I worry that the higher core will also means that Apple will return to their old habits of charging exorbitant prices. One of the things that was appealing about the first round of M1’s in addition to the power was the price. The new iMac M1 was a bit disappointing in that regard, especially when taking into consideration the fact that the base model is missing some key features that make the mid-tier model the only real option.
I just upgraded my Hackintosh to an 18-core i9 for a little over $1000, if I had specced it out from scratch the total cost for that machine would have been in the $2500 range (GPU-madness aside). I’m eager to return to a legit Apple computer, but I hope that these new machines which might start to be competitive with my main rig are priced within what mere mortals can afford.
Me too. I love the versatility the mini offers and the M1 Mini was such a relief for price VS performance and hope it’s not a one off situation.
Hopefully Apple goes a new route with the pricing, although their RAM and SSD seem like they’ll always be a pricey upgrade.
Here’s to hoping that rumored Mini “Pro” isn’t too crazy in price.
Nah. I’m fine with mine. For me my MBA is mainly for e-mail and web. The fact that I can run Blender on it really well is a bonus. If Apple updates the line I might consider selling this and updating in a year or so, but I won’t be mad about it.
I’d happily even go up to $2k for one, but it’d have to be competitive at the very least with my last Hackintosh build (i9 9900k/5700xt GPU/64Gb RAM) which the current M1 isn’t. Bonus points if it supports eGPU.
As with all things Mac related, it’s the GPU that remains the biggest hanging point for me. Though given that I spend a good 95% of my time in Eevee these days, which even midline spec’d cards can handle fairly well, and the M1 is punching well above its weight class on all other fronts, I’m wondering if I should maybe start reconsidering my priorities.
While I don’t think an Apple computer will ever be as price-competitive as a build-your-own, I think it’s going to start being closer than it ever was. If the rumored mac mini turns out to be true, we might have the best all-around mac apple has offered in years.
I’m expected the starting price of an m1x mac mini to be around $1099, and specced out with 64gb of RAM and the rumored 32-core gpu bump to land around $2000-$2500. With the rumored performance of this thing, that feels competitive enough for me.
Can’t WAIT to see what Apple pulls out of their hat for the mac pro.
Thats quite likely to happen Finally Apple was quite successful in the past turning their products into veblen goods. If I think about that monitor stand…
Yeah, its not officially yet, but I think its far more than a rumor what bloomberg offers here
Buyers of the high-end Mac Pro desktop planned for next year will likely have a choice of two processors that are either twice or four times as powerful as the new high-end MacBook Pro chip.
Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics. The computing core counts top the 28 core maximum offered by today’s Intel Mac Pro chips, while the higher-end graphics chips would replace parts now made by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The reality is that 90% of the time our CPUs are doing very little work. It’s a waste of energy to use up high power cores if all you’re doing is modeling.
Still, having 4 to 8 of them seems a bit extreme, given that two could easily handle the everyday tasks (email, movies, web browsing, etc. etc.) they’re designed for.
The best way I’ve heard it explained is that the efficiency cores are smaller and having those doing the mundane light OS task frees up space for more high end cores to sit idle waiting to do the task they’re designed for with out any space and energy waste.
Having more of them gives the scheduler much more freedom to balance the workload between the two types of cores. Its not that different from why hyperthreading had a positive effect over their hyperthreadingless counterparts. It offers the possibility to design calculations differently /tasks in smaller chunks and get a more efficient overall performance. And energy efficiency is not just an argument for saving battery power, modern desktop systems should also be capable to run like that if the horsepower isnt really needed.
Tiwaz posted a benchmark render with Blender Cycles and the M1. I then posted some comparisons with the 3070 and ryzen 5900x. It reconfirms the M1 almost has the performance per watt of the Ryzen. Impressive.
It’s definitely impressive. Not sure if your calculations are correct with saying the Ryzen 5950X and M1 are equal in performance per Watt. Even if you double the cores of the M1 to match, and then double the multi-core score, I’m thinking the M1 at 20W-24W TDP (AnandTech) will significantly draw less power than the 5950X at 105W TDP.
Honestly doubling a 4X4 M1 wouldn’t be the same as a true 16 Performance core M2 without the efficiency core count handicap. If you double the multi-core score of the new M1 iMacs (7665) with what would be line an 8X8 core system (8 efficiency and 8 performance) it would score close to 15400 multi.
I have a feeling that a full 16 core Apple “M” variant will significantly out score any X86 chipset at a fraction of the power.
But we’ll see!
EDIT: Sorry I see you are talking about the 5900X and not the higher core count 5950X. If that’s the case I think the next M1 variant with matching core count will be an even better power to performance chipset.
