M1 Chip Beats GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560 for Graphics Performance

[harmoniumfarfisa]

Okay so they got the chip right and that's exciting.

The integration and software side is very behind though.

With the latest iPhones where a superior model with a better camera sensor can't provide superior results, there's some growing pains happening here. I can't put my finger on it.

 

[Hyperchaotic]

Exactly my 8 core 3Ghz (3.9Ghz boost) Xeon and 64GB with two GPUs with 3GB of RAM video RAM per GPU that and support for up to 6 4K displays is only slightly impressed but isn't sweating.

But where did all y'all find a ultralight laptop with the configuration is what I wanna know, that's like a high end workstation!

 

[filterdecay]

ok show us non synthetics. We will see them soon enough. We can also judge the m1's ability to chew on x86 code. The thing most people will need it to do.

 

[iBug2]

I do not think Apple will have GPU hardware to touch those PC parts for a long time, long time.

I think they will get there next year. They have to. Otherwise they won't be able to release new iMacs. No AS computer Apple will release will be slower than the Intel one it replaces. It has to be faster, much faster. So since the current iMacs come with Navi 5700XT, whatever Apple has in store for the iMac has to be substantially faster than that. So that will put it in the same league as the highest end gpu's of today.

 

[Realityck]

Apple's M1 processor often surpasses the graphics performance of desktop GPUs, including the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560, according to a new benchmark submission spotted by Tom's Hardware.

Ok the very first question that comes to mind is how come these graphics performance Fps are so high versus the metal score of the M1? Example https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-8-core-gpu-is-equal-to-gtx-1060-6gb.2267273/

Metal Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser

gtx 1060 6gb metal: 18441

m1 gpu: 18656

Look at Metal Benchmarks on GeekBench

Now excuse me for questioning what sounds like phenomenal news, but the internal GPU with a few cores is now radically besting what's shown on Geekbench for other discrete very large GPU cards? Help me understand why this article wasn't challenged a bit more. Thanks. PS I know the above image applies to CL but the scores are not that far apart when I ran metal vs CL on Macs.

 

[pshufd]

Ok the very first question that comes to mind is how come these graphics performance Fps are so high versus the metal score of the M1? Example https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-8-core-gpu-is-equal-to-gtx-1060-6gb.2267273/

Metal Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser

gtx 1060 6gb metal: 18441

m1 gpu: 18656

Look at Metal Benchmarks on GeekBench

Now excuse me for questioning what sounds like phenomenal news, but the internal GPU with a few cores is now radically besting what's shown on Geekbench for other discrete very large GPU cards? Help me understand why this article wasn't challenged a bit more. Thanks.

My GTX 1050 Ti gets 21,603 on GB5 OpenCL. The high score is 21,977 in the database. That one might be overclocked.

 

[chetzar]

How do you propose putting a $1000 graphics card into a $999 laptop and keeping the price at $999?
How do you propose putting a 300W graphics card into a 30W laptop and having it work at all?
How do you propose putting an 11.5" x5.5"X 2" card into a MacBook Air Form factor without interdimensional pockets?
How do you propose cooling the 300W card without fans on liquid in a MacBook air form factor?

Please, enlighten us with your brilliant engineering. No one is saying it is the fastest GFX ever built. They said it was a fine first effort and an ENTRY LEVEL chip. They haven't released a flagship model yet. Pretending it is the top end because it is the only one is willful ignorance.

If you want to run the latest Elder Scrolls game at 8K at 900FPS, you don't buy a laptop to do it. Wrong tool for the wrong job.

I think you're missing the point. From a hardware perspective, it is not all that impressive to be on par or better than a BUDGET dGPU that is 2-3 years old. We are not talking about being on par with a 1080, 2070, or 2080. Intel and AMD have iGPU's that can be on par with to 1050. Yes, it was a 75w TDP card when it launched, but technology has evolved and that same performance can obviously be achieved with a much smaller thermal footprint.

That being said, that level of graphics will WILL be good for an entry level MacBook. I think we need to see what their GPU is capable of for a 16" MBP, the iMac, iMac Pro, and if they go full bore, the Mac Pro.

That being said, you cannot that Mac's will be capable of gaming without:
1) A higher performing GPU, dedicated or integrated, because a 1050 will not run most modern games adequately
AND
2) The ability to run Windows. Like it or not, Windows is THE gaming platform. Not OS X. Look at where developers are and where they make their games: Windows, X-Box, PS5.

IMO, OS X really boils down to a platform of UI and/or Eco-System preference. For professional workloads, which Apple claims they are targeting, Windows does everything just as well, if not better, than a Mac (particularly with the NVidia lockout).

I love the using my MacBook (except the butterfly keyboard), I prefer the Mac UI, look and feel, and connectivity with my phone over W10, but at the end of the day, that's really what OS X is, a preference. Apple has always trailed in performance for the sake of stability - problem is, that is that's not really an issue for Windows anymore.

Add in that the memory is baked into the SoC, and if that carries over to the MacPro, they will have shot themselves in the foot again. Actually, come to think of it, I don't think an Apple SoC for the MacPro sounds very appealing at all - it negates a lot of the advantages of a tower style desktop.

 

[ader42]

Many of us do not care about gaming at all... 3D software like Maya maybe, but games? nope.
These are low end laptops, for mild photoshop work and not gaming or 3d gfx workstation devices.
It sure feels like the anti-Apple crowd are scared...

 

[Realityck]

Here is a link to the test results that Toms Hardware article used

GFXBench - Unified cross-platform 3D graphics benchmark database

The first unified cross-platform 3D graphics benchmark database for comparing Android, iOS, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT capable devices based on graphics processing power.

gfxbench.com

If your curious to comparing the Intel based Mac with discrete GPU against metal you have currently just install GFX Bench Metal app from the Apple Store. I though the M1 did quite well against my 2015 iMac 4 Ghz i7 + M395X GPU. Some tests M1 did better other it didn't. Comparing results from link to my Mac.

 

[iAlexandre]

This is very impressive for a MacBook Air. Yes this is not on par with educated GPU but you all need to remember that this is a MacBook Air and Mac mini with no dedicated Graphic Card. This is very impressive.

The fact that you can now play games with a decent FPS is a huge leap forward.

All this for $999 is very very accessible.

I can't wait to see the M1X (or something) with dedicated graphic card on high end laptops like the MacBook Pro 16.

My MacBook Pro 16 is a very capable machine game wise and it will be even more impressive with the M1.

 

[tubular]

Having deja vu flashbacks to the introduction of the HomePod, when the forum was filled with unfavorable apples-to-oranges comparisons to a fifty-dollar Echo, rather than about the sound quality that's the core of the product. Now, it's the other way around -- the integrated graphics capabilities of the M1 CPU are being unfavorably compared to RTX 3000 series dedicated gamer graphics cards. Miscategorization in, garbage out.

 

[entropys]

Chetzah, nice shifting of the goalposts. Almost respect inducing.
bottom line, apple’s first foray into producing a low power, low end mobile chip with an iGPU that is so much better than competing iGPUs, people are looking around to see how it fairs against much more powerful desktop dGPUs. The dGPUs they used were more about showing comparable performance.

 

[lkrupp]

Having deja vu flashbacks to the introduction of the HomePod, when the forum was filled with unfavorable apples-to-oranges comparisons to a fifty-dollar Echo, rather than about the sound quality that's the core of the product. Now, it's the other way around -- the integrated graphics capabilities of the M1 CPU are being unfavorably compared to RTX 3000 series dedicated gamer graphics cards. Miscategorization in, garbage out.

Well, that’s how it goes in the MacRumors forums. Obfuscate and misdirect to make Apple’s offerings look substandard. Never mind the fact that the M1 is the first Apple Silicon SOC and is offered in entry level machines. Even when the M1X, or M2, or whatever Apple calls the desktop class SOC that’s surely coming for the iMac and Pro is released we’ll se the same thing.

 

[djgamble]

With a few obvious caveats...
1. We have no FPS scores, oh wait, most modern games haven't been ported to ARM [facepalm]
2. This is promising for low-end, fanless tech (mostly because Apple's history with graphics performance is abysmal) but cheap, mid-range x86-based WinTel rigs will still be a looot faster. Remember, WinTel users aren't restricted to using 2017 tech for graphics.

 

[jacjustjac]

I can see the ‘Pro’ M1 being all about increases GPU power, for the computers usually with a dGPU. My money is on it being called the ‘M1X’, and you’ll have the same chip in the top end 14” MBP and 16” MBP. So the only difference will be screen size, prompting more people to choose the 14” for portability, and a new 22” or 28” iMac for home use.

 

[name99]

Quite impressive for a iGPU. Though we need to see if Apple can keep up with things like shaders, ray tracing, and other graphical niceties. 300 FPS is great, but not if that means the game has to miss out on tessellation.

Why do we need to see if Apple can "keep up" with them? We can look at the data

https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Set-Tables.pdf

There's a whole lot of stuff on the iOS (and now M1 side) that isn't on the Mac side, and very little in the other direction.

Tessellation was there in A9.
Shaders are one place Apple is substantially ahead (particularly in the overhead of scheduling shaders and having them feed into each other).
Ray tracing gets better every year and will likely be on Apple GPUs in stand-alone usable form before it's on the competition.

 

[seek3r]

So what you're saying is, Intel and AMD should have made laptop processors that don't need PCIe and LPDDR. Instead, they're beaten by a company who is new to the game.

FWIW Apple is hardly new to the game. Hell, they were one of the other two companies beside Acorn to band together to create ARM to begin with, and they've been designing their own chips for a long time with ever increasing experience and production - they've shipped a *lot* of their own silicon before this point. Also they have more money than pretty much anyone else to pour into it; Apple's market cap is more than 10x Intel's and more than 20x AMD's, and they're sitting on hundreds of billions in cash.

 

[ruka.snow]

Why do we need to see if Apple can "keep up" with them? We can look at the data

https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Set-Tables.pdf

There's a whole lot of stuff on the iOS (and now M1 side) that isn't on the Mac side, and very little in the other direction.

Tessellation was there in A9.
Shaders are one place Apple is substantially ahead (particularly in the overhead of scheduling shaders and having them feed into each other).
Ray tracing gets better every year and will likely be on Apple GPUs in stand-alone usable form before it's on the competition.

Way to miss the point....

 

[StefDeLux]

I think they will get there next year. They have to. Otherwise they won't be able to release new iMacs. No AS computer Apple will release will be slower than the Intel one it replaces. It has to be faster, much faster. So since the current iMacs come with Navi 5700XT, whatever Apple has in store for the iMac has to be substantially faster than that. So that will put it in the same league as the highest end gpu's of today.

And what exactly would prevent Apple from using Nvidia or AMD discrete GPUs in other machines?

 

[mabhatter]

...that’s it? 1050ti is not impressive at all

Only like 5% of PC owners buy GPUs, even fewer for gaming. The vast majority just uses what came in the $399 package from the Big Box store. Compared to the default “Intel Integrated” a ti1050 is an order of magnitude more powerful... and EVERY Mac will have at least that much horsepower going forward. (With programming that matches iOS devices, so there’s lots of devs on mobile that know how.)

 

[JeepGuy]

Exactly my 8 core 3Ghz (3.9Ghz boost) Xeon and 64GB with two GPUs with 3GB of RAM video RAM per GPU that and support for up to 6 4K displays is only slightly impressed but isn't sweating.

If apple can come out with a compact arm based computer that can spank my current Dell workstation at a fraction of the price, I would switch in a heart beat.

 

[cycomiko]

These models only replace the Intel model which only had 2 ports as well. They still sell the 4 port versions. My guess is next Spring we will see the 4 port versions replaced with a chip that has enough PCIe lanes to support it.

"these models" also include a mac mini, which has 2USBC (an 2 A ports), while the old mac mini running intel had four USBc and two A.

 

[stinhambo]

If (and it's a reasonably big 'if') the M1 can sustain performance at 1050ti levels, then that's potentially pretty exciting news for gamers.

That's a level where you can play just about any modern game at low or medium settings and resolution. It's not going to impress compared to a 3090, but for game publishers it means that the Mac market for AAA titles suddenly grows from iMac and 15/16 inch MacBook owners to every single owner of a new Mac.

I hope this will represent a tipping point where AAA game publishers might actually return to the Mac over the coming years for their biggest titles.

I definitely agree with you about games developers (AAA titles are pushing it a bit) but proper gaming won't be available until Apple supports high refresh and Freesync (Vsync).

 

[iosuser]

Some of you here are seriously demanding. I for one am seriously impressed if true, that the new Macbooks can match a GTX1050ti.

I build PCs for fun. I have 6 boxes of varying sizes here, all except one have discrete GPU ranging from GT1030 to RTX2060S. The smallest being a tiny 3-liter case which I modded a GTX1650 to fit into. I do have a GTX1050ti running 24/7 in a HTPC (remember those??). Someone mentioned that Intel and AMD both have an integrated GPU that tops the GTX1050ti. I would sure love to know which it is. Even the Ryzen 5 4650G has only half the performance of a GTX1050ti.

 

[LenticularTapir]

It's about 4x better than the intel GPU it's replacing. Given Intel GPUs are considered garbage, and the 1050 is an old, low end card, this doesn't really mean much at all. The M1 chip could run circles around with Wii or 360 too, but nobody would consider that anything great either.

The 1050Ti and 1050 aren't the same thing.

If these benchmarks are to be believed and the M1 is indeed faster than a 1050Ti, that puts it ahead of the PS4 and Xbox One S, and within striking distance of the PS4 Pro.

That also puts it in the same ballpark as a GTX960, which was the original minimum spec for the Oculus Rift VR headset.

That this is an iGPU being put in low-powered, low-end Macs is pretty incredible and personally I find it very hard to believe.

But with the first M1-equipped Macs now landing in customers' hands, we'll know for sure soon enough.