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11-17-2020, 12:23 PM
Mitsu3000gt

Quote:

Originally Posted by rage2

Cinebench doesn't even use GPU does it? The M1 shines in that it's got decent CPU and a huge jump in GPU. Real world, gaming, video rendering, it's killing any of the Intels. I haven't seen any Ryzen real world comparisons yet, if you find some, point them out.

Prior versions of Cinebench do have a GPU test (separate from CPU test) but I do not believe R23 does, at least not yet.

iGPU benchmarks I have not seen much of yet. Anything can beat Intel's 620 for example, but I would be curious to see how to does vs AMD's old Vega architecture on the Ryzen 4000 series.

Give it a few days and I bet there will be a lot more info to look at. Seems like today is when the review embargo lifted.

Or wait 1-2 months for Ryzen 5000 mobile to land with the Zen 3 cores with another ~20% improvement on top of the earlier charts.
11-17-2020, 12:57 PM
Xtrema

https://youtu.be/OEaKQ0pxQsg

Sounds like MBA is the one to get. And wow, playing SOTR thru Rosetta sold it for me. And it's way better than Windows on ARM emulation BS.
11-17-2020, 01:35 PM
rage2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xtrema

Sounds like MBA is the one to get. And wow, playing SOTR thru Rosetta sold it for me. And it's way better than Windows on ARM emulation BS.

Looks like it. Even when the MBA throttles due to a lack of a fan, it loses about 25% performance, which is still faster than the old MBA at peak performance that lasts 1-2 mins. I could never get the x86 MBA to run well, the kids would fire up Google Meet, fan kicks in and everything else is slow. Can't even go through google slides to follow along with class. Had to go MBP for grade 1 classes. The new MBA would not have that problem at all from the looks of it.

Rosetta apparently does translation and not emulation. I don't know enough about CPU hardware so someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but apparently x86 processors natively decode x86 into RISC instructions and executes on RISC cores. What Rosetta 2 is doing is translating x86 binaries to RISC binaries at launch (hence the slow initial launch) then executes those binaries. This is why there's a minimal impact for Rosetta 2.
11-17-2020, 01:42 PM
The_Rural_Juror

I'm ==> <== close to drinking the kool-aid.
11-17-2020, 02:09 PM
rage2

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Rural_Juror

I'm ==> <== close to drinking the kool-aid.

Before you do, make sure that your day to day work is effective under a Mac. My previous role, with so much more technical work and better tools under Windows, switching to Mac would be a bit of a PITA. I'm in Marketing now, 90% of my time is spent in Safari and Chrome, so it was an easy transition.

With that said, you have until January to return it if it doesn't work out. Can't beat a free test drive.
11-17-2020, 02:30 PM
rage2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mitsu3000gt

iGPU benchmarks I have not seen much of yet. Anything can beat Intel's 620 for example, but I would be curious to see how to does vs AMD's old Vega architecture on the Ryzen 4000 series.

Give it a few days and I bet there will be a lot more info to look at. Seems like today is when the review embargo lifted.

Or wait 1-2 months for Ryzen 5000 mobile to land with the Zen 3 cores with another ~20% improvement on top of the earlier charts.

Here's some benchmarks + real world (I guess if you can call tomb raider benchmark real world).

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252...le-m1-tested/3

The M1 beats everything that doesn't have an dGPU, and is mid pack compared to other laptops with dGPU.

Of course this is a Mac mini review, but there's some data there. Gaming seems to be a hit with the M1 so far with people running everything they have that's Mac compatible.
11-17-2020, 02:40 PM
killramos

By egpu do you mean dgpu?
11-17-2020, 02:43 PM
Xtrema

Quote:

Originally Posted by rage2

The M1 beats everything that doesn't have an eGPU, and is mid pack compared to other laptops with eGPU.

This is where the price/performance isn't quite there for M1. A laptop with a GTX1650 can be had for $900 right now.

But I'm super impressed by Rosetta efficiency still, no wonder Apple is confident enough to completely remove Intel from Macbook Air line up.
11-17-2020, 02:57 PM
pheoxs

Quote:

Originally Posted by rage2

Wait a few days till the full reviews come out. We’re only seeing tidbits of info right now. The biggest question is how good Rosetta 2 is, and if the apps you use are fully compatible. Prelim performance on Rosetta 2 has been promising, roughly 20% performance hit.

If all the boxes are checked, I just need them to revive the 12” MacBook. That will be the ultimate travel machine, once traveling is normal again haha.

Anandtech released some reviews but it looks pretty poorly put together. The first page they're comparing gpu performance in games and it loses to a 4600H /w 1650 then the next page its apparently beating a 5950x then the next page its losing to a 4900HS again ... just seems all over the map so I'm guessing their x86-64 conversions is helping some apps but hindering others.

Neat tech but until it's reliable and proven I'll watch from the sidelines
11-17-2020, 03:11 PM
Mitsu3000gt

Quote:

Originally Posted by rage2

Here's some benchmarks + real world (I guess if you can call tomb raider benchmark real world).

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252...le-m1-tested/3

The M1 beats everything that doesn't have an eGPU, and is mid pack compared to other laptops with eGPU.

Of course this is a Mac mini review, but there's some data there. Gaming seems to be a hit with the M1 so far with people running everything they have that's Mac compatible.

That review is pretty poorly done IMO, nearly every chart has a completely different combination of comparison hardware and their results are all over the map making it very hard to follow. Some of that probably has to do with x86 vs ARM.

None of those laptops are using eGPUs as far as I can tell, they either have discrete or integrated GPUs. Kind of odd that Apple didn't add eGPU support to the M1 though.

I might have missed it but it doesn't look like they tested it against any of the 8-core Vega iGPUs (what I was curious about) or the "half baked" discrete solutions from Nvidia like a MX450. All the older Ryzen CPUs they tested were paired with a 3-generation-old entry level dGPU so you don't really get to see how it compares against modern hardware (yet). Regardless, some of those laptops with older older dGPUs that greatly outperform the M1 cost about the same or in some cases even less as a Macbook.

Cinebench R23 is not a synthetic benchmark so that will probably be closest to "real world" from what we've seen so far, but only gives us CPU data. I am most curious to see how the M1 does in the Puget Photoshop/Premiere benchmarks and Davinci Resolve benchmarks, but that might be a while as to my knowledge none of those programs are ported over to ARM yet.

I'm reserving judgement until we get better data and more relatable benchmarks personally, but the more competitors in the CPU arena the better as far as I'm concerned. I think when the dust settles it'll turn out to be an overall average performer as expected but we will see. Early reviews seem to be getting half the advertised battery life, and that was supposed to be one of the primary selling points.
11-17-2020, 03:28 PM
rage2

I corrected my mistake there. Meant dgpu, brain fart.

Photoshop is going to suck IMO. Adobe is terrible at moving off x86 for some reason. I'm still waiting for full photoshop on iPad, that was announced what 2 or 3 years ago? Lightroom mobile is junk. I've moved on to Affinity.

My kids will test battery life, they're never plugged in till it dies. Mine's arriving tmr so I'll have some real world data for my workloads.
11-17-2020, 03:44 PM
Mitsu3000gt

Quote:

Originally Posted by rage2

I corrected my mistake there. Meant dgpu, brain fart.

Photoshop is going to suck IMO. Adobe is terrible at moving off x86 for some reason. I'm still waiting for full photoshop on iPad, that was announced what 2 or 3 years ago? Lightroom mobile is junk. I've moved on to Affinity.

My kids will test battery life, they're never plugged in till it dies. Mine's arriving tmr so I'll have some real world data for my workloads.

Yeah I wouldn't hold your breath on Photoshop for iPad, it will never ever get to where desktop Photoshop is because Apple won't allow things like plug-ins or custom color profile support and as far as I know is still missing dozens of basic features like batch processing. Affinity is OK for working on one image at a time on vacation or something, that's what I have used it for anyway. I'm buying a new laptop in Q1 and then my iPad Pro will probably become a strictly media consumption tool at that point.

LumaFusion was amazing for iPad video editing until I had to correct distortion, and realized it unfortunately it doesn't support that in any capacity. My other complaint (lack of 10bit support) was actually resolved yesterday with an update, so they are headed in the right direction. I must say their customer support is excellent, every time I've emailed them one of their engineers replies with a real answer. I've since switched to Davinci Resolve but at the moment I have nothing that can run it other than my desktop PC.

2021 should be a pretty great year for computers, regardless of what you want to buy.
11-17-2020, 03:49 PM
Xtrema

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mitsu3000gt

Early reviews seem to be getting half the advertised battery life, and that was supposed to be one of the primary selling points.

I think it really depends on how many x86 apps you run thru Rosetta.

If your work flow requires those x86 apps, wait a year or 2 until they are moved over.

But that 4K Premiere Pro export was able to beat an XPS 13 by 3 mins thru Rosetta is still pretty impressive.
11-17-2020, 04:09 PM
Mitsu3000gt

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xtrema

I think it really depends on how many x86 apps you run thru Rosetta.

If your work flow requires those x86 apps, wait a year or 2 until they are moved over.

But that 4K Premiere Pro export was able to beat an XPS 13 by 3 mins thru Rosetta is still pretty impressive.

A lot less impressive when you consider what CPUs the XPS 13 is using :) It's still running on 6-year-old architecture at it's core. The highest CPU SKU in the XPS13 I believe uses a Intel Core i7-1065G7 which is a quad core part with low clocks easily beaten by old Zen 2 cores in Ryzen 4000 mobile.

In a month or two we can hopefully compare the M1 to Ryzen 5000 mobile and that will be the most relevant comparison for the upcoming year IMO. It doesn't look like Intel is going to be competitive again until 2022 at the earliest.
11-17-2020, 04:12 PM
pheoxs

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mitsu3000gt

A lot less impressive when you consider what CPUs the XPS 13 is using :) It's still running on 6-year-old architecture at it's core. The highest CPU SKU in the XPS13 I believe uses a Intel Core i7-1065G7 which is a quad core part with low clocks easily beaten by old Zen 2 cores in Ryzen 4000 mobile.

In a month or two we can hopefully compare the M1 to Ryzen 5000 mobile and that will be the most relevant comparison for the upcoming year IMO. It doesn't look like Intel is going to be competitive again until 2022 at the earliest.

Thats what I'm having a hard time comparing. Sure the M1 is stomping the current igpu market and the XPS13 but both those are pretty dated. Whenever the new ryzen equivalent to the 3400g comes out we should see a significant bump up.
11-17-2020, 04:24 PM
Mitsu3000gt

Quote:

Originally Posted by pheoxs

Thats what I'm having a hard time comparing. Sure the M1 is stomping the current igpu market and the XPS13 but both those are pretty dated. Whenever the new ryzen equivalent to the 3400g comes out we should see a significant bump up.

Yeah the comparisons right now are all pretty useless as they are comparing the brand new M1 to 2-6 year old hardware. Even though Ryzen 4000 is currently the best mobile CPU, it's still using old Zen 2 cores and even older Vega GPU cores. The M1 compares favorably against Intel's older CPUs in some instances, but pretty much anything is better than Intel right now haha. I get that it's impossible to compare with Ryzen 5000 mobile at the moment but it's right around the corner and will be the primary competitor going into 2021. Unfortunately, Ryzen 5000 mobile is still going to use Vega iGPU cores rather than Navi, so I guess they're waiting for AM5/Zen4 before they take that leap.
11-17-2020, 04:40 PM
killramos

I mean it still essentially smokes anything in single core. That’s pretty impressive tbh, and I think not as irrelevant for day to day use as we might think.

I still use tons of software with garbage multi-core support.

If it ran windows these MacBook airs would probably spank the beast workstation we use at work for some workflows that don’t scale to multi core.

I am moving from this arm transition being a barrier to me getting into another Mac, to probably being a strong opportunity.

I mean if I can get awesome performance from a base spec machine that is going to save me tons of money compared to what spec’d out 16” pros currently cost.
11-18-2020, 08:58 AM
The_Rural_Juror

Are the MBP touch bars practical? Asus has a touch screen pad alternative.
11-18-2020, 09:10 AM
killramos

My wife’s MacBook has one. It’s 80% gimmick for sure.

It’s really up to the software makers to make it worthwhile or not so it’s hit and miss depending on what you use it for.

Usually it’s just for sending emojis in texts haha
11-18-2020, 09:20 AM
rage2

I hate the Touch Bar. I prefer the Air's keyboard TBH.

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