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

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 7 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.755s | 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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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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1. 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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2. 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.

3. 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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4. 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.
5. JosephRedfern ◴[12 Nov 20 08:59 UTC] No.25067882[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.
6. nbevans ◴[12 Nov 20 10:56 UTC] No.25068570[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.
7. dave84 ◴[12 Nov 20 12:44 UTC] No.25069201[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...