As with the old PowerPC days and Motorola, Intel was having trouble delivering updates on time, thus severely limiting Apple's ability to update their hardware completely disrupting the product cycle. Others can explain better I than problematic Intel's power consumption, back-door security issues and software interoperability were for Apple, but they were most definitely NOT an asset. Apple is being pragmatic, rather than arrogant, plus their ability to control the software/hardware ecosystem from toe to tail is a major bonus. I wouldn't run around calling anybody "arrogant," but that shoe would seem to fit Intel far more than Apple.
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First Geekbench Scores for New Mac Mini With M2 Pro Surface, Beats M1 Max
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The burning question is M2 Pro vs M1 Max which arises because a 32GB M2 Pro, 12 CPU/19GPU Mini costs about the same as a 32GB M1 10 CPU/24 GPU Max Studio (YMMV depending on what country you live in and whether you think 10GB Ethernet should be included - but they're still very close). I think 24 M1-era GPU cores vs. 19 (probably) slightly faster M2-era GPU cores, plus what this article shows is faster CPU performance is going to be swings and roundabouts and very dependent on what your actual workload is.
So if you need to get a high demand CPU/GPU job done using a desktop......then yes I think most people would want the fastest option.
It is great that Apple does it better in terms of performance per watt, and if you are some extreme enviromentalist or power costs are super high where you are, that will matter. However for most people, using a desktop to do these kinds of workloads, for a living and time is money, they simply do not care about the performance per watt, they care about performance.
I have a large desk at home. My M1 Mac mini, with 27inch 4K monitor is on one end. I do all of my "computing" on it (typing this now) and it is silent and I love that. It sips power with my needs, email, web browser, teams, zoom, VPN into work, Secure CRT/SSH into various devices.
On the other end of my desk is a my gaming PC. It is a 11700K, 3070ti, 64gig, 3TB of PCIE M.2 SSD (1TB boot drive, 2TB drive for games). I have it in a large case, Phantek 500, with 3 - 140mm fans in front, 1 - 140mm rear fan, Noctua 15s CPU fan. While not even close to the Mac mini in terms of quiet, it is actually quiet because those fans are PWM and they never get loud, even after an hour of gaming. The power usage in comparison is off the charts I have no doubt...but I do not care because I want to game.
I was kind of disappointed that Apple went with A15 cores rather than leap to A16. Would've been a bigger jump in performance. But for some reason (cost? timing?) they stuck with older generation. It seems at this point Apple is relying more on TSMC to boost performance and efficiency... Maybe it's time for a radical redesign?
Don't get me wrong, a geekbench score of 15,000+ in a box the size of a mini is insane.
Apple ain’t stupid. And they didn’t start building their own silicon to suck.
Aren’t they “laptops” now?
Apple Mac 'notebooks' become 'laptops' in branding change
Apple has started changing how it refers to its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks, now being referred to as Mac laptops.
9to5mac.com
This is something one doesn’t see often on the Intel side. “Hey, look at the performance of this desktop, pretty good right? Well, here’s a laptop WITH THE SAME PERFORMANCE! Even on battery!” I’d like to see someone compare the least performant Apple Silicon with the least performant Intel/AMD solutions
It's similar to how Intel works — their Xeon CPUs tend to be derived from much older laptop/desktop CPUs.
They seem to start where the volume is (Ax), which drives down cost, then use the same cores but at higher clock and additional options on the higher end (Mx), then higher (Mx Pro, Max), even higher (Mx Ultra) and eventually smaller (Sx). That's the pattern we've seen with the AxX (e.g. A12X), and it seems to continue with the M1 and M2 thus far.
On top of that, just as with the AxX, we're seeing a slower release cycle: the Ax is annual, but the Mx seems to average 18 months, just like the AxX did.
Therefore, I expect the M3 Ultra this fall, the M3 in winter this year (about 3 years after the M1), and the M3 Pro next summer. Those will all be based on the A16, even though the A17 will come out in the meantime.
Yes, it seems they haven't done much to improve the design for a few years now.
Yep.
Most people don't use a desktop. At this point, even many people with high-end computers no longer use a desktop.
That's nice, but I assure you competing with gaming towers isn't something Apple is interested in.
I'd agree with you in 2003. These days, most people would absolutely do "that kind of work" on a laptop.
As for plugged in: it's not just that you need to plug it in. It's also warmer and louder. And it's either thicker, or needs to throttle a lot.
I look at it like this: the more Macs which can meet or exceed the Floating Point Operations of the PS5 is always a welcome addition, no matter how they get it done.
Might speed up OS Updates
Or any other task that needs decompression. I guess they might not know, but still feel itAnd I think that’s fair because 99% of the people buying the machines won’t expose the thermal limitations of the notebooks. I’d guess that, for the vast majority of Geekbench scores, that benchmark run was likely the most effort that system had expended up until then and it won’t see that much stress until the NEXT time the person runs Geekbench.
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
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Yeah, just another reason why I never click on anything MaxTech. Just not worth the minutes.
What are energy prices in Europe? Realistically to run my wife's m1 8 hours a day (At full blast) 365 days per year would cost me about $9 per YEAR. My Much more powerful desktop at full load would be about $90/year.
That's a huge percentage for what it is, but it's NOTHING compared to my 3 KWH air-conditioner, or 2.5 KWH Stove, or a 15 KWH Emergency heating element on a heat pump. These are all on or two orders of magnitude more energy hungry.
Except for that in most jurisdictions it’s illegal to drive 150mph, much less 180!
Wait a second! I think you just came up with Apples new ad slogan! “So fast, it should be illegal!”
And that’s ONLY if the scale of the task is in a human recognizable quantity. For most things on computers, if a task takes 1 second now, but .75 seconds on an updated system, even though that’s a big difference, the human wouldn’t notice it.
Because in 2020 Intels best iMac CPU was destroyed by apples entry level MacBook Air M1 chip. (outside of multi core of course)
We had a few years of insane leads and now the competition is catching up in speed, but not efficiency.
Mac Studio better gpu, better cooling, sd card slot. Front ports. Can anyone confirm if M1 Max has 2x the video engines as the m2 pro?
As expected the fastest chips are the quickest to lose their value. With 3nm there will come yet another core-count boost to even higher multi-core scores. I don't know why some people pretend there is no progress?
