New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

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Discussion

TimmyWimmyWoo

4,228 posts

168 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
The first Geekbench scores have surfaced, the M1 Air is faster than the 16-inch MBP apparently.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-ai...

ant1973

5,606 posts

192 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
TimmyWimmyWoo said:
The first Geekbench scores have surfaced, the M1 Air is faster than the 16-inch MBP apparently.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-ai...
The figures look fairly astonishing to my admittedly untrained eye. How are intel and amd going to compete with that - at least in relation to laptops?

ATG

19,409 posts

259 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
ant1973 said:
TimmyWimmyWoo said:
The first Geekbench scores have surfaced, the M1 Air is faster than the 16-inch MBP apparently.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-ai...
The figures look fairly astonishing to my admittedly untrained eye. How are intel and amd going to compete with that - at least in relation to laptops?
The comparisons are all to other Macs and it's a single benchmark. That should ring an alarm bell.

budgie smuggler

4,884 posts

146 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
TimmyWimmyWoo said:
The first Geekbench scores have surfaced, the M1 Air is faster than the 16-inch MBP apparently.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-ai...
Geekbench is not reliable tool, for example for a long time Apple's A12X chip was rated as being faster at multicore performance than the AMD Epyc 7501 which is a 170w 32 core server chip. (Seems they've deleted the results for that now.)

Cinebench or similar would be more useful. I was cautiously impressed that it was faster at compiling though. I am assuming they haven't cheated by compiling for different targets.

plasticpig

12,924 posts

212 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
xeny said:
or more than one external monitor, or the ability to run x86 VMs, or use software that is CPU intensive (e/g/ makes heavy use of AVX(2) and not likely to be re-released for ARM.

They cover a large fraction of Mac laptop use cases but the corner cases will catch a fair few people out.
You will be able to run X86 VMs on M1 Macs. Parallels has already announced support for M1 Macs.


130R

6,703 posts

193 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
budgie smuggler said:
Geekbench is not reliable tool, for example for a long time Apple's A12X chip was rated as being faster at multicore performance than the AMD Epyc 7501 which is a 170w 32 core server chip. (Seems they've deleted the results for that now.)

Cinebench or similar would be more useful. I was cautiously impressed that it was faster at compiling though. I am assuming they haven't cheated by compiling for different targets.
Cinebench R23 has just been released with support for M1 so that should give a true comparison

xeny

3,640 posts

65 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
plasticpig said:
You will be able to run X86 VMs on M1 Macs. Parallels has already announced support for M1 Macs.
but back to CPU emulation. My experience of that is not fantastic even with a significant performance advantage on the native CPU platform.

ThisInJapanese

10,687 posts

213 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
My wife has a 7-year-old Mac Book Air, which is due to be replaced. With a £1000 budget, I was pointing her to a refurbished 13" Mac Book Pro on the Apple website.

However, the new base Air is really interesting at that price.
Pros
- Better battery life
- Better performance
Cons
- Lesser screen resolution (Air is lower than MBP)
- Lesser storage (512gb MBP vs 256gb Air)

She's forever running out of room on her current machine, and the lovely Apple pricing model means an extra 256Gb is £250! At the moment I think the refurbished Mac Book Pro seems better value.

plasticpig

12,924 posts

212 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
xeny said:
but back to CPU emulation. My experience of that is not fantastic even with a significant performance advantage on the native CPU platform.
Mainly use a Mac for IOS development so it's a win for me. Does beg the question whether there will be an IPad Pro style Mac though.

budgie smuggler

4,884 posts

146 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
130R said:
budgie smuggler said:
Geekbench is not reliable tool, for example for a long time Apple's A12X chip was rated as being faster at multicore performance than the AMD Epyc 7501 which is a 170w 32 core server chip. (Seems they've deleted the results for that now.)

Cinebench or similar would be more useful. I was cautiously impressed that it was faster at compiling though. I am assuming they haven't cheated by compiling for different targets.
Cinebench R23 has just been released with support for M1 so that should give a true comparison
Just seen that AnandTech have tested it using SpecInt2006 and found it's bloody fast, bettering a i7-1185G7 ... while only drawing 10w! eek

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon...

Edited by budgie smuggler on Thursday 12th November 14:19

cobra kid

4,466 posts

227 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
page3 said:
Thinking of the Air for my 12 year old. With the ability to run iOS apps I think it’ll be the perfect machine for him, especially as he won’t accept Windows.

I will (on the other hand) carry on with my 2012 Air. Probably hacked to run Big Sur.
He won't accept Windows?

If I'm buying it, he gets what he gets.

mmm-five

10,607 posts

271 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
budgie smuggler said:
Just seen that AnandTech have tested it using SpecInt2006 and found it's bloody fast, bettering a i7-1185G7 ... while only drawing 10w! eek

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon...

Edited by budgie smuggler on Thursday 12th November 14:19
That's a benchmark to the A14 in the iPhone 12/iPad.

The M1 has more 2 more 'performance' cores, and as the single core speed is already reported to be to be faster than the A14 you can assume the multi-core score will probably double too.



Edited by mmm-five on Thursday 12th November 14:39

budgie smuggler

4,884 posts

146 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
mmm-five said:
That's a benchmark to the A14 in the iPhone 12/iPad.

The M1 has more 2 more 'performance' cores, and as the single core speed is already reported to be to be faster than the A14 you can assume the multi-core score will probably double too.



Edited by mmm-five on Thursday 12th November 14:39
Whoops you're right thanks. If the figures are accurate in real world use, this could be a game changer!

nikaiyo2

4,249 posts

182 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
ThisInJapanese said:
My wife has a 7-year-old Mac Book Air, which is due to be replaced. With a £1000 budget, I was pointing her to a refurbished 13" Mac Book Pro on the Apple website.

However, the new base Air is really interesting at that price.
Pros
- Better battery life
- Better performance
Cons
- Lesser screen resolution (Air is lower than MBP)
- Lesser storage (512gb MBP vs 256gb Air)

She's forever running out of room on her current machine, and the lovely Apple pricing model means an extra 256Gb is £250! At the moment I think the refurbished Mac Book Pro seems better value.
Would it not make sense to get her 2TB cloud storage? You would get 3 years for £250...

ThisInJapanese

10,687 posts

213 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
nikaiyo2 said:
Would it not make sense to get her 2TB cloud storage? You would get 3 years for £250...
Yes it would, however, as a concept it doesn't work for her...

sjg

7,314 posts

252 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
plasticpig said:
You will be able to run X86 VMs on M1 Macs. Parallels has already announced support for M1 Macs.
You could run Windows with Virtual PC on G4/G5 Macs back in the PowerPC days. Performance was from dire to barely acceptable depending on how fast your Mac was.

These days I have a quick Windows machine for work so quite tempted to pick up an Air for all the non-work stuff.

Edited by sjg on Thursday 12th November 16:33

loudlashadjuster

4,685 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
ThisInJapanese said:
nikaiyo2 said:
Would it not make sense to get her 2TB cloud storage? You would get 3 years for £250...
Yes it would, however, as a concept it doesn't work for her...
Just configure it as a drive? She'd never know. (assuming iCloud can be configured like Google Drive, Dropbox etc.)

leglessAlex

4,795 posts

128 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
cobra kid said:
page3 said:
Thinking of the Air for my 12 year old. With the ability to run iOS apps I think it’ll be the perfect machine for him, especially as he won’t accept Windows.

I will (on the other hand) carry on with my 2012 Air. Probably hacked to run Big Sur.
He won't accept Windows?

If I'm buying it, he gets what he gets.
Yeah I thought that was kind of funny, too. At 12 I think dad would have laughed at me and said "you'll get what your given" hehe

I am very very tempted to get an Air just to see how usable it is, I had one last year in 'top spec' but it was horifically slow for what I wanted to do. Very excited about the new chips, if the leaked Geekbench 5 scores are accurate and they don't suffer from crazy thermal throttling, they'll rewrite the thin and light handbook. The scores indicate it outperforming my i9 16" Pro!

JulianHJ

8,557 posts

249 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
I'm hanging on at least for the 14" mini-LED MacBook Pro rumoured to be released some time next year. My current 2013 rMBP is still going strong, so I'm in no rush to upgrade.

bitchstewie

45,610 posts

197 months

Thursday 12th November 2020
quotequote all
Replying mostly to tag onto the thread.

I'm typing this on a 2015 13" i5 MBP that I keep threatening to replace.

If the reviews match the benchmarks it sounds like an Air is a viable replacement.