Benchmarks Confirm Intel's Latest Core i9 Chip Outperforms Apple's M1 Max With Several Caveats

[Technerd108]

You can buy a MacBook Pro with M2 Extreme chip and have the same battery life.
On the go it's up to you if you use the M2 Extreme at the limit or not.
You can still use with the M2 Extreme the same amount of cores, which you are using now.

What MacBook can I buy with a M2 Extreme chip? There is no such thing. M2 Pro/Max is yet to be released. Only M2 is available or M1 Pro/Max.

The M1 13” MBP is a great laptop. I know the new M2 13” MBP is in an odd spot but I still think there is a market for it. It would have been nice if Apple just put the 13.6” screen in it and I think it would have been more popular. Some people want more power than a passive cooled M2 but don’t need a larger Pro Model and want portability that the 13” pro delivers.

 

[Ethosik]

You have no idea what a workstation is.
A workstation is not intended for editing YouTube videos.
A workstation is designed for simulations and complex engineering CAD programs that require professional graphics cards such as the Quadoro series, in addition to ECC RAM error correction memories.
Ability to install at least 4 graphic cards together, a large bay for disk arrays in RAID and of course support for PCI cards.

You said professional. Not $100,000 level of productivity. So there are no professionals up until you use that level of computer?

And stop with the condescending attitude. I know very well what a workstation is. I’m a professional. With my POS $4,000 system with a crappy one GPU according to your logic. We are not all employees of Pixar that needs 4 GPUs. Not all professional workloads require that.

 

[urib2]

You said professional. Not $100,000 level of productivity. So there are no professionals up until you use that level of computer?

Let's cut it short, professional people who need the option to install PCI cards. Apart from the Intel-based Mac Pro, Apple currently has nothing else in the workstation class.

 

[Ethosik]

Let's cut it short, professional people who need the option to install PCI cards. Apart from the Intel-based Mac Pro, Apple currently has nothing else in the workstation class.

Not all professionals do. I certainly don’t. The millions that use MacBook pros and Mac studios and iMacs don’t either. NONE….NONE of these are professionals? Really?

 

[Unregistered 4U]

The Intel CPU is a good solution, especially if combined with Nvidia, however pull the power cord different story. This 17" W10 system can barely manage 2 hours off the mains, 13" M1 MBP can stretch to 20 hours and arguably the MBP is faster in many a use case...

Intel’s a good solution mainly if there’s a need to run applications that have, for years, been honed and tuned endlessly for Intel chips. There’s not a single Apple Silicon application that has had even 1/10 of the tuning that Intel apps have had, and the results speak for themselves. However, if a user needs to use something like Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro? They’re not going to find an Intel macOS system that outperforms Apple Silicon in the same form factor.

 

[mdatwood]

Let's cut it short, professional people who need the option to install PCI cards. Apart from the Intel-based Mac Pro, Apple currently has nothing else in the workstation class.

Professionals who need to install PCI cards is a small and shrinking population. Overall, laptop sales have outpaced desktops for years.

If you want to narrowly define workstation as a 'desktop tower then can have cards installed' that's fine. But, I would argue that's not the case anymore. Laptops are so powerful now that the need for a classically defined workstation has shrunk dramatically. I haven't owned a desktop computer in over a decade, and I would argue every MBP I have owned in that time has been a workstation for the type of work I do.

 

[chucker23n1]

If you want to narrowly define workstation as a 'desktop tower then can have cards installed' that's fine. But, I would argue that's not the case anymore. Laptops are so powerful now that the need for a classically defined workstation has shrunk dramatically. I haven't owned a desktop computer in over a decade, and I would argue every MBP I have owned in that time has been a workstation for the type of work I do.

Yeah. It made sense as a distinction when it was a separate CPU architecture entirely. The era of SPARC, Alpha, PA-RISC, etc. Companies like SGI and Sun. That's a quarter century ago.

Wikipedia speaks of "the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment", and for the present day, lists these potential differentiators:

A workstation-class PC may have some of the following features:

• Larger number of memory sockets which use registered (buffered) modules[36]
• Multiple displays[36]
• Reliable high-performance graphics card[36]
• Multiple processor sockets, powerful CPUs[36]
• Run reliable operating system with advanced features[36]
• Support for ECC memory[36]

Note that it says "may have". And even so, the 14-inch MacBook Pro ticks most of these boxes. It supports multiple displays, has a high-performance graphics card (not the highest performance you can get as a consumer, but high nonetheless), has ten CPU cores, and runs a UNIX.

Its memory isn't ECC nor does it come on sockets. That's really about it.

 

[mdatwood]

Yeah. It made sense as a distinction when it was a separate CPU architecture entirely. The era of SPARC, Alpha, PA-RISC, etc. Companies like SGI and Sun. That's a quarter century ago.

I had a SPARC station at one of my first jobs...thanks for reminding me how old I am

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I had a SPARC station at one of my first jobs...thanks for reminding me how old I am

My first career office environment was run on a Wang minicomputer.

 

[Romain_H]

My first career office environment was run on a Wang minicomputer.

Mine too. Wang VS