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Comment by Thaxll | Hacker News Reader

An AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cost $700 and is almost 2x faster than an m1 max in multi core.

Except in benchmarks outside GeekBench it isn't. See e.g. the last graph in

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

The 5950X is only 55% faster than the M1 Max on multi-threaded integer benchmarks. The M1 Max is even 26% faster than the 5950X on multi-threaded FP benchmarks (maybe it has two AMX units?).

The M1 Max is really in 5900X/5950X territory... in a laptop.

I agree on the pricing (I also have a 5900X and a 5950X machine). But it is fantastic that we can have that kind of performance in a mobile device and still have many hours of battery life.

We should complement both AMD and Apple and be happy that we finally have serious competitors to Intel. AMD has managed to compete with and outrun Intel from the an initial position of an also-ran underdog. I think the M1 line is more impressive technically than Ryzen, given the very low TDPs. But Apple has vastly more budget and much more opportunity for vertical integration.

Both companies have done impressive work the last few years.

> I think the M1 line is more impressive technically than Ryzen, given the very low TDPs.

I would say TSMC's 5nm process is more impressive technically than TSMC's 7nm process, which are used here respectively.

I think Apple will still win on a per Watt basis even when AMD starts using the current-generation process, but the question is: by how much?

This is the real question, my money is on 5-10%.

In Geekbench Multi-Core, the 5950X is only 33% faster (at 16.6k) than the M1 Max (which benches around 12.5k). So the difference is actually smaller than in SPEC that Anandtech uses.

For all the dissing of Geekbench, I found it to actually correlate pretty closely with supposedly more elaborate benchmarks like SPEC. (The writing was on the wall for Apple Silicon performance for many years, when the iPhone/iPad Ax CPUs where catching up and surpassing laptop CPUs in Geekbench, but lots of people dismissed it because it was just Geekbench...).

To get some context of the M1 Pro/Max perf, people should take a look at https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks, sort by Multi-Core, and slot the M1 Pro/Max in at around 12500.

> Both companies have done impressive work the last few years.

Apple bought timed-exclusive access to TSMC 5N and also now 5NP. On the same node the differences would be less.

I'm an AMD fan.

The comparison should not even be close TBH. We're talking about a laptop chip that can run on battery for an extended period of time that performs as well and sometimes better than the high end consumer AMD desktop chip. Kudos to Apple.

I'm not suprised. Apple has the lead in the fabrication process, 5nm vs 7nm. I eagerly await a true apples to apples comparison when AMD uses the same 5nm process.

I'm definitely not an Apple fan but what's available on the market at any given moment is an apple to apple comparison of what companies are able to do. I mean: any modern army (or pary of) would crush Roman legions, but they had to do it 2000 years ago.

The article ends wondering about the impact on PC OEMs. I presume they are extrapolating the performance improvement curves, talking with Microsoft about Windows on ARM and working at HW contingency plans in case they have to leave a sinking x86 ship. I don't think they are resting on promises of big improvements from AMD and Intel.

It has to be 3x faster to match M1's efficiency given the TDP is 30 vs 105.

I could care less about efficiency, it's still 2x faster for 2/3x less expensive. Isn't the m1 max tdp between 60 and 90w?

Well yes but ones a laptop chip with a 17 hour life and the other I’ve got under my desk heating my entire condo lol

If you could conceivably run a chip at a much higher TDP before hitting thermal limits you could get significantly more performance. Not that you can (probably) OC these chips at all but it suggests there may be more rabbits in the bag.

You're comparing a single CPU with a complete machine

Its 60-90w including GPU.

If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect.

> And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect.

Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient.

>Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient.

Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can.

CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.

> Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat

No, not even close. There are huge losses in electricity production and transmission.

Which is why I covered them in my comment about CHP, which recoups a large portion of those "losses". Either way other power sources also require logistic challenges and/or big equipment installs to use, so it isn't exactly 1:1 comparison.

But a heat pump is more than 100% efficient.

I feel this is a bit disingenuous, because using the same logic burning wood is thousands of % effective, or even ∞% if the system only uses convection, making heat pumps seem like a poor choice even when they're perfectly valid.

Until the temperature drops below 4 C

Which is why you bore a hole deep enough that it isn't a problem.

I'm in Quebec (Eastern Canada). Most of the electricity is produced from hydraulic power (dams) up north, while cities are in the southern part of the province. Most houses are electrically heated (especially those built after 1970). Production from water turbines is very efficient. Transmission losses are about 30%, because of the distance (> 1500km). Heating itself is 100% efficient, no moving parts, no maintenance. In this context, heating with a baseboard or CPU makes no difference.

It's 100 efficient, and the amount of houses with a heat pump is <1%

Here in Sweden, roughly 50% of all small houses (ie one household) have a heat pump. Direct electricity heating is just somewhere around 15%.

In bigger houses direct electricity just isn't a thing, most have some sort of central heating, and lots have either some combustion or heat pump solution. The latter is gaining.

This winter I'm going to experiment with having a Raspberry Pi act as a thermostat that starts/stops containers running on a server in our basement. That, combined with the laptop we just got for gaming that has a 3070 in it, should do nicely to supplement our heating system.

Watts go in, Watts come out. So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise.

I know that’s a bummer for people who want to heat their house with their computer, but Thermodynamics is always a bummer, I don’t make the Laws.

> So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise.

I wonder how many CPUs I need to build a cryptocurrency miner water heater... That would be so much better than just wasting energy heating up dumb elements.

That's why I heat my house with a dell C4140! The _lowest_ power throttle it has is 1.4KW.

Modern heat pumps provide a lot more than 100% efficiency. I'd stick to the heating system unless those containers are doing something profitable (mining?)

Literally nothing provides 100% efficiency. You're conflating coefficient of performance with efficiency. They're not even close to the same thing, modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around, which provides more heat indoors than if you had converted an equivalent amount of electricity directly into 100% heat.

Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything.

> because they don't actually generate heat Heatpumps still do use electricity(or other power), and all that electricity also ends up as heat. It's why heatpumps have higher CoP than the same system as a refrigeration cycle.

> Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything

Well the cogen gas powerplants here can produce 50kWh of electricity from burning 100kWh of natural gas. I can use 50kWh of electricity to put 200kWh of heat into my house with a heatpump.

Seems like a good deal to me, and I think carnot would be fine with that.

Nobody said "thermodynamic efficiency". You're butting in for no good reason.

Coefficient of performance is a type of efficiency.

> modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around

That's not even true! What a mess of a pedantic correction.

As someone who lives in south-east Queensland, Australia, lower TDPs and thermal output is always welcome, at least for me. I adore my Ryzen 5600X/3060 Ti mini-ITX desktop, but mining on it makes my room annoyingly warm, and it's not even summer yet.

Was semi-useful in winter though, all 6 weeks of it...

>If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical.

"If you're plugged in all the time" then try the Mac Pro version when it comes out.

This is about performance in laptop models, where it IS critical.

A hot laptop can have significant impacts on fertility in men. And in the summer you have to dissipate that heat. A heat pump is more efficient for heating, to boot.

It's a temporary infertility, at least.

Ok, lets build an equivalent PC. These are prices in Germany (incl. VAT):

A 14' Macbook Pro (M1 Max with 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 512 GB storage) is 3440€.

A PC: 5950X (750€), 32GB RAM (150€), Mainboard (130€), WD SN850 500GB (90€). Now if you build from scratch you need a PSU, CPU cooler and a case (~200€ together).

That's 1320€ without a GPU. Depending on your workload the GPU performance seems to be between a desktop 3060 and 3080. So between 700€ and 1400€.

Tl;dr: A 3440€ Macbook competes with a 2000-2700€ desktop depending on your workload. The desktop has no peripherals and no USB4/TB4.

TBF GPU prices are nonsensical at this point in time. The MSRP of a 3060 Ti is $400, a 3080 should be $700.

I wonder how much a comparable desktop monitor would add to that.

On the other hand I really want to give the keyboard a shot before I pull the trigger, after 3 years of Thinkpad I think that will be the real pain point...

You'd need to add a HiDPI HDR screen too.

That’s amazing that it’s not even twice as good!

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