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Apples M2 looks like a beast.
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UnknownSouljer
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Only downside was my "assumption" that would increase the ports on these gen 2 models. And they "mostly" haven't. Still only two thunderbolt ports, however in theory you've "gained" 50% more by having access to Magsafe (though in theory whatever peripheral you were using could charge simultaneously with TB in this and the previous generation).
It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against the Macbook Pros in testing.
A 24GB Ram, 10-Core GPU, 1TB SSD MBA or 13" MBP comes at around $2100. Which is basically entry level 14" pricing. If the M2's IPC and GPU performance puts it ahead of the base model 14" then it will be a pretty meaningful gain at least for the time being, when undoubtedly the next gen M2 Pro/Max/Ultra chip leap frogs the regular M2.
Still, it's compelling as the Air likely will have the best battery life and certainly the most desirable size/weight - it's just a matter of if "it's enough" vs a different more performative laptop.
It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against the Macbook Pros in testing.
A 24GB Ram, 10-Core GPU, 1TB SSD MBA or 13" MBP comes at around $2100. Which is basically entry level 14" pricing. If the M2's IPC and GPU performance puts it ahead of the base model 14" then it will be a pretty meaningful gain at least for the time being, when undoubtedly the next gen M2 Pro/Max/Ultra chip leap frogs the regular M2.
Still, it's compelling as the Air likely will have the best battery life and certainly the most desirable size/weight - it's just a matter of if "it's enough" vs a different more performative laptop.
I will withhold judgement until there are some reliable 3rd party benchmarks. Apple's marketing has a long history of, shall we say, "exaggerating" the performance for their hardware. I never trust vendor claims, but I trust their claims even less than most.
KazeoHin
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Turns out I was looking at the new MBP specsheet. My bad. MBA still looks to be Passive. good to see.
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In this case they are extremely conservator too, I am not sure how it could be less than an 18% upgrade, considering it has 25% more transistors/50% more memory bandwidth.
Benchmark between M1 and competition had a lot of leway and hard to pin, M2 improvement over M1 should be straight forward and hard to manipulate.
GotNoRice
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Seriously, let's get some 3rd party benchmarks. I'm sick of these "look, one line is higher!!!" graphs that are like something North Korea would publish about their economy.
I'm here for it. The M1 Air at launch was and is still one of the best computer "investments" I've made (it's my wife's main and I login to fart around while watching TV and such). It has the perfect form factor. Excited for those that get an M2 Air!
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Zarathustra[H]
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I'm with you. I don't believe any of the hype surrounding the M1. It's mostly made up and corner cases.
The M2 gains over M1 should be more quantifiable, but still, what good does it tell you that you are 18% faster than an unknown factor?
Same oke same ole from Apple. It's "magical" with nothing concrete to back it up.
DrezKill
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! That's basically what it's like.
DukenukemX
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I'm kinda surprised as I thought Apple would have migrated over to 3nm. This isn't good news for Apple since AMD is now moving towards 5nm as well, which means the power efficiency gap might close a bit faster than I thought. Even more so since AMD isn't making one large monolithic die like Apple, and therefore can utilize higher clock speeds with cheaper prices thanks to their chiplet technology.
I wouldn't call the M2 a beast. Just looking at Apple's photos it looks to be like a small performance boost. Looking at what Apple wrote I can conclude some things about the M2. Firstly the CPU performance increase seems to be from more cache, just like how AMD is adding more cache to their CPU's lately. That's where most of the performance increase is coming, and according to Apple it's mostly multi-threaded performance increase. They like to compare the M2 to PC cores, which is most likely Intel as AMD has done wonders lately with their Zen4 Ryzen CPU's.
The main performance increase in the M2 seems to be related to the GPU since as Apple said they have "UP TO" twice as many GPU cores compred to the M1. Which is odd since it only adds 35% more performance even though they added twice as many GPU cores. Again Apple is comparing their GPU performance to integrated graphics from PC's, which according to Apple is a 2.3x increase. Kinda sad since they have 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth which is more than a RTX 3090 but the M2's won't be anywhere near a RTX 3060 in performance. Nobody tell Apple about Intel's upcoming ARC or that AMD's new Zen4 based CPU's that come out later this year will all come with RDNA2 graphics.
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In fairness the RDNA2 graphics on Zen4 are quoted as being “serviceable” for troubleshooting we aren’t talking games - it’s Intel UHD at best.
SunnyD
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In fairness, the AMD 3200U was plenty "serviceable" for games. The Acer laptop I have plays plenty of games just fine at 1080p with medium of better settings with the onboard Vega 3. Sure you're not going to be pushing the latest Call of Duty crap at ultra settings, but I would venture a guess that RDNA2 is going to perform a hell of a lot better than Vega alongside Zen4.
Some of the hype around M1 was merited; it was (and to a degree, still is) pretty fast in some tasks, such as video and browsing, while offering a ton of battery life and using so little power that the first-gen Air was fanless. It's just not as beastly as some would have you believe, and Apple's graphs are definitely selective.
M2 sounds like it'll be the kind of generational improvement you'd expect: nice, but not so nice that you'd chuck your previous-gen hardware out the window. This is more to stay competitive, and to give people using Intel Macs a better reason to upgrade. I just want to see what Apple does for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra.
DukenukemX
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I guess that means the Steam Deck with Zen2 cores and RDNA2 graphics isn't "serviceable". Anyone wanna sell me their Steam Deck for a discount? The M1's only game that was serviceable that isn't 8 years old is Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Even Metro Exodus which was ported is using Rosetta2 and MoltenVK is still playable if you don't mind stutters and frame rate drops. Even Ryzen CPU's with Vega graphics can still play games with a playable framerate. Zen4 Ryzen CPU's with RDNA2 graphics is going to near RTX 3060 levels of performance while offering Ray-Tracing.
OFaceSIG
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I don't think anyone is going to expect to play AAA games at 4k with the onboard RDNA2, but to claim it's at the same level as Intel UHD makes me think some research is lacking on your part.
paradoxical
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Here we go again with PC fanboys refusing to believe that Apple now makes the fastest laptops in the world in their respective formfactors (Ultrabook, thin and light 13 and 14).
I have a loaded MBP 14. I'll paypal you $10 if anyone here has a 13 or 14 inch laptop in the same class (not a 4 inch thick desktop replacement) which outperforms it in any of these benchmarks or specs:
Cinebench
Storage Space (8TB)
Amount of RAM (64GB)
Storage Speed (read and write)
Geekbench
Premiere Pro video 4k video rendering
Amount of time the fan doesn't run
Handbrake encode
When you factor in that most PC laptops can't even win at one of these things and Apple combines all of them - plus killer battery life, great thermals, an accurate screen, etc, there is nothing even close from an overall system performance standpoint in the PC world. Even little things like the headphone jack in the new Pros....it can actually drive my Sennheiser HD650s to deafening volumes whereas on the previous gen I needed a standalone amp. It's just better.
I have a loaded MBP 14. I'll paypal you $10 if anyone here has a 13 or 14 inch laptop in the same class (not a 4 inch thick desktop replacement) which outperforms it in any of these benchmarks or specs:
Cinebench
Storage Space (8TB)
Amount of RAM (64GB)
Storage Speed (read and write)
Geekbench
Premiere Pro video 4k video rendering
Amount of time the fan doesn't run
Handbrake encode
When you factor in that most PC laptops can't even win at one of these things and Apple combines all of them - plus killer battery life, great thermals, an accurate screen, etc, there is nothing even close from an overall system performance standpoint in the PC world. Even little things like the headphone jack in the new Pros....it can actually drive my Sennheiser HD650s to deafening volumes whereas on the previous gen I needed a standalone amp. It's just better.
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My wife has been using the same macbook air since 2011, and I was watching her use it last week and said "that is just painful to watch, lets upgrade you". The M2 air release times perfectly, and I'll be getting one.
You’re confusing an APU with what’s going to be in Zen4. Watch the GamersNexus Zen4 video it explains it - just for basic stuff they didn’t want to take up too much of the die.
TSMC announced the delay of 3nm back in Aug of 2021 and in their share holder meeting made mention that as a result they would miss the Apple launch windows.
They announced further delays in Feb of this year and now fully expect that Intel will have their 4nm process in production before their 3nm process is and when it does they will loose the node advantage.
These chips are on the TSMC 5nm++ process that they also refer to as 4nm, no it isn’t as good as the Intel 4 process which is why Apple calls it the 5nm process in their presentation so they don’t have to explain why Intel 4 is better than the 4nm process Apple is using.
Apple has increased their wafer agreement with TSMC so they will be getting more chips, it’s AMD and Nvidia who will be feeling the pinch not Apple here. Intels wafer agreements with TSMC remain about the same.
Zarathustra[H]
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The only thing that makes the graphics on the steam deck usable is it's extremely low resolution.
As far as the PC hardware goes, the steam deck is craptastic. The only thing it has going for it is that it is portable
The 3200U is pretty dope, but the Zen 4 GPU is looking to be 256 shaders on 2CU clocking in at a maximum 1100mhz boost clock and should pull less than 10w. The 3200u will out perform it by a good 20% or so if the leaks are accurate.
It should be noted though that Epic is launching UE5 as a full Mac native engine so any UE5 title could launch M1 native.
From a development perspective when developing for UE5 using the Epic toolsets the Apple Max Studio destroys similarly priced Threadripper/RTX workstations.
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It’s also an absolute emulation beast. If they ever launch a v2 I’ll order that up in a heartbeat.
And if they never launch a v2 then I chalk it up as another Valve gimmick and I probably just build something out of CM5 whenever that gets around to launching.
This is somewhat hyperbolic. The MacBook lineup is very good these days, but you're basing the criteria for the "best" laptop around your own usage patterns and preferences. You don't need a chunky desktop replacement to have decent gaming, if you value that; there are some apps that run better on x86-based Windows PCs or don't have Mac equivalents.
Apple's advantage is simply that it nails some of the fundamentals very, very well. MacBooks are fast for common tasks, last a long time on battery, are very quiet, sound superb, boast some of the best overall displays and offer great keyboard/trackpad combos. They're not the best in every circumstance, but they can make more sense than comparable Windows machines if they run the apps you want.
paradoxical
Limp Gawd
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Yeah, but that wasn't what people here were arguing. They were saying that Apple's M1 CPU architecture is smoke and mirrors. It's not; it's the fastest CPU in each formfactor. Gaming is certainly an area where PC laptops can perform better merely by virtue of native Direct X compatibility, not because Intel CPUs are faster than Apple's.
My post was simply meant to highlight that by calling out everyone that says the M1 architecture doesn't perform well. Let's go head to head on benchmarks and see what comes out on top. From a pure hardware performance and specification standpoint, Apple's MBP 14 is in a league of it's own. It's got the fastest CPU, most memory bandwidth, tied for most physical memory, most storage space, fastest SSD, etc, etc. And it screams running linux in a VM since everything is arm native. Obviously if it can't run the software you need for a compatibility reason, it's not a great choice for you. But if the software is cross platform it will almost always be faster on my macbook pro than on a comparable PC laptop.
Similarly, nothing is even going to remotely touch the M2 in an ultrabook formfactor.
Signed, owner of a 9900k, 3990x, and M1 Max.
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pendragon1
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the 5 year old pc laptop i had, before this m1 air was assigned to me, was faster. only difference is better battery, i get ~6hr vs 4, not to mention everything i do is in a microsoft environment anyways. these M chips are not the miracle/magic everyone makes them out to be, especially the "apple fanboys"...
ill need some hard 3rd party proof before drinking this kool-aid
ill need some hard 3rd party proof before drinking this kool-aid
paradoxical
Limp Gawd
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That is patently false unless you did something stupid like got an air with 8GB ram. But I welcome you to nominate some cross platform compute benchmarks. You can use your desktop if you want, it'll still lose to my Macbook if you're at stock clocks.
cjcox
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From a purely tech point of view, I think it's "great". But unless you're locked into the Apple eco-system already, it's just "tech".
Nothing really to be locked into. I move from Windows to Mac and back all day. My gaming laptops are Windows. My productivity laptops are Mac. My gaming PCs are Windows. Everything works fine. It's not 1998, anymore.
Biggest issue is ARM and VMs - you can't (reasonably) emulate anything that isn't ARM, obviously. But with Docker and other options it is getting easier.
pendragon1
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8gb is the standard, notice how i said "assigned to me"...
lol, ok.... chug-a-lug
paradoxical
Limp Gawd
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I don't have a ton of time to game anymore but I actually have been shocked by how well games run in a VM. I can run the Metro series just fine at high settings 3440x1440 (AA slows it down), Titanfall 2 maxed out with AA maintains over 60FPS, etc, etc.
Emulating Cinebench in a VM on windows gives about a 50% performance hit, which STILL makes it faster than a lot of people's native Intel laptops here!
As for Linux, VMs absolutely fly since almost everything has a native ARM variant.
Zarathustra[H]
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I mean, any x86 system with on board graphics made in the last decade or so can handle that type of emulation. There is nothing special about the Deck except its form factor.
It's a bottom end AMD APU like you might find in a Chromebook.
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But it’s a nicer form factor… it’s a one stop shop. But so are a number of cheap Chinese ARM handhelds that easily boot up something like Batocera.
If they do a v2 I’d be more interested as the current steam deck leaves me underwhelmed with its PC performance.
May order an Anbernic 552 around Father’s Day, because why not?
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How are you running x86 VMs on ARM? Or am I misunderstanding...
Its hard to say... those where APUs that gave up some CPU space for a GPU. This time AMD seems like they realized they have to get at least a basic display working without requiring a GPU. Its possible these will bea couple compute units. I built one of my kids a Ryzen 2200 system a few years back... and its is surprising how decent it was at 1080p medium with only 8 compute units. We'll have to wait and see, I suspect we might see some of these new 7000 skus only having 2-4 compute units cause AMD is just ticking a box (will boot without a GPU). On the other hand if these have at least 8 RDNA2 units hey they might be decently fine for light 1080p.
paradoxical
Limp Gawd
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I believe Windows ARM is doing the x86 emulation, the VM itself is not x86. When you install Parallels on your Mac, there is a one-click setup where it will download and install Windows 11 for you in a VM. I am pretty sure this is an ARM version of windows, though honestly I didn't even bother to check since it just worked. I have not run into any compatibility issues so far, just a 40% performance loss on non-ARM apps from the windows x86 emulation.
EDIT: Actually, I did have a single compatibility issue. I had to change the emulation settings for Supreme Commander Forged Alliance to get it to launch. But now it works great.
For Linux, it's a totally different ballgame. Almost every piece of software I use has a native ARM variant since Linux is so popular on ARM devices. The VM is literally impossible to distinguish from bare metal and it absolutely flies.
Must have changed quite a bit since last April ?
Edit: reading the comments, giant list of *, experience can vary for the crash and some shaders compiling/baking step were not finish and was running previews performance level.
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As it’s already pointed out in the comments his dev environment settings are all wrong. But yeah if you don’t know what your doing your gonna have a bad time regardless of your platform.
Here’s one with the proper settings working at 120 fps while developing and 60+ while playing with full Ray Tracing.
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He is not too, he is simply walking around on an already made scene.
And like pointed out below:
Ray tracing, Lumen, and Nanite are not supported on Mac. The reflections in this scene are standard probs and planar reflections.
I think we can safely discard both has not UE dev but people wanting to make content.....