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Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Air SSD Really Is Twice as Fast as Previous Model

dannys1 said:
I mean to be fair for 95% of users, the M1 provides more than enough power. So whilst they've started at the bottom and worked up, they've covered more users straight away.
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The M1 itself provides enough power for a lot of pro workflows. But it's new tech and most software isn't ready yet, so it's not yet suitable for professional use. I think that's why they limited the ram/storage/ports, to discourage pro users from migrating too soon.

If I were Apple, I would have done exactly the same. They'll sell every system they can build anyway, so they'll better sell them to less demanding users.
 
mi7chy said:
It's slow compared to NVMe PCIe 3.0 Samsung 970 EVO+ 2TB on sale for $250 that does around 3500/3300 MB/s seq read/write. NVMe PCIe 4.0 is even faster at >5000 MB/s.
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Remember this is a M1 256GB ssd that you are comparing to a 2TB Samsung 970. Small SSDs are extremely slow due to lack of channels. You only get full speed at about the 1TB mark. 256GB is about 1/2 to 1/4 the speed of 1TB.

This is absolutely the fastest speed I've seen a 256GB SSD do, it's phenomenal. Too early to say yet but M1 1TB could be 2 or 3x faster, meaning 4-6GB/s. Especially in the MBP.
 
These fast SSD's seem to run very hot. On my 2018 Mini, if I do anything that generates a lot of disk access, it gets very warm to the touch and the fan ramps up. Could that be a problem in the MacBook Air?
 
pixelbart said:
The M1 itself provides enough power for a lot of pro workflows. But it's new tech and most software isn't ready yet, so it's not yet suitable for professional use. I think that's why they limited the ram/storage/ports, to discourage pro users from migrating too soon.

If I were Apple, I would have done exactly the same. They'll sell every system they can build anyway, so they'll better sell them to less demanding users.
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I think they idea was always to start at the low end and move up - they're starting where they have the biggest gains coming from the iPad, power per watt. Their gains aren't going to be as big at the top end. But also start with entry level, this also allows smaller devs easy access to update their apps too and by the time the mid level comes out next year you'll have a more mature platform. Eventually when the pro series comes at the end of the two year cycle the platform is ready for it, they figure out how to get the best from the processors at the top end (and whatever they decide to do with graphics, be it a discrete card or something else)
 
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RedTomato said:
Remember this is a M1 256GB ssd that you are comparing to a 2TB Samsung 970. Small SSDs are extremely slow due to lack of channels. You only get full speed at about the 1TB mark. 256GB is about 1/2 to 1/4 the speed of 1TB.
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Remember that Apple charges $800 for 2TB compared to 2TB Samsung 970 EVO+ for $250. Even the 250GB 970 EVO+ is faster overall with 3600/2400 MB/s seq read/write. The speed of smaller drives has nothing to do with "lack of channels".
 
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Traditionally all Macs ran on substantially the same chip in the 68K and PPC days but with different clock speeds. Yes there were times when the high-end ran on the next model while most models stayed on the previous chip. When Intel moved to the iX series Apple started using different models of the same generation chip i3-i9. One of the main differences, superficially at least, being clock speed (yes, there's core counts, caches, etc. as well) which was always listed in the marketing materials as a primary differentiator (i7 3.2Ghz for example).

In the initial release of these new machines Apple isn't calling out ANY differences in the chip speeds, cores, clocks, etc. Not saying there aren't differences, just that Apple isn't calling them out in any marketing or tech specs.

When we start getting the mid and high end systems what will be the marketing differentiator do you think? Will the mid level be the M2, high end M3, will they use suffixes like we saw with some of the iOS devices (M1x, M1z) or do you think Apple would slip into the trap of starting to talk about clock speeds again as a differentiator?

As Mac's ecosystem becomes washed in Apple Silicon will the chip line diversify such that Apple is making a different format of chip specs for each application? Will they make a small range of chips and shoe-horn them into the desired applications like in the past? I don't see much technical reason that every single model of Mac can't have it's own custom designed processor at this point, no more overlap/sharing between models.

Just idle thoughts.
 
citysnaps said:
You may not be aware the MBA was an entry level laptop. Thus its performance was less than more expensive MBPs.
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$900 is NOT entry level pricing for a laptop. For Apple, maybe...but Apple uses standard parts (in Intel model) and the SSD speeds in the MBA were just embarrassing. There isn't any magic tech or expensive parts needed to get decent SSD speed in a laptop under $900. They just used the cheapest, slowest SSD chips and charged the consumer a premium.

Now, the speeds in the M1 MBA are more "normal" but certainly not earth-shattering. A respected PCIe 4.0 speed would be OVER 3000 for reads and writes. Well OVER. So still being in the 2000's is nothing to write home about. Those are very middle-of-the-road PCIe 3.0 speeds.

Now, we will see if the 512GB or larger SSD sizes are faster. They should be. But will we see >4000 read/write speeds as we should with PCIe 4.0? Doubtful.
 
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Tesix2 said:
Apple was always going to hold back on putting high performance components in recent Intel machines, so as to give their own CPU the bbest chance to impress.
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That’s because Intel didn’t make any high performance components for this form factor. They did the best they could do but, even so, I believe the initial “new” MacBook Air only had ONE processor configuration. And, that was designed specifically for Apple (didn’t appear in Intel’s ARK until after the announcement). Now, it IS possible that Intel was paid by Apple to intentionally gimp their MacBook Air bound processors. AND it’s possible that with Apple’s money, they’ve been paying Intel for YEARS to miss their targets, adding more and more ”+”’s to 14nm so that gives Apple some “cover” for eventually leaving. But, I doubt it.
grjj said:
When we start getting the mid and high end systems what will be the marketing differentiator do you think?
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Same as with these... number of ports, cooling capability, form factor. One of my first predictions was that Apple was going to follow the iPad model regarding not providing detailed information about their CPU’s. That also means that the number of configurations would decrease as there’s no longer a need to have an Air with a weaker processor just to hit the $999 target.
 
dragoon2745 said:
So it's twice as fast today because the cut the speed in half in the previous models? Why did they have to move to slower SSDs in the MacBook Air to begin with?
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So they could say the M1 is twice as fast as "the previous model"
 
dmylrea said:
$900 is NOT entry level pricing for a laptop. For Apple, maybe...but Apple uses standard parts (in Intel model) and the SSD speeds in the MBA were just embarrassing. There isn't any magic tech or expensive parts needed to get decent SSD speed in a laptop under $900. They just used the cheapest, slowest SSD chips and charged the consumer a premium.

Now, the speeds in the M1 MBA are more "normal" but certainly not earth-shattering. A respected PCIe 4.0 speed would be OVER 3000 for reads and writes. Well OVER. So still being in the 2000's is nothing to write home about. Those are very middle-of-the-road PCIe 3.0 speeds.

Now, we will see if the 512GB or larger SSD sizes are faster. They should be. But will we see >4000 read/write speeds as we should with PCIe 4.0? Doubtful.
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"$900 is NOT entry level pricing for a laptop. For Apple, maybe.."

No. It should be: "For Apple, yes..."

It's a shame you didn't stop there. The rest is a big bowl of irrelevant buh-blah.

Especially in the context of the post I was responding to: "So it's twice as fast today because the cut the speed in half in the previous models? Why did they have to move to slower SSDs in the MacBook Air to begin with?"
 
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This is fast, but my $1200 Windows gaming machine is faster with 7000/5000MBps read/write. The Samsung 980 Pro NVMe's with PCIe 4.0 are sick, along with a few others. In the real world they are doing 6800/4800 in benchmarks. I'm shocked to see so many people amazed by the MBP Air speed tbh... PCIe 3.0 and a $100 NVMe can perform these speeds. Must be an issue with heat or something, because there's no way the MBP Pros are this slow.
 
Tesix2 said:
Apple was always going to hold back on putting high performance components in recent Intel machines, so as to give their own CPU the bbest chance to impress.
This is why the last couple of years of releases have somewhat underwhelmed performance wise.
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I wouldn't write as they were facts your totally unproven conspiracy theories :)
 
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BGPL said:
This is fast, but my $1200 Windows gaming machine is faster with 7000/5000MBps read/write. The Samsung 980 Pro NVMe's with PCIe 4.0 are sick, along with a few others. In the real world they are doing 6800/4800 in benchmarks. I'm shocked to see so many people amazed by the MBP Air speed tbh... PCIe 3.0 and a $100 NVMe can perform these speeds. Must be an issue with heat or something, because there's no way the MBP Pros are this slow.
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Because of what the Air is meant to be: a very thin, very light, very portable machine when you just need to do light work away from home.
You can pick apart the machine and the benchmarks and say any single thing or subset isn't as good as something else, sure. You can do that with almost any comparison.
But on it's whole, in a machine at this size, at this pricepoint running a major operating system, with this overall performance and battery life... it's very impressive.

Yes, i9 and Xeon processors will be faster, yes there is faster storage, yes you might find battery life. But people don't use computers in bits and pieces, they use them as a consolidated whole. Nothing else in this price range and size and provide this compute power and runtime. THAT'S what the average person buys.
 
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16GB RAM has always been the top tier for these lower end models.

16GB is going to feel like 64 with this chip and SSD.
 
jonnysods said:
Bring the new iMac on!!
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(Finally) bring a mid tower on! Something fitting nicely, in terms of size and cost, between the Mini and the Pro.
No disrespect for the Mini, it's a nice niche computer.
Frankly, despite having owned a iMac for 11 years, I still can't get used to the AIO style.
I like to choose my own screen, and I already happen to have a very good one. No need nor spare space for another one, thank you very much.
 
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