keep it indefinitely.

 

[orthorim]

Thinking the 16 will be a total redesign since we no longer need this massive battery

 

[Dave245]

Agreed, the only downer for me is the 400nits peak brightness. I wish it was 500 like the Pro

I’m even more excited now that I’ve found out we can use iPad Pro apps on the Mac. Affinity have not long tweeted this.

Now if I can just get Lumafusion on the M1 that would be awesome. I’m so tempted to sell my 2019 13” MacBook Pro and either get the new Air or the Pro with Apple Silicone.

 

[dannys1]

FYI PCIE is not the DDR I/F , they have nothing in common , DRAM I/F is a wide parallel I/F while PCIE is a serial I/F.

Either way the M1 doesn't have the ability to support more than 16gb of ram, which obviously the next steps up will.

 

[Falhófnir]

What are your guesses about the upgrade cycle of Apple Silicon Macs? Are we going to see a yearly upgrade like iphone?

Can see it being similar to now, with popular models like the MacBook Air and Pro getting consistent yearly updates and other less popular machines on 18 month to 2+ year cycles.

 

[bklement]

If this one doesn't make what else will!?

One one external monitor still hurst tho'.

 

[ani4ani]

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.

So who are going to be the new Mac customers other than those who would buy whatever Mac is available anyhow?

 

[danr_97070]

[/QUOTE]

Just an incredible leap. Can't wait for this to shine in a 2022 iMac.

There's another company (Ampere) that has produced an ARM-based machine with many cores. I'm hoping that the Apple Silicon iMac will have performance on par or better than this processor.

For those that want to see benchmarks of the Ampere processor, see here:

Comparative Benchmark of Ampere eMAG, AMD EPYC, and Intel XEON for Cloud-Native Workloads | Kinvolk

kinvolk.io

 

[ValO]

Indeed!

But imagine a higher TDP allowance, coupled or not with more cores ? Just bring in an M1X with 12 CPU cores (8 hi perf) and 16 GPU cores !

Yeah, with the option for 32 gb and 4 TB/usb 4 ports and connection with 2x 6k external displays.(or at least 2x 4k).

And for desktop: just 8 high performance cores, without the 4 high eff cores or all just 12 high performance cores.

but I think for the mb pro 16-> 8 high, 4 high eff, 12 gpu cores. It seems that the gpu cores match the cpu cores.

 

[BobRoss]

Sitting here on a newly purchased 2019 MBP 16" and wondering if I should return it and get the MBP 13" now

Yes. You should

 

[jakja83]

Will the Air M1 be able to bootcamp windows and have enough GPU-power to play games on? E.g. decent strategy-games from before 2016 like Civilization 5-6 - Europa Univeralis ++?

 

[tillathenun]

I currently have a MacBook Pro with BlackMagic Pro eGPU (Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB).

Will the M1’s GPU be faster? I’m seriously tempted to sell the eGPU and get a new Mac mini instead! (And pocket the change).

 

[aknabi]

What I'm wondering about is on the higher end SoCs planned for the 16", iMac, etc in the short term what are they going to do given the M1 is @ 16 billion transistors... so it's not clear if they can add a few billion more for more cores, etc... or do they take the GPU, Neural Engine and move that to a separate die then use that for more CPU cores? (though that has interconnect issues)... as I recall the current M1 die is around 120mm2 (as I recall from Anandtech's estimate), so maybe they can go a bit bigger on the die (then add more CPU and GPU cores)?

"The whole SoC features a massive 16 billion transistors, which is 35% more than the A14 inside of the newest iPhones. If Apple was able to keep the transistor density between the two chips similar, we should expect a die size of around 120mm². This would be considerably smaller than past generation of Intel chips inside of Apple's MacBooks."

AnandTech Forums: Technology, Hardware, Software, and Deals

Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

www.anandtech.com

 

[msh]

But will the M1 play nice with a dedicated gpu, because egpu is not supported?

I would think a dedicated GPU outisde the M1 would slow it down and add inefficiency and, for mobile devices, defeat the purpose of the M1.

 

[dazzer21-2]

Will the Air M1 be able to bootcamp windows and have enough GPU-power to play games on? E.g. decent strategy-games from before 2016 like Civilization 5-6 - Europa Univeralis ++?

There will be no Boot Camp. Or Windows compatibility.

 

[chuchelmik]

Will the Air M1 be able to bootcamp windows and have enough GPU-power to play games on? E.g. decent strategy-games from before 2016 like Civilization 5-6 - Europa Univeralis ++?

No, as there is no Windows OS for ARM architechture. So there is no support unless Microsoft goes into the ARM business as well

 

[Joe Dohn]

There will be no Boot Camp. Or Windows compatibility.

There will, through virtualization. It will be slow, but how slow remains to be seen.
If M1 chips are fast enough, it'll still be slow, but chances are you won't feel it in practice.

 

[Billyk711]

Yawn. Wait until they need to go off chip though the caches and to a DDR scheduler/controller to LPDDR.
This is a synthetic benchmark and tells nothing about the real world.

This Poor dude is just making stuff up.

 

[UltimateSyn]

No, as there is no Windows OS for ARM architechture. So there is no support unless Microsoft goes into the ARM business as well

Well, that's not true at all... https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/

 

[woocintosh]

If x86 based hardware couldn't catch up Apple Silicon based Macs and Mac users grow, someday, Microsoft may release Windows running on Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[ikir]

Even faster:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4661599 MBA 13"
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4663687 MBP 13"

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Wait, wait, wait... STOP THE BENCHMARKING! Intel and AMD WON!
Fake News!

Some Macrumors members have claimed that Apple is doomed switching to ARM and performance would be near that of an iPhone, dumbing down apps and make new Macs email machines. So this can't be right.

Then again, it is exactly as I expected and I made the right decision when I bought a fully specced MBP16 when it originally came out, well knowing it would be my last Intel based Mac. So next year we should see a MBP16 power machine with ARM, which would open my upgrade path. If I jump right on it or not, depends on software support.

I'm tempted to grab a Mac mini though, depending on the graphic performance. Another option would be to wait for the Mac (smaller Mac Pro). That should cover my all-around tasks, while for the big stuff I need Linux anyway with the RTX8000 and 24-core Xeon, so Apple is not an option here.

 

[McScooby]

Unsure about Apple's choice of naming convention considering the 2020 iPad Pro has a M12 coprocessor, does that mean it's faster?🤔🤣

 

[applesith]

Very impressive! Apple really hit it out of the park so far. I can't wait to see how everyday use is with the M1 and how much of a difference native vs Rosetta2 will be.