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Comment by porphyra | Hacker News Reader

Nice. Lots of people still claim that M1 is super duper fast but now we're at almost twice the performance!

M1 is still fast, the speed of its successors does not change that.

I use one for software development and it's great. Sometimes rust builds are slow and I'd love to force that to be faster with hardware (optimizing build time would be a huge undertaking with not-so-great returns), otherwise I'm totally content. I also have an M2 Max with 32GB of RAM that still feels like magic. I've never had computers that felt so fast for so long.

I dunno, working with M1 daily I struggle with resource contention and slow py/js builds. I'd love something faster when work provides me with updated device.

Sounds like you need to spend some time optimising your build. Faster hardware just makes developers lazy. I'm still on an M1 and it's fine, although I do have 32GB.

To be fair, for all you know they’re building something pretty crazy that justifies high resource consumption.

Faster hardware doesn’t exclusively make developers lazy, it also opens up capability.

That's the thing. It's not a trivial project. I've already put a lot of time into optimizations and the returns are diminishing now.

In the age of AI it seems wild to blame developers for being “lazy” and needing more resources.

Like, if I were buying a new workstation right now, I’d want to be shelling out $2000 so that I could get something like a Ryzen AI 395+ with 128GB of fast RAM for local AI, or an equivalent Mac Studio.

That’s definitely not because I’m “lazy,” it’s because I can’t run a decent model on a raspberry pi

Could you clarify more, AFAIK there is no M1 with 32gb ram machine.

M1 Pro

Well it's quite different from the M1. Please don't mix it. It like saying i3 and i7 is the same if they are on the same generation.

It's not that different. It has more cores but they're the same cores.

And higher power limit, exactly like i3 and i5 and i7. Same core architecture, just different in clock, power and core count.

I think they have the same microarchitecture but are slightly different (in, like, the number of address bits)

My m1 16gb pro gets throttled (and manually restarted) every time vs code hits 100gb ram usage when running jest unit tests. Don’t know who to blame but 99% sure the problem is my source code and not the machine.

100gb ram usage? Why not build a pc?

Considering he's got a 16GB of RAM, this is virtual memory, and most programs don't need to keep it all loaded at all times (if they do, you'll notice with constant paging exception handling).

> My m1 16gb pro gets throttled (and manually restarted) every time

Chrome eats all my resources too and I have 128GB of ram. Some pages like ClickUp and the Google cloud console (bigquery) eat something like 3-5GB

You’re chewing through 100GB of RAM on unit tests? What is filling your RAM? Are you sure that you don’t have a memory leak somewhere?

I’m certain it’s a memory leak, just not sure solving the problem is worth my time.

you could try moving your dev environment & docker into a linux VM.. could do something similar to this: https://medium.com/carvago-development/my-docker-on-macos-pa...

I mention this because I'm guessing you might be using Desktop Docker which is kinda slow.

Or maybe just switch to OrbStack: https://orbstack.dev/

Won’t change how slow it is to run docker containers in VMs on macOS.

OrbStack’s docker and VMs are lightning fast.

docker definitely runs faster inside linux running in a VM on macOS. funny how that works given the overhead on running a VM, but it seems running on a linux & ext4fs interfaces give it quite a performance boost.

OSX file I/O is really, really slow with large amounts of small files. Wondering if Apple will ever fix that.

Same here. I have an M1 Max with 64GB and the only time I notice a slowdown is doing Rust release builds with `lto = true` and `codegen-units = 1`, which makes complete sense. Otherwise there is _plenty_ of multicore performance for debug builds, webdev, web browsing, etc., often all at once.

Fill out your SSD to 90% or more (and keep it there), and you'll understand how quickly things can go south.

Why would I ever do that?

You paid for that capacity to be able to use it?

I pay so that I only fill up to 50% usually

This requires you either being very good at predicting your storage needs, your storage not growing over time (no growing photo collection?), and being aware how flash wear affects SSDs and how wear levelling works.

If you fail at these, you can even trash your SSD and need replacing the whole laptop due to it being soldered in.

I have i7-4790k that still seems to score almost 1500 on single core benchmark: that thing felt fast for decade+.

But it burns a hole in your lap while doing so probably.

And yet, it allows the user to experience true freedom unlike Apple's offerings.

Care to elaborate on this? I get that iOS is a closed system but I’ve never felt limited by Apple in what I can do with my Macbook.

I guess the hardware is extremely locked down. That part is a drag. Application sharing limitations (needing to publish to the app store, more or less) still feels wrong after all these years. There's more but those are the ones that bother me with any frequency

Need to publish to the app store? I have precisely zero app store applications installed. All just downloaded DMGs from the vendor’s website.

There is no decent option on an alternative operating system. I do not like macOS and its many quirks, especially its extremely gatekept nature, including the system being SURE that what IT wants is the best for me; I understand that this might be an approach that some people prefer, but in my case it's the equivalent of showing a bull a red cloth.

I will say this - and most will not like this - that I'd go out and buy a M* MacBook if they still kept Boot Camp around and let me install Windows 11 ARM on it. I've heard Linux is pretty OK nowadays, but I have some... ideological differences with the staff behind Asahi and it is still a wonky hack that Apple can put their foot down on any day.

Why not virtualise (?) with Parallels? Runs like a beast (M1 mba).

Because I'd prefer to run bare metal and, if I recall correctly, macOS still hogs up 50+ GB on a clean install - and there is no GPU acceleration(? - might be wrong here).

Most laptops sit on a desk and never see a lap, even Macs.

Benchmarking how long people could sit with a laptop on their lap while running Geekbench could be an interesting metric though.

I can't even remember PCs now (been 10+ years on Macs) but heat is still an issue (especially in summer in hot climates) if the thing is going to throttle.

I've got a laptop of the times when you switched to a Mac. It's warm in winter, which is nice, but not so warm to be a problem in summer. My workloads are mild, Django and Rails. Even the test suites are not CPU bound. Linux, not Windows.

Heat is an issue with Macs too: if it wasn't, you'd have Air chassis with the performance of M4 Max/Ultra.

Yes, they've done some nice things to get the performance and energy efficiency up, but it's not like they've got some magic bullet either. From what I've seen in reviews, Intel is not so far off with things like Ultra 7 258V. If they caught up to TSCM on the process node, they would probably match Apple too.

It's an old desktop built in 2014 or 2015 that I never used on my lap.

This was a reply to "never having had a computer that felt fast for so long".

For some tasks, this CPU with the GTX 970 still feels faster than MacBook M2 or recent Ryzen laptop APU.

Not really - I bought an M4 Air to check how my dev ecosystem (.NET) would run on the ARM/Apple silicon and while its usable its noticeably slowing me down in my day to day with Rider. I will be getting the M5 pro because the performance is a bottleneck for me (even incremental builds take a while). Also I regret not getting at least 30gb ram (Amazon only had 24gb configurations) because with docker running I constantly hit the memory pressure thresholds .

Which is not to say that the Air is a bad device, its an amazing laptop (especially for the price, I have not seen a single Windows laptop with this build quality even at 2x price) and the performance is good - that if I was doing something like VSCode and node/frontend only it would be more than enough.

But also people here oversell its capabilities, if you need anything more CPU/Memory intensive PRO is a must, and the "Apple needs less ram because of the fast IO/memory" argument is a myth.

Have you checked what is slowing it down?

I wonder if it’s Docker as it runs in a VM on macOS.

You can control how much RAM gets allocated to the Docker VM and I keep that at 2GB which is not that much. I am not running stuff inside docker locally just using it to boot up stuff like pg/rmq/redis

Just everything syphoning down RAM, standard office/desktop stuff like Slack, Chrome, Mail, Calendar, Messages, a few IMs will easily eat up over 12 GB, then add in VSCode, Rider, Docker (which I cap at 2 GB ram) - I am swapping gigabytes when I have multiple tools running.

But even when I kill all processes and just run a build you can see lack of cores slow the build down enough that it is noticeable. Investing into a 48gb ram/pro version will definitely be worth it for the improved experience, I can get by in the meantime by working more on my desktop workstation.

I bought an M1 Max with 64GB of ram on the gamble it would last awhile because future M series would be evolutionary not revolutionary again. It seems like it's paid off since there's never a time it feels slow. I may end up upgrading to the M5 just to go down in screen size because I travel more than I did when I bought the 16" one.

I had a 16' m1 pro until July when work had an M3 with 2GB more ram going free and I thought it would be smart to take it, in the past when I had had a three+ year old machine and upgraded everything was super better.. but this time I don't notice any difference at all in almost any application.

The only place I feel it is when I am running a local llm - I do get appreciably more tokens per second.

Same. My M1 Max only shows it age when building a few massive C++ projects, the M4 cuts down compile times to a quarter so I feel like I'm missing out there, but not enough to put down another$4k yet.

Compared to every Intel MBP I went through, where they would show their age after about 2-3 years, and every action/compile required more and more fans and throttling, the M1 is still a magical processor.

Have an M1 Pro 32GB which recently started feeling slower. VSCode multiple tabs is a problem. Generally the UI feels less snappy.

I've switched now to a desktop Linux, using an 8C/16T AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with 64GB. it's like night and day. but it is software related. Apple just slows everything down with their animations and UI patterns. Probably to nudge people to acquire faster newer hardware.

The change to Linux is a change in lifestyle, but it comes with a lot of freedom and options.

I claim that the M1 (macbook air) is fast. I also claim it's about half the speed of my similarly priced desktop of the same vintage for slow tasks that I care about.

So I guess we've caught up with the desktop now.

Actually I assume we caught up awhile ago if I used the beefy multi core MX-Ultra variants they released, really just the base model has caught up. On the other hand I could have spent four times as much for twice as many cores on my desktop as well.

You can buy laptops with essentially identical CPU performance to desktop plugged in nowadays, so long as you aren't thinking of thread ripper.

On the move laptops will always be a bit slow because all the tricks to save idle usage don't help much when you're actually putting them to work.

I use m1 max and m4 max every day. Don’t see difference in speed at all. Regular tasks are equally fast. Rust compiler is equally slow

A car that travels 0-60 MPH in 2 seconds is fast

A car that does this in 4 seconds is still fast (though twice as slow)

If they both top out at 60 they are equally fast. One just had better acceleration than the other

Top speed hardly matters for cars. Acceleration is where fun is. Not sure this applies to CPUs at all.

Any cpu can run at 100ghz for 1 cycle. The trick is getting it to run at 100ghz forever

I think the speed of light would like to have a word with you.

Cornering speed is where real fun is. And danger.

Acceleration is actually a thing. The CPU needs to ramp up cycles fast if it wants to feel snappy. It needs to wind down as soon as no significant workload is there anymore. All needed for good efficiency

Yes - typically the (US English, at least) jargon is "quick" for acceleration and "fast" for top speed...

Nah not really. When you watch drag racing, they're testing acceleration. One car is always faster. Nobody says one is quicker than the other. Quick (when referring to straight line speed) is reserved for cars like the Miata, which has decent acceleration, but certainly can't accelerate like a muscle car. Nobody really compares top speed all that much because it's damn near impossible to hit top speed in a lot of cars, even on a race track. You will find slower cars comparing top speed though. Like an MG Midget, or an early Honda Civic might be able to hit 100mph, but that's an easily attainable speed. Fast cars are just faster than quick cars.

Interestingly, Gemini agrees with me:

>>In the context of cars:

>>"Fast" refers to top speed. A fast car has a high maximum velocity. It can cover a great distance in a sustained manner once it reaches its peak speed. Think of the Bugatti Chiron or a Koenigsegg, which are famous for their incredibly high top speeds.

>>"Quick" refers to acceleration. A quick car can get from a standstill to a certain speed (often 0 to 60 mph or 0 to 100 km/h) in a very short amount of time. This is about how rapidly the car can change its velocity. Modern electric vehicles, like the Tesla Model S Plaid or the Lucid Air Sapphire, are prime examples of exceptionally quick cars due to the instant torque of their electric motors.

The first car is much more fun to ride

Only if all you care about is a straight line.

I assume everything else is the same, or else it will be apple and orange.

What is that, 6 years for less than a doubling? Nothing against the Apple chips themselves, but gone are the days of Moore...

Not necessarily. If single core speed doubled but we also doubled or tripled the number of cores, doesn’t that count as keeping up with Moore?

M1 has 16bn transistors, M4 has 28bn. Increasing the core count is useful for some applications (particularly GPU cores), but there are still many critical workloads that are gated by single-threaded performance.

That's not what was being talked about.

Moore's law was never about single threaded performance, it was about transistor count and transistor cost, but people misunderstood it when single threaded performance was increasing exponentially.

GP mentions cores and the article is about benchmarks. The relationship between transistor count, core count, and performance, is exactly on topic.

Single core performance and transistor count are not the same thing and have been disconnected for two decades.

Did you think I said otherwise?

Moore's law was about transistors and cost, you were equating it to performance.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45434910

Your reply here is not directly related or an answer to the comment you replied to.

You have brought a lot of your own assumptions to that reading. OP asked if doubling or tripling core count counted as keeping up with Moore’s law. I pointed out that in the case of the M series (the topic of the thread), regardless of core count, transistor count did not double or triple.

Moore was just about the transistor count doubling. Not performance.

Performance is an excellent proxy for transistor count. Somebody else replied with the actual transistor counts, which had basically equal scaling.

I feel no need to upgrade, especially now that you can have applecare yearly subscription.

M1 is still fast for a lot, more so when it's cooled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com