Apple Silicon (ARM based) Macs buyers and owners thread (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

So yeah, choo choo I'm on board...

 

[DaveF]

Not sure what this says, besides DTK has iPad chip and runs as fast as an iPad, which was a given.

 

[JohnRice]

Sam, what is this?

 

[Sam Posten]

Not sure what this says, besides DTK has iPad chip and runs as fast as an iPad, which was a given.

It runs as fast as that -IN EMULATION-.

 

[Sam Posten]

Sam, what is this?

First batch of developer kit geekbenches.

 

[DaveF]

It runs as fast as that -IN EMULATION-.

It runs like a three (?) year old iPad / three gen old SOC in emulation.

Is this impressive? I don’t know. Seems ... fine?

Guess I don’t understand, it seems to be doing what we’d expect: A12Z be A12Z.

 

[Thomas Newton]

According to that post, the DTK (A12z) is running benchmarks about as fast as the 10.5" iPad Pro (slower A10x). Not as fast as the 12" iPad Pro (A12z) – and slower than the low-end Core i3 Mini.

If "virtualized" means "not simply virtualized, but running Intel-based benchmarks using Rosetta 2", that might explain the difference.

 

[Sam Posten]

 

[Sam Posten]

It’s only a back of the envelope guess. But the address ends up in a damn ritzy neighborhood

Fun With Charts: Entirely speculative charts about Apple Silicon

Last week I stared directly into the Apple marketing content and speculated about the information it was trying to impart with a WWDC slide. This week, prompted by reader David Hovis, I’d lik…

sixcolors.com

To misquote star trek I’ll take Snell’s guesses over some people’s facts. I think he might be low on some of his guesses

 

[DaveF]

Good one. I don’t always read the 6C articles, so glad to get tipped one is especially worthwhile.

 

[DaveF]

My assumption had been that Apple would launch their SoC in a MacBook / Air. Something moderate performance where battery life is the big selling point.

But after WWDC, it registered that Apple may instead want to launch with a chip that leaves no doubt of their computational capabilities. They may want to produce a chip that bests the best i9 laptop system and also has best of class battery. And there’s little doubt they can for single threaded, given iPhone benchmarks on the A14. And with a bigger thermal allowance — not necessarily active, but just the heat sink a laptop offers over a pocket computer — its easy to speculate they can spend Watts to get the multithreaded performance needed.

So yeah, we might see a MacBook Pro with all day battery life and performance to best current top-end i9 configuration.

 

[Sam Posten]

For me it’s all gonna come down to the GPU. An i3 CPU is good enough for anybody except scientists these days. Can it beat a 2080TI with better thermals?

 

[DaveF]

An i3 CPU is good enough for anybody except scientists these days.

Uhmmm...no.

 

[Sam Posten]

It really is. You may WANT more power but the vast majority of people don't NEED more than an i3 and couldn't tell when they were using a lesser processor.

If you are doing video or audio production you can use more. Gamers too. But they don't NEED it for the vast majority of use.

 

[DaveF]

My 2017 27” i5 iMac beachballs on safari tabs, and Numbers is sluggish on moderate size spreadsheets. I agree with your point that for the basics of writing email and doing google searches, an i3 from even five years ago is fine. But for anyone doing anything moderate — not just science/engineering — the way Apple codes at least, more CPU remains beneficial.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Anyone hoping for a silicon-based iMac this year is most likely going to be disappointed.

It's rumored to be dropping next week but it's also rumored to be Intel-based

Rumors: New Intel iMac coming as soon as this week, redesign unlikely - 9to5Mac

A pair of new rumors this weekend claim to offer additional details on Apple’s plans to release a new iMac...

9to5mac.com

 

[Dave Upton]

For me it’s all gonna come down to the GPU. An i3 CPU is good enough for anybody except scientists these days. Can it beat a 2080TI with better thermals?

While I share your hope, I'm not holding my breath when it comes to 3D Gaming acceleration. I think that Apple will absolutely match the best Nvidia has to offer when it comes to video decoding, transcoding and other multimedia use. They might even come very close for content creators, CAD and rendering for workstations.

That said, we need to remember they are not going to have technologies like DLSS 2.0, RTX at this early stage. They also have a dramatically different thermal envelope to work with than a 300 watt TDP and Ampere graphics card. GPUs are really hard, and Nvidia has been working at it non-stop for over two decades. I think Apple will make an amazing and surprisingly competent product, but I don't think it will come anywhere near top of the line graphics cards coming up in the next generation.

 

[Sam Posten]

That’s true my if only SOC. For a Mac Pro and maybe iMac Pro I could see full on Apple GPU boards

 

[Dave Upton]

That’s true my if only SOC. For a Mac Pro and maybe iMac Pro I could see full on Apple GPU boards

Absolutely, but it's going to take time to develop the technology to match what Nvidia has, I'd guess in 3 to 5 years they will be maturing.

 

[JohnRice]

It really is. You may WANT more power but the vast majority of people don't NEED more than an i3 and couldn't tell when they were using a lesser processor.

Well, what you need is always pretty vague, but your meaning is valid. I think there's already been conversations about how processor speed has finally reached it's usable limit. In other words, even the base model Mini has plenty of processing power to assure most computer needs aren't noticeably limited. I still see plenty of value to step up to the 6 core i5, for the modest price, but how many people will even take advantage of more than that? I'm going to get the final upgrade Mini for work, which will be the main one I use, and I was going to go for the i7, but I realize that wouldn't have any real world benefit over the i5. If you don't do CAD or process video, I see no benefit to the i7 over the i5. I process video at home, but not at work. So, I realize I can save, what... $300(?) and just go with a "standard" model Mini with i5 instead of special ordering an i7 directly from Apple.