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

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 6 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.759s | 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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martinald ◴[12 Nov 20 02:45 UTC] No.25065838[source]▶
Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?
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kalleboo ◴[12 Nov 20 02:48 UTC] No.25065858[source]▶
It still has a lot of limitations that matter to many pros - max 16 GB of RAM, max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops), only enough PCIe lanes to support 2 thunderbolt ports. eGPUs aren't supported either, but hopefully that is a software thing that will be fixed.

It will be very interesting to see what the performance will be of the more "pro" chip that overcomes those limitations that they'd put in the 16" and iMacs

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1. rickbutton ◴[12 Nov 20 03:34 UTC] No.25066109[source]▶
why would it be only 1 external display? Can you not plug into a thunderbolt dock and use multiple external displays? I do exactly that with my 2012 MacBook Pro.
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2. eli ◴[12 Nov 20 03:37 UTC] No.25066136[source]▶
It's a limitation of the M1 chip apparently

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/11/how-apple-silicon...

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3. rorykoehler ◴[12 Nov 20 03:49 UTC] No.25066214[source]▶
You can use sidecar with an ipad for a second external display.
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4. kalleboo ◴[12 Nov 20 04:28 UTC] No.25066448[source]▶
The embedded GPU doesn't support it
5. Fnoord ◴[12 Nov 20 09:58 UTC] No.25068254[source]▶
With some iPads. Not all. I was thinking of using an older iPad for this purpose, but alas. Won't work. Too old.
6. dawnerd ◴[12 Nov 20 20:39 UTC] No.25074660[source]▶
That’s merely speculation as to why.