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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 17 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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maz1b ◴[12 Nov 20 02:16 UTC] No.25065664[source]▶
This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years.

For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.

Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.

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1. numpad0 ◴[12 Nov 20 03:22 UTC] No.25066040[source]▶
Laptop Macs of late are known for heavy throttling due to inadequate cooling, which cannot have been unnoticed in simulations
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2. Bud ◴[12 Nov 20 03:42 UTC] No.25066169[source]▶
But not anymore. That era is over.
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3. numpad0 ◴[12 Nov 20 03:57 UTC] No.25066266[source]▶
So it’s natural that devices from that era and devices after that era behave differently
4. rayiner ◴[12 Nov 20 04:03 UTC] No.25066309[source]▶
I have the 16” MacBook Pro. It doesn’t throttle and will happily run at max boost for tens of minutes.
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5. perfmode ◴[12 Nov 20 04:21 UTC] No.25066398[source]▶
mine throttles to 30% within a minute of ffmpeg
6. JosephRedfern ◴[12 Nov 20 07:35 UTC] No.25067424[source]▶
I’d go so far as to say “laptops of late”, thermal throttling isn’t unique to MacBooks.

My XPS15 regularly throttles and sounds like it’s about to take off.

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7. adrianN ◴[12 Nov 20 07:44 UTC] No.25067473[source]▶
Mine doesn't throttle when the ambient temperature is below 21°C, but throttles almost immediately if the ambient temperature is above 24°C.
8. rbanffy ◴[12 Nov 20 08:08 UTC] No.25067608[source]▶
Gaming laptops are huge for a reason: they need to get rid of a lot of heat.

Thin and light is great for short bursts of activity, but, when you need sustainable heavy usage, you'll need a bigger computer, even if it's just to have a bigger heatsink.

9. numpad0 ◴[12 Nov 20 08:21 UTC] No.25067678[source]▶
It was Surface that started the trend, then MacBook followed and became a feature.

By the way, “throttling” refers to CPU _slowing down_ despite cooling working at full capacity, so loud fans in itself isn’t one.

e: Another way to explain thermal throttling would be “thermal fading”, like brake fading on a car. Whether brake fading is considered a design fault or a feature that allow bursts of stronger brakes is semantic.

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10. roel_v ◴[12 Nov 20 08:53 UTC] No.25067843[source]▶
My XPS15's GPU runs at 100C (on benchmark loads), even after I replaced the heat pads and cooling paste. It took me weeks to get used to the idea. I guess that's just the new normal. I don't find mine to be loud though.
11. JosephRedfern ◴[12 Nov 20 08:59 UTC] No.25067882{3}[source]▶
Sorry, yes, I realise that’s what throttling is but wasn’t clear. I meant to say in the original comment the fans normally come on followed by throttling.
12. sliken ◴[12 Nov 20 09:03 UTC] No.25067903[source]▶
Which one? I have the i9 flavor and it sounds like it's taking off if I run a video conf with zoom or Microsoft teams.
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13. Tepix ◴[12 Nov 20 09:23 UTC] No.25068025[source]▶
The MBP16 has a problem with overheating VRMs during prolonged high load. A hack with thermal pads helps:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/gs6bal/2019_mbp...

14. akmarinov ◴[12 Nov 20 09:40 UTC] No.25068152[source]▶
*Intel Laptop Macs of late are known for heavy throttling

We have no idea what the M1 would look like. Though it's likely. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the fan out of the Air if that was a big concern.

15. nbevans ◴[12 Nov 20 10:56 UTC] No.25068570{3}[source]▶
If we're doing analogies, let's do them right :) Therefore I'd argue it is more like supercharger overheating on a car. As a supercharger gets hotter from prolonged load it gets hot and warms the air entering the engine which reduces cold-air intake thus reducing horse power compared to a cooler supercharger. There is a way to solve this: by fitting a chargecooler - which is basically a cooling system for the supercharger.
16. dave84 ◴[12 Nov 20 12:44 UTC] No.25069201{3}[source]▶
I think the Surface was late to the party, the original Macbook Air had huge problems when it launched in 2008.

https://www.theage.com.au/technology/apple-fans-burned-by-ho...

17. numpad0 ◴[12 Nov 20 16:49 UTC] No.25071692{3}[source]▶
Throttling refers to throttling down. Choking up. Going up is boosting.