Chart: 4 M1 SoCs & discussion

[silentstorm]

synthetic benchmarks are best case a starting point for further real world examinations.

The most attractive part of the Apple SOCs is the low power consumption for CPU and GPU. As a user I care about the electric bill for my tools and the heat that needs to be pulled away by the AC in my office.

In case in real world I'll have to wait 2 seconds more on a 30 minutes tasks while saving $ 1 on the electrical bill I'd always vote for the lower noise and lower cost option. In fact the M1 studio might be a few seconds faster in many real world tasks while saving power.

Nothing to complain about.

Well, time is money. Can that $1 buy back 2 sec? Hahahahaha~ Anyway you can always put that $1 extra into operating cost and get your tax relief. Hahahahaha~

Seriously, the Ultra has plenty of power and I don't think anyone using it will complain regardless of the things they throw at it.

Talking about power, the Ultra is not far off actually. The Max eats 60W, and putting 2 together eat 120W at base. And the Max when at boost mode eats about 95W, so that makes it around 190W. And people who want crunching power are not going to care for 250W draw for a cpu. But I have to agree the power efficiency bit, many hours on battery and no fans is a HUGE PLUS! I only wish apple makes the Ultra runs a little faster at 3.5GHz, that should keep many people happy for a very long time.

People are happy with the M1 baseline and I am very happy with the M1 MAX and I am sure people will be utterly happy with their M1 Ultra for years to come. Optimized software on MACs just shines - FCP is IMHO unbeatable in perceived performance.

the Mac Studio daws maximum 360 W - total system load. That a bit more than those new Intel and AMD chips alone without any GPU

As long as the software codes are native M1, the speed improvement can be felt by anyone. Youtube has videos where people slap 8 layers of prores video using DaVinci Resolve and it playback in real time. Similar performance was observed on Premiere Pro.

I read somewhere that the Studio Ultra has a internal power supply of just 390W. Assuming the SoC runs 200W max, the ssd, controller & T2 chips, wifi, etc takes another 100W, 390W sounds about right. The last time I heard of 380W psu for a computer was during the Tiger OS days.

The price, like you said, is really hard to beat! For $700 you get the whole good performance computer less the KB, mouse and monitor. For the same money, one can only go for i3/Ryzen 3 series system. The only thing Intel/AMD look good is when you need expansion flexibility.

What do you want to expand?

Buy the machine as you want it to be and add storage with a NAS. All else is fine as it is and replace your machine in 4..5 years with the next version - you'll be able to sell it for 30..40 % of your purchasing price and when you deduct it to the tax office you'll get in germany 45 % back from the community => 10..20 % real cash out and you'll always have the best system available.

Well not everyone lives in Germany and not every country runs on Germany policies. So lucky you! Hahahaha~

There are people who use the i3 to make their own NAS or server for home use, so the flexibility to put a RAID card or extra optical fiber networking card is a must have. Using dongles and protocol converters on the Mini or Studio can be messy and also compatibility problems.

I am using two NAS - DS1817+ with 8x 10 TB and DS1821+ with 8x 18 TB - both in raid 6 with the old one acting as the backup for the rater new one - both with 10 GbE - hardly any complaint about sped and flexibility - both running cool at a few Watt only - and not in m office - which is almost more important than the speed - i hate fan noise - even the faintest one.

There are people who want to control their own NAS and networking. Nothing wrong with that. With the recent QNAP and Asustor NAS ransome ware attack, if I have the skills set, I'll create my own NAS too.

Different strokes for different folks. The Mini and Studio can do so many things really well. :-D

I see nothing these MACs can't do outside of gaming - which is not my goal anyway - I drive real sports and V8 cars

Joking aside - the new studio looks amazing and I am tempted to get one just for fun - it's a bargain in investment compare to it's computational power.

Actually the M1 Max can game pretty well too (eg. Tomb Raider), just not top of the line like a RTX3090 can, and that graphics card alone sucks 350W. I'm also tempted to get the 48 gpu cores 64GB Studio just for fun! :-D

 

[Henry Richardson]

Thank you for checking. Was this on an M1 MacBook Air 8gb/256gb 8/7? And run on the full size GFX 100S photo?

Yes to both questions.

Each time I exited PhotoLab, as it said I should, but I did not reboot. It takes longer to downsample the image, as I did for the post, but not the timings.

IMO PhotoLab isn't particularly good at downsampling. The best algorithm is Bicubic and there is no sharpening. Too bad Irfanview (Lanczos) doesn't run on MacOS. [Added: XnView has Lanczos option.]

I was planning to get a Macbook 16, but I can't complain about 36 seconds for 100Mp! Maybe I'll wait for a newer model with HDMI 2.1.

Absolutely. That is very impressive.

Back in 2016 I bought one of these:

HP Spectre x360 13.3" (thin, no fan)
i5-6200u, 2 cores, (2.3ghz, Turbo Boost 2.8ghz)
Intel HD Graphics 520
8gb RAM
256gb SSD

I still have it, but don't use it much. Very well made and has never given me a moment of problems. The size is very similar to the Macbook Air. Although your M1 MBA and this old x360 both have 8gb/256gb the M1 is, of course, much more powerful. Having said that, I used the x360 in October for a road trip to Kyoto for a week or so. Before going I loaded the current Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and my Topaz programs. Lightroom ran pretty well on it. Small screen, of course. But I mostly just imported, added keywords, etc. and only edited a few. Tried Topaz programs and they worked pretty well too, but not fast. I also had my browser with about 15 tabs open, Notepad, a couple of Explorer windows, and Faststone running. Then when I got home I went back to using my regular computer.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Tom_N]

The price, like you said, is really hard to beat! For $700 you get the whole good performance computer less the KB, mouse and monitor. For the same money, one can only go for i3/Ryzen 3 series system. The only thing Intel/AMD look good is when you need expansion flexibility.

What do you want to expand?

It might be nice to have a M1-Pro-based Mini, with an extra rear-panel USB4 (TB4) port, to fill in the gap between the current M1 Minis and the new Mac Studios. Choosing the M1 Pro Mini over the M1 Mini would get you

• The ability to order 32 GB of RAM
• An 8-core or 10-core CPU with more of the cores being performance cores
• A 14-core or 16-core GPU
• Support for two USB-C (DP) or Thunderbolt monitors
• A third back-panel USB4 (Thunderbolt) port

Apple could set configurations and pricing something like this:

• $1099 for a Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD
• $1299 for a Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 32 GB of RAM (+$200), and a 256 GB SSD
• $1599 for a custom-order Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 10 CPU cores / 16 GPU cores (+$100), 32 GB of RAM (+$200), and a 512 GB SSD (+$200)

The $400 to go from a 32 GB / 512 GB M1 Pro Mini, to a 32 GB / 512 GB M1 Max Studio, would get you

• A 24-core GPU
• Support for four USB-C (DP) or Thunderbolt monitors
• A fourth back-panel USB4 (Thunderbolt) port
• Two front-panel USB-C ports
• A front-panel UHS-II SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader
• 10 Gbps Ethernet

So there would still be that "one more upgrade; just one more!" sucking at your wallet …

 

[robgendreau]

The price, like you said, is really hard to beat! For $700 you get the whole good performance computer less the KB, mouse and monitor. For the same money, one can only go for i3/Ryzen 3 series system. The only thing Intel/AMD look good is when you need expansion flexibility.

What do you want to expand?

It might be nice to have a M1-Pro-based Mini, with an extra rear-panel USB4 (TB4) port, to fill in the gap between the current M1 Minis and the new Mac Studios. Choosing the M1 Pro Mini over the M1 Mini would get you

• The ability to order 32 GB of RAM
• An 8-core or 10-core CPU with more of the cores being performance cores
• A 14-core or 16-core GPU
• Support for two USB-C (DP) or Thunderbolt monitors
• A third back-panel USB4 (Thunderbolt) port

Apple could set configurations and pricing something like this:

• $1099 for a Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD
• $1299 for a Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 32 GB of RAM (+$200), and a 256 GB SSD
• $1599 for a custom-order Mac Mini with a M1 Pro, 10 CPU cores / 16 GPU cores (+$100), 32 GB of RAM (+$200), and a 512 GB SSD (+$200)

The $400 to go from a 32 GB / 512 GB M1 Pro Mini, to a 32 GB / 512 GB M1 Max Studio, would get you

• A 24-core GPU
• Support for four USB-C (DP) or Thunderbolt monitors
• A fourth back-panel USB4 (Thunderbolt) port
• Two front-panel USB-C ports
• A front-panel UHS-II SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader
• 10 Gbps Ethernet

So there would still be that "one more upgrade; just one more!" sucking at your wallet …

I would think that other M1s would make there way into other machines. Even the 24" iMac perhaps. It's early days, and the product line seems a tad jumbled still. IIRC even some of the options on the laptops didn't make tons of sense from a price/value standpoint. And if the 27" iMac is gone (I think so) then perhaps a progression of minis to go with the Studio Display from budget to prosumer would be nice. Kind of like keeping that lens as you upgrade camera bodies.

 

[Henry Richardson]

Looks like CPU only was better than my 7-core (IIRC) GPU. Probably the order mattered, as some PL5 pages were probably already in memory due to MacOS scheduler, which explains why last test was fastest. This GFX 100S image is from a DPreview gallery. Order of tests:

• 36.23 seconds - Apple Neural Engine
• 108.41 - GPU Apple M1
• 107.21 - CPU only
• 31.32 - Auto selection

I was curious so I sent a message to Topaz asking them if they use the Neural Engine for Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI. I got this reply:

We use Neural Engine on M1 and Neural Engine + GPU on M1 Pro and M1 Max.

 

[Tom_N]

Looks like CPU only was better than my 7-core (IIRC) GPU. Probably the order mattered, as some PL5 pages were probably already in memory due to MacOS scheduler, which explains why last test was fastest. This GFX 100S image is from a DPreview gallery. Order of tests:

• 36.23 seconds - Apple Neural Engine
• 108.41 - GPU Apple M1
• 107.21 - CPU only
• 31.32 - Auto selection

I was curious so I sent a message to Topaz asking them if they use the Neural Engine for Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI. I got this reply:

We use Neural Engine on M1 and Neural Engine + GPU on M1 Pro and M1 Max.

If the memory bandwidth is there to let the Neural Engine and GPU work hard at the same time, it might make a lot of sense to split batch jobs between them.

One image might go through the Neural Engine; the next to the GPU; just like how supermarkets can check out customers faster when they have regular checkout lines open at the same time as self-checkout lines.

 

[QuietOC]

My current PC is a 4.9GHz 8-core 9700k with a Radeon RX 5600 XT and 32 GB of DDR4 3200 and 8TB of NVMe. I bought my girlfriend a Mac Book Air 8 GPU/16 GB/512 GB. It is a great machine for her--the extra GPU core was probably a silly purchase.

I've estimated the costs of Apple's M1 chips:

M1 7 $400
M1 8 $450
M1 Pro 8/14 $800
M1 Pro 10/14 $1000
M1 Pro 10/16 $1100
M1 Max 10/24 $1300
M1 Max 10/32 $1500
M1 Ultra 20/48 $2700 ($1350 per Max)
M1 Ultra 20/64 $3700 ($1850 per Max)

$100 per CPU performance core.

$50 per GPU core (M1, Pro)
$25 per GPU core (Max)
$125 per GPU core (Ultra)

$25 per GB of memory (M1, Pro)
$12.5 per GB of memory (Max, Ultra)

$0.78 per GB +256GB of SSD
$0.39 per GB +1TB and +2TB of SSD
$0.29 per GB +2TB and +4TB of SSD

There is always diminishing returns of adding more, but either version of the Max seems like a pretty good deal. The base Ultra is reasonable. The fully enabled Ultra is silly. The full 8 GPU M1 and 10/14 and full 10/16 versions of the Pro are not very good deals.

 

[Henry Richardson]

My current PC is a 4.9GHz 8-core 9700k with a Radeon RX 5600 XT and 32 GB of DDR4 3200 and 8TB of NVMe. I bought my girlfriend a Mac Book Air 8 GPU/16 GB/512 GB. It is a great machine for her--the extra GPU core was probably a silly purchase.

I've estimated the costs of Apple's M1 chips:

M1 7 $400
M1 8 $450
M1 Pro 8/14 $800
M1 Pro 10/14 $1000
M1 Pro 10/16 $1100
M1 Max 10/24 $1300
M1 Max 10/32 $1500
M1 Ultra 20/48 $2700 ($1350 per Max)
M1 Ultra 20/64 $3700 ($1850 per Max)

$100 per CPU performance core.

$50 per GPU core (M1, Pro)
$25 per GPU core (Max)
$125 per GPU core (Ultra)

$25 per GB of memory (M1, Pro)
$12.5 per GB of memory (Max, Ultra)

$0.78 per GB +256GB of SSD
$0.39 per GB +1TB and +2TB of SSD
$0.29 per GB +2TB and +4TB of SSD

There is always diminishing returns of adding more, but either version of the Max seems like a pretty good deal. The base Ultra is reasonable. The fully enabled Ultra is silly. The full 8 GPU M1 and 10/14 and full 10/16 versions of the Pro are not very good deals.

All the prices are interesting. How did you come up with them?

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Henry Richardson]

Awhile back I recall seeing a video or reading somewhere that the M1 computers (M1 Mac Mini, M1 MacBook Air, iMac) have fast SSDs. Faster than the Intel Macs and faster than most Windows PCs. I also saw something about how the M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra computers have even faster SSDs than the M1 computers. Of course, it is nice to have very fast SSDs, but it is particularly important since there is often swapping going on. A very fast SSD can make that swapping much less noticeable. I have also read that the compression and decompression for data in memory is done in hardware and very fast so that also helps a lot. These are 2 of the reasons why one can often get by pretty well with less memory than with the earlier Intel Macs. I am sure there are other reasons as well.

Feel free to correct anything I got wrong and also to add your knowledge to this thread. I am interested in this and find the architecture to be elegant. And that is on top of the change to a RISC CPU.

I suppose later there will be a series of M2 SoCs.

The SSD speed is the same as those PCIe 4 SSD, not any faster in comparison, but is plenty PLENTY fast.

The ram embedded is DDR5 ram running at 5000 speed (from reviews), not the current DDR5 ram sticks on the shelves running at 4800. Besides faster speed, the embedded ram has lower latency as well.

Another thing to note is that the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra has many codecs built-in, not just decoder. For video use, those are very useful and efficient. Neural engines boost for those AI software. This SoC is really a game changer. Can't wait for all apps to be ported to native M1 architecture.

I believe if you have enough ram, the swapping should be min. So getting a 32GB M1 Pro is the min one should buy IMO. Hopefully the new Air comes with basic M1 with 32GB option, that would be enough for many people's use. :-D

This is an interesting video. No one would load their computer down with so many programs, heavy duty programs, running at the same time, but it gives an extreme stress test to see how things work out.

16GB vs 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook - Multitasking RAM TEST

In this video, we run various benchmarks like video editing, photo editing, programming, and much more between the 16GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook Pro and the 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook Pro!

We run all of these tests to find out if it's actually worth spending the extra $400 on the 32GB of RAM or NOT!

$400 extra to go from 16gb to 32gb.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[silentstorm]

$400 extra to go from 16gb to 32gb.

Yes, it's a known fact apple charges a premium over others for the same parts. That's why now they solder everything and customers have no choice but to pay that premium. No option to upgrade ram or storage, you pay for what you want to use at the point of purchase. Any upgrade is to purchase a new machine, unlike in the past.

 

[Tom_N]

$400 extra to go from 16gb to 32gb.

Yes, it's a known fact apple charges a premium over others for the same parts. That's why now they solder everything and customers have no choice but to pay that premium. No option to upgrade ram or storage, you pay for what you want to use at the point of purchase. Any upgrade is to purchase a new machine, unlike in the past.

The RAM for the Apple Silicon Macs isn't soldered onto a motherboard – it's located in the same SoC packages as the CPU/GPU/Neural Engine dies themselves.

The maximum memory bandwidth increases with the number of RAM dies that surround the main processor dies. A M1 Ultra has 8 RAM dies, providing up to 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This is more than the 76.8 GB/s for an Intel Core i9-12900K and the 608 GB/s for a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's discrete video memory – combined.

https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-rtx-3080-ti-specs-price-3070-ti-053205095.html

Perhaps there is some performance advantage to locating the RAM in the SoC, not merely a desire to "solder" it so that you have "no choice but to pay"?

 

[Henry Richardson]

This is a well done video that stresses the computers to compare performance:

16GB vs 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook: REAL-LIFE Comparison

And this good video is doing photo stuff using huge files (56gb file in Photoshop, making humongous panoramas in Lightroom, big HDR merge, etc.):

Why Photographer should upgrade MacBook Pro 2021 RAM to 32 GB for Pro Photo Workflow? 16 VS 32 GB

This is the interesting video that I posted earlier. No one would load their computer down with so many programs, heavy duty programs, running at the same time, but it gives an extreme stress test to see how things work out.

16GB vs 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook - Multitasking RAM TEST

The takeaway for me is that for my uses it looks like 16gb will be fine so that is what I ordered last week (14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro base model). I use Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz programs. Of course, browser, etc. too. No video editing. All my photo files are 20mp or smaller. I don't make big panoramas. I rarely even use Photoshop and when I do it is just for some light things, usually with no layers. During the first 14 days if it looks like 16gb was not the right choice then I can return it.

One thing I will note from all these videos is that although they show in the system monitor the memory pressure with the 16gb and 32gb computers and sometimes the 16gb has more and the 16gb also has more swapping, in most cases both computers were still performing very similarly and were both responsive. Very fast SSDs and memory. Therefore, for me, memory pressure and swapping amounts are interesting technical things to know, but the bottom line is whether the computer is working well. I don't really care about the memory pressure and swapping if the only way to really know it is happening is having to look at the system monitor.

I pretty often see people say they like to buy and use the same computer for 7-10 years. Or their digital camera. I usually don't go that way myself though when tech is changing fairly fast. I usually buy for what I can use NOW and for the next year or two, but not way down the road -- too hazy to see that far into the future anyway.

With Apple Silicon I am thinking that 16gb on an M1 Pro will be good for me for quite awhile. In a couple of years there may be an M3 or M2 Pro or whatever and other good stuff. I would then probably want to update for many reasons, not just to get more memory.

For people who do want to use it for 7-10 years and don't care about the M3, M4, M5, etc. and other likely good stuff Apple will come out with in those 7-10 years then spending $4k, $5k, $10k now and then a few years later still be using an old, outdated, relatively slow Mac compared to the then current models is fine. Different strokes for different folks.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[CAcreeks]

I pretty often see people say they like to buy and use the same computer for 7-10 years.

We have never had a Windows laptop that lasted 7 years even.

I suppose it can happen if you don't use the laptop frequently. Deskside PCs last longer.

With Apple Silicon I am thinking that 16gb on an M1 Pro will be good for me for quite awhile. In a couple of years there may be an M3 or M2 Pro or whatever and other good stuff. I would then probably want to update for many reasons, not just to get more memory.

Yes, I had decided on the 16GB M1 Macbook 16", based on the videos you posted and other sources. Even 8GB M1 Air seems fine for DxO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo. I didn't like Photoshop (switched to GIMP) so I've never tried Lightroom and probably never will. In my experience with Sony Vegas and Openshot, video editing doesn't require much memory, but perhaps DaVinci and FCP do. Mostly video editing and rendering need GPU.

 

[Henry Richardson]

I pretty often see people say they like to buy and use the same computer for 7-10 years.

We have never had a Windows laptop that lasted 7 years even.

I have a 12 year old Win10 14.1" Dell laptop that still runs fine with an i5-520m, 8gb, 500gb. My wife has used it for years. In 2015 we went to Europe (Spain, France, Hungary) for 2 months and I decided to take a computer for the long trip. We took this one since it was the smallest one we had at the time. I used it with Lightroom and Photoshop during the time there to work on photos.

I also have a 10 year old Win10 17.3" Dell laptop that still runs fine with a i7-3630qm, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2gb, 8gb, 256gb SSD, 1tb HD -- I used it for awhile yesterday even. I have owned about 10 or so Windows laptops over the years and 3 desktops. They all just worked. Plug a monitor in and it just works. I have owned several monitors and have moved them around among various computers and they all just work. Never had heard of monitor connection problems before. Connect a keyboard or mouse and it just works.

I had an HP laptop I bought in late 2000 or early 2001 that developed a screen problem about 1.5 years later, but I didn't bother to get it fixed. By then tech had moved on so I just bought a new WinXP HP laptop in 2002. I still have it back in the States and it still works. It has an Athlon, 512mb, 40gb. I fired it up the last time I was there to do some scanning. My old 2000 Minolta film scanner has a SCSI interface and the only computer I currently have that can use it is that 2002 laptop with a SCSI interface.

I have updated computers fairly regularly, but except for the 2001 HP laptop it has never been because they stopped working. It has always been because tech had moved on and I wanted to update. Our 6 computers we have now of various ages (2002 to 2019) all still work fine and my main one that I bought in 2019 is still going very strong. But tech moves on.

I suppose it can happen if you don't use the laptop frequently. Deskside PCs last longer.

With Apple Silicon I am thinking that 16gb on an M1 Pro will be good for me for quite awhile. In a couple of years there may be an M3 or M2 Pro or whatever and other good stuff. I would then probably want to update for many reasons, not just to get more memory.

Yes, I had decided on the 16GB M1 Macbook 16", based on the videos you posted and other sources. Even 8GB M1 Air seems fine for DxO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo. I didn't like Photoshop (switched to GIMP) so I've never tried Lightroom and probably never will. In my experience with Sony Vegas and Openshot, video editing doesn't require much memory, but perhaps DaVinci and FCP do. Mostly video editing and rendering need GPU.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Henry Richardson]

Yes, I had decided on the 16GB M1 Macbook 16", based on the videos you posted and other sources. Even 8GB M1 Air seems fine for DxO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo. I didn't like Photoshop (switched to GIMP) so I've never tried Lightroom and probably never will. In my experience with Sony Vegas and Openshot, video editing doesn't require much memory, but perhaps DaVinci and FCP do. Mostly video editing and rendering need GPU.

Have you already got the 16" Macbook or still thinking it over? I suspect it will run all your software very well and you will be happy.

Here are 2 more good videos by a photographer so it is good see the focus more on that rather than just the many generic benchmarks:

M1 Pro Macbook Photography Review - 16GB Ram Mistake?

Lightroom Tests on the M1 PRO MacBook: A Photographer’s Dream!

A few weeks ago when I had the M1 iMac for awhile I checked Topaz Sharpen AI and Denoise AI. They ran about 10 times faster than on my current laptop (i7-8565u, Nvidia Geforce MX250 2gb, 32gb) so that was nice. I suppose the M1 Pro Macbook that I am waiting on will be 15-20 times faster running them than on my current laptop.

These GPU scores, of course, are just a guide. The real world depends on the actual application, etc. But, it at least gives a rough idea of the differences.

https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks

10,177 - MX250
18,176 (8c/8c) - M1
35,625 (10c/16c) - M1 Pro

I ordered the M1 Pro (8c/14c) so I assume that the score would be something like 31,000 to 32,000.

I have my fingers crossed that the 14" Macbook I ordered will work fine with my monitor. I have another monitor at another location and I want to check it with that one too.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[silentstorm]

$400 extra to go from 16gb to 32gb.

Yes, it's a known fact apple charges a premium over others for the same parts. That's why now they solder everything and customers have no choice but to pay that premium. No option to upgrade ram or storage, you pay for what you want to use at the point of purchase. Any upgrade is to purchase a new machine, unlike in the past.

The RAM for the Apple Silicon Macs isn't soldered onto a motherboard – it's located in the same SoC packages as the CPU/GPU/Neural Engine dies themselves.

The maximum memory bandwidth increases with the number of RAM dies that surround the main processor dies. A M1 Ultra has 8 RAM dies, providing up to 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This is more than the 76.8 GB/s for an Intel Core i9-12900K and the 608 GB/s for a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti's discrete video memory – combined.

https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-rtx-3080-ti-specs-price-3070-ti-053205095.html

Perhaps there is some performance advantage to locating the RAM in the SoC, not merely a desire to "solder" it so that you have "no choice but to pay"?

Yes, we all know that the current M1 series chip has their ram embedded as part of the silicon. What I mentioned was done over the years from past to present. And now with everything embedded in a chip, the grip for premium prices is cemented. Lesser products get to swap parts out throughout the years when you look at the history starting from 2010. And when you upgrade or replace parts, apple sells them at a higher price than off the shelves. That's what I was referring to.

Sorry I didn't made that clear enough.

 

[silentstorm]

This is an interesting video. No one would load their computer down with so many programs, heavy duty programs, running at the same time, but it gives an extreme stress test to see how things work out.

16GB vs 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook - Multitasking RAM TEST

In this video, we run various benchmarks like video editing, photo editing, programming, and much more between the 16GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook Pro and the 32GB RAM M1 Pro MacBook Pro!

We run all of these tests to find out if it's actually worth spending the extra $400 on the 32GB of RAM or NOT!

$400 extra to go from 16gb to 32gb.

Saw the video, but didn't see Max Tech highlight what the problem was when the R5 8K video was stuttering and not very playable. Not sure what codec was that and in the next video, he mentioned another in 422 10bit, also not smooth. I understand M1 Ultra/Max have codecs embedded in, like HEVC (H.265?), H.264 and ProRes. Even if the video was encoded in Panny AVC or Sony XAVC, those were based off H.264. Hope Max could give some details on those 2 videos.

The video of interest starts at 14:19

 

[CAcreeks]

Yes, I had decided on the 16GB M1 Macbook 16", based on the videos you posted and other sources. Even 8GB M1 Air seems fine for DxO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo... In my experience with Sony Vegas and Openshot, video editing doesn't require much memory, but perhaps DaVinci and FCP do. Mostly video editing and rendering need GPU.

Maybe 8K video will require lots of memory for editing? I don't see the point in it however, because hardly anybody has an 8K monitor and most people in the US don't have an internet connection capable of even 4K. Which do you prefer, stuttering or low-res?

Have you already got the 16" Macbook or still thinking it over? I suspect it will run all your software very well and you will be happy.

No, after setting my M1 Macbook Air (built-in display) to larger-letter 1280x800, from default 1440x900, it is legible enough, and powerful enough to drive my UHD monitor. My current plan is to wait for HDMI 2.1 in the next Macbook 16.

I had a 17" laptop running Linux, which I liked, but the fan went kerblooee. HP delivered a replacement after 5 months, which I haven't yet installed.

 

[Henry Richardson]

I pretty often see people say they like to buy and use the same computer for 7-10 years.

We have never had a Windows laptop that lasted 7 years even.

I have a 12 year old Win10 14.1" Dell laptop that still runs fine with an i5-520m, 8gb, 500gb. My wife has used it for years. In 2015 we went to Europe (Spain, France, Hungary) for 2 months and I decided to take a computer for the long trip. We took this one since it was the smallest one we had at the time. I used it with Lightroom and Photoshop during the time there to work on photos.

I also have a 10 year old Win10 17.3" Dell laptop that still runs fine with a i7-3630qm, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2gb, 8gb, 256gb SSD, 1tb HD -- I used it for awhile yesterday even. I have owned about 10 or so Windows laptops over the years and 3 desktops. They all just worked. Plug a monitor in and it just works. I have owned several monitors and have moved them around among various computers and they all just work. Never had heard of monitor connection problems before. Connect a keyboard or mouse and it just works.

I had an HP laptop I bought in late 2000 or early 2001 that developed a screen problem about 1.5 years later, but I didn't bother to get it fixed. By then tech had moved on so I just bought a new WinXP HP laptop in 2002. I still have it back in the States and it still works. It has an Athlon, 512mb, 40gb. I fired it up the last time I was there to do some scanning. My old 2000 Minolta film scanner has a SCSI interface and the only computer I currently have that can use it is that 2002 laptop with a SCSI interface.

I have updated computers fairly regularly, but except for the 2001 HP laptop it has never been because they stopped working. It has always been because tech had moved on and I wanted to update. Our 6 computers we have now of various ages (2002 to 2019) all still work fine and my main one that I bought in 2019 is still going very strong. But tech moves on.

I suppose it can happen if you don't use the laptop frequently. Deskside PCs last longer.

With Apple Silicon I am thinking that 16gb on an M1 Pro will be good for me for quite awhile. In a couple of years there may be an M3 or M2 Pro or whatever and other good stuff. I would then probably want to update for many reasons, not just to get more memory.

Yes, I had decided on the 16GB M1 Macbook 16", based on the videos you posted and other sources. Even 8GB M1 Air seems fine for DxO PhotoLab and Affinity Photo. I didn't like Photoshop (switched to GIMP) so I've never tried Lightroom and probably never will. In my experience with Sony Vegas and Openshot, video editing doesn't require much memory, but perhaps DaVinci and FCP do. Mostly video editing and rendering need GPU.

I watched this new video yesterday. Of course, it has a clickbait title, but I tend to not get worked up about that. The video is pretty good and he has some good points about both:

MacBook Fan SWITCHES to Windows Laptop (for a week)

One of the things that for him is a big deal is that Macs can usually be resold for a good price, they hold their value better. That isn't a big deal for me though because I have never sold a computer. I have given several away though. He has a youtube channel though so he is constantly churning through new computers and making videos about them. I can see how resell value would be very important to him. I buy, use, and then either set aside an old computer or give it to someone.

One other point he makes is that he keeps both Macs and Windows PCs because there are some apps he uses that either don't work on the other or don't work well. Naturally, he wishes he could have the best of both and get rid of annoyances that one has, but the other doesn't.

He also complains about all the monitor connection problems he always has with Macs and also external disk connection problems and just wishes Apple was like Windows PCs where that stuff just works. Apple is one of the top 4 richest companies in the world -- Apple is valued at $2.79t, 2021 revenue $366b, profit $163b, 154k employees, but years go by and they somehow can't find the resources (money and workers) to fix their quality problems. :-( Especially since being such a big, high profile, wildly successful company they can easily hire away any talent they need. We aren't talking about a garage operation anymore.

 

[CAcreeks]

MacBook Fan SWITCHES to Windows Laptop (for a week)

Yes, he makes some good points.

Maybe he's right that File Explorer is better than Finder. W10 File Explorer seems too busy with ugly design, but it gets the job done. Is there a good 3rd-party Mac finder?

One thing he neglected to mention is that the Windows 11 taskbar is stuck at bottom of screen, whereas the MacOS dock can be moved to the left or right side.

Notebookcheck tested the Lenovo Legion 7 he shows, or a similar model; only 77% DCI-P3 screen. It's not the kind of laptop I'd want, but a gamer definitely might. Lenovo is the only major PC laptop vendor that hasn't failed us yet, because we've never bought one.

Loading…

www.notebookcheck.net