Macs are great for casual use. But for any serious compute, you're pretty limited while the Apple tax gets pretty ridiculous quick.
This is why I abandoned the platform. You get so much more bang per buck on the PC side. And even if you care about power efficiency you can use 7950x in Eco mode, and undervolt your GPU.
Apple tax pays for itself when IT doesn't have to manage a bunch of custom Windows desktops and configurations. Initially our editors complained and requested Windows PCs but since we got them all M1 Ultra Mac Studios there have been no complaints. Having everyone on the same managed platform saves us a ton of time and money. Even our Android devs love them.
yup, macs are way easier to manage, troubleshoot and maintain. If we need windows systems we virtualize them and link them to an Azure AD that syncs with a 3rd party directory that’s also way easier to use. we keep microsoft stuff as compartmentalized as possible.
It's a double edged butter knife. Good for all round use up to a certain point.
If you want raw compute, M1/M2 Macs are the most expensive computers of all, rivaling or exceeding Xeon/Threadripper/NVidia A6000 combos.
I'm constantly looking for whether it's worth buying one, and the answer continues to be no, because the price is just too high for what you get.
Not all workloads have made it to the cloud, yest.
Compute hasn't been a focus on the mac for ages, if ever.
The mac has a few pro use cases; content creation/manipulation, development, office, and few odds and ends here and there.
Most stuff that needed heavy local compute FE Analysis/Training models/CAD/CAE/FD/etc is been almost exclusively on windows/linux ever since the old RISC workstations went extinct, and I don't think Mac was ever a big market there.
Even if they have had use cases, yanking the carpet out from under Mac/Nvidia users (which was me), trust in Apple for such stuff is now near zero.
Basing anything with heavy compute on Macs is now out of the question.
They might try to use M chips for compute, but the chip design limits them in ways they should have predicted.
I wouldn't expect anyone to take Apple seriously for compute, specially since they basically abandoned OpenCL and Grand Central.
Apple has a very bad track record when it comes to anything compute/enterprise/infrastructure. They did the same thing with Xserve.
I have no clue what the use case really is for their newest Mac Pro. PCI-e expansion but no discrete GPU support.
Mac Studio is 3.69 liters TOTAL while the 4090 is 2.5 liters all by itself.
Velka 3 is the smallest usable PC case I know of and it's more than 3.9 liters. Further, it isn't going to fit something more powerful than a 4060Ti and a 7700X or 12400 (yes, 13400 throttles) due to heat constraints.
For size/performance and power/performance, the Studio is a very good machine. If you compare to prebuilt professional computers, it's not super-outrageously priced either. Market matters when considering value.
When apple marketing reaches for the bottom of the barrel, and the brightest idea they have is to compare sizes... you know its getting bad.
Really? Size comparison? Just go with its power efficiency angles man.. or were you tasked to think of a new idea? PC users do want that low powered stuff you know.. its just that apple suddenly drops support for standards so maybe they can work to bring back those.
SFF has seen a *massive* increase in popularity over the past few years among PC builders (in fact, Intel NUC shut down because they couldn't/wouldn't become price competitive).
Not everyone wants a massive desktop hogging all their space. Almost all the top-selling cases are mATX or ITX showing that the trend toward smaller is clearly happening. I'd guess that if ITX weren't so much more expensive than mATX, it would have already taken over the market.
Thanks for suggesting that ssf is ***massive***, but no.
Small form factor is a niche, thats why mobo manufacturers only design 1\~3 per chipset generation. And you've hit the head on why it caters to a smaller number of customers, its more expensive. Its such a first world problem for desktop real estate/appearances to be an issue.
> SFF has seen a massive increase in popularity over the past few years among PC builders
> Thanks for suggesting that ssf is massive
These two things have different meanings...
> Mac Studio is 3.69 liters TOTAL while the 4090 is 2.5 liters all by itself.
If you clock a 4090 to have comparable performance with an M2 Ultra, you probably wouldn't need anywhere near that much cooling.
That's true, but you'd be more like the 4060 Ti in performance by the time you got the TDP down far enough. I didn't even start talking about fanspeed either. The Velka 3 gets pretty loud when you ramp things up.
Rare solid video from LTT. Missing a few aspects, for example regarding efficiency, where obviously faster setups will use more power (but will they actually use more energy?), and also using the most outrageously inefficient CPU like 13900k. But overall gets the important parts.
Yeah should've compared to 7950x, but I've noticed this LTT always chooses Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs to compare in general unless it's a literal review of a PC CPU/GPU.
I kind of get why it makes sense to compare Apple silicon to Intel.
First, Intel is what Apple themselves used and have now transitioned away from.
Second, Intel P/E core design is more comparable to Apple/arm big.LITTLE. at least when doing a like for like core configuration competition.
> Second, Intel P/E core design is more comparable to Apple/arm big.LITTLE.
That is so misleading... Intel E cores are mid range CPU cores, that equal something like a first generation Zen. Apple E cores are ultra slow cores that are used for handling background tasks and very light loads.
Saying that one P/E = another P/E when they differ totally in power and performance profile, is extreme misleading for people.
I hate how Intel calls them E-cores because they are not efficient core like you expect. Intel was better calling them S-Core (as in small cores), what is more factual correct.
How did you interpret that to be "misleading?"; both Intel and Apple are using a hybrid architecture. They are 2 examples of the same approach, which differ in details obviously. But the intent and goal are the same.
Intel calls them "efficiency" cores because that is the intended purpose; much lower power consumption for non compute-intensive threads compared to running them on the P-cores.
I am quoting Earthborn92, who said that Intels architecture is comparable to Apples, when the Apple E-Cores != Intel E-Cores in power nor efficiency. Its misleading for people who do not know the architecture involved.
And Intel is kind of misleading people with calling them E-core. Yes, they are more efficient the their P-cores, but that is because their P-cores are manufacture overclocked like hell. Its like Ferrari coming out with a car that has a 300HP engine and eats "only" 10l/100km, calling it a Efficient car. This skews the comparison to other brands who may indeed have more efficient cares that do 4l/100km. Understand the issue?
Most tasks still are going to hit the P-cores, and workloads that hit the E-cores in mass, in general have little benefit. And the argument that light loads on the E-core are more efficient is not that true. The p-cores on light loads, as long as the boost are not going into the 4+ Ghz, can be just as efficient. The issue is that insane frequency boost + power budget that is put available.
Anyway, they are a far stretch from E-cores like Apple, and that is what i was talking about. A better naming was S-core, or M core or whatever, as to not confuse people. Yea yea, marketing bla bla ...
I don't think their intent was to mislead. The fact is Apple and Intel both use heterogeneous designs and AMD does not, so I can certainly see the connection OP made. As different as Intel and Apple designs may be, their more similar than an AMD and Apple comparison would have been.
In the past Linus has stated they go with Intel/Nvidia because it reliably works. AMD can result in better performance but often causes weird glitches that take precious hours to troubleshoot making it not worth it.
And in the same video he said now that's not the case but still they haven't changed. That's one of the reasons why the AMD challenge isn't completed, they have nothing to report, the GPUs have worked normally for the most part, just like their previous Nvidia cards.
That's literally not true, the AMD challenge was delayed due to a communication issue between Linus and Luke. Linus swapped the 7900XTX out of his PC, and was waiting on Luke's report, but Luke thought he had to wait for Linus'.
It's also not true that he said he had no issues, he was eager to swap out his 7900XTX for a Nvidia card because RDNA3 had artefacting issues with TOTK emulation.
[WAN show segment here.](https://youtu.be/nfCUTZWwlvo?t=9953)
They did talk about how they had nothing to report to compared to Linux challenge.
>It's also not true that he said he had no issues, he was eager to swap out his 7900XTX for a Nvidia card because RDNA3 had artefacting issues with TOTK emulation.
I didn't say AMD didn't have issues, I said the cards worked normally like their previous Nvidia cards. Jake even preferred the 7900xtx because of the challenge.
>reasons why the AMD challenge isn't completed
Is this speculation or they actually said this? I almost always skim through their WAN show and i doubt that i missed this if they said it there.
I feel like the launch of LTT labs resulted in video testing quality taking a big step down and they are finally working out the kinks to get back to the level they were previously. Hopefully now the ceiling is much higher so we'll just get better and better data as the ramp up continues.
Agreed. This video was solid, but it's also clear they've got more headroom now. It seems like new employees and new methodologies are getting up to speed now.
It’s really interesting how much Apple has stagnated and slowed since coming out of the gates blazing with the M1. They’ve still got the best product on the market in the laptop segment but that will probably change come this fall and they really don’t seem to follow up the M1 with many major leaps - at a time when Intel and AMD are progressing faster than ever.
They’re still in a very good spot and it doesn’t even really matter for their market position but it shows how quickly you can go from threatening the highest end PC parts to horribly behind in just one generation - at least in the desktop realm.
Not to whataboutism but dont most companies do this?
But on the video Ive said this multiple times.... Efficiency matters yes but its not the gotcha on desktop. Apples shipments desktop/laptop improved so I bet their laptops are doing numbers especially m1 air.
Its crazy how amd/intel are discounting their cpus nd cpus due to low demand nd competition but apple still wants to sell mac studios at msrp (at least officially) do they not get the memo?
Nvidia is guilty of a bunch of disingenuous marketing, but what specifically about DLSS3 concerns you? The technology exists and it works as advertised, and at this point it's clear that a non-trained eye will have trouble telling the difference between an FG-assisted framerate vs a native one.
My biggest pet peeve is them releasing an underpowered card (say, the 4060) and justifying its lack of power by pointing at DLSS and FG-assisted results. But that's the problem of the card, not the technology.
The Reddit classic, down voting pure objective facts.
DLSS3 is 100% legit.
Nvidia pricing/naming their cards off of DLSS Performance is also 100% pure corpo greed.
They’re incomplete fake frames that Nvidia is treating as if they’re fully fledged actual frames.
That makes them worthless if they increase the input lag too much or if they smear too much or if they obscur relevant information. Or if they destroy the HUD too much.
And, *as with all DLSS things*, they only work on specific games and GPUs, that makes them even more situational.
So, in short, they are a rarely working silver bullet solution that cannot be seriously considered anything but a novelty for the time being.
I haven't tried every game that supports DLSS 3, but I have tried a good couple at this point. HUD Artifacts have been almost never present except shortly after launch, or a brief flicker of an issue that ends up being a "Oh yea, DLSS 3 is on" I have yet to play a game where Input lag was noticeably different from On vs Off.
The only games where it might be detrimental, is the highest level of Esports games, which are almost universally designed for potato computers and have no need for a boost.
Your argument seems to stem entirely around the situation at launch, or as someone who hasn't actually used it.
Nvidia being a greedy shit has nothing to do with the technology itself.
The Greatest weakness of DLSS and Frame gen specifially, is the small number of games it's available in.
>The Greatest weakness of DLSS and Frame gen specifically, is the small number of games it's available in.
Which is *exactly* why it's not a real benchmark that should ever be used to **measure the actual performance of a GPU**. "better FPS in select games" does not create a real world stat that you can reliably apply to other games or gain an understanding of. Pure, actual frames generated will allow you to compare between card models, and manufacturers.
But dlss 3 has lower latency than intel & amd cards because they dont have reflex equivalent at the moment.
You dont know this but 40fps on nvidia feels like 60-70 on intel & amd. Since reflex cuts latency by almost 50%.
Dlss 3 has higher latency than dlss 2 + reflex but lower latency than fsr 2 or xess
Hud issues is a big concern and makes sense
Dlss3 only working on ada makes sense, its nvidia artificially forcing people to upgrade (I refuse to believe 4050 will have faster optical flow than 3090ti)
> (I refuse to believe 4050 will have faster optical flow than 3090ti)
Will you be surprised to learn that the 3050 has a better NVENC encoder than the 2080Ti? Nvidia's media block is completely separate from CUDA codes (which is what we usually define performance by) and is fixed for every generation (every single 3000-series card has the same 7th-gen NVENC unit). Since framegen works the same on every 4000-series card so far, I'm pretty sure OFA works the same way - every 4000-series card has the same OFA silicon that's better than the previous-gen OFA on the 3000 series.
Dlss 3 fps isn't real fps and isn't supported in all games hence can't be compared to native or dlss 2 in performance but Nvidia does.
>The technology exists and it works as advertised, and at this point it's clear that a non-trained eye will have trouble telling the difference between an FG-assisted framerate vs a native one.
Completely subjective, I tried it out and didn't like it at all. Probably because I'm very sensitive as I play Dota 2 competitively. So for me FG is irrelevant, I don't even use upscaling unless I literally have to to run the game.
> Dlss 3 fps isn't real fps and isn't supported in all games hence can't be compared to native or dlss 2 in performance but Nvidia does.
*In the specific game that does support DLSS and FG*, it's a fair comparison to make. Overall, no, but in specific games yes. The "fake frames aren't real" debate is just a rehash of when DLSS1 first released - "it's not real pixels I'm seeing, it's fake pixels generated by AI". A hardware generation and big software improvements later, people got used to the idea that AI upscaling is valid.
Same will happen with FG in 2 years, when it'll accrue a backlog of a few years of every new AAA release supporting it, and more people get their hands on supported hardware.
>In the specific game that does support DLSS and FG, it's a fair comparison to make
Debatable, but Nvidia compares overall not specific games.
>The "fake frames aren't real" debate is just a rehash of when DLSS1 first released - "it's not real pixels I'm seeing, it's fake pixels generated by AI". A hardware generation and big software improvements later, people got used to the idea that AI upscaling is valid.
That isn't going to happen in this case as FG literally inserts fake frames as in those frames don't interact with the game engine while normal upscaling frames do. This makes FG useless for certain types of games like multiplayer, eSports, shooters, etc. While normal upscaling can be used in such games no problem.
>dont most companies do this?
Many, and it needs to be called out every time. Perhaps it feels more egregious here since it's so expensive and Apple is a lot more focused on selling their clean and professional image.
I agree with the vid, its good...People like Linus are important in the industry. I guess since im slightly tech savvy I never trust companies slides but average joe will probably believe those numbers.
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