Outside the rest of the claim not making sense how exactly would one compare the price of the M1 Ultra to an Intel CPU in the first place? The M1 Ultra doesn't have a price tag and even if it did you'd still not have a number you'd compare to the cost of a CPU.
You're definitely right there. I put together a build with this CPU and chose the most expensive part available (except GPU because chip shortage, case because there are $5000 ATX cases for no good reason, PSU because I just got the best Seasonic one, and SSD because there are $12k enterprise ones): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DYxhk9
So that's $3500 without a GPU, buy a $500 used GPU on eBay and you're beating Apple. And, nobody buys $1000 motherboards, so that takes $500 off. You don't need a $300 case. Etc. Basically the point of the exercise is that you can max everything out, and get a faster computer for less money, which is what the comment was trying to say.
Someone will reply and say that your time sourcing and assembling the components isn't free, or that it doesn't run OS X, etc. I get it, you don't have to say that. Just adding an actual computer that's expensive as possible that you could have right now to compare to.
I just got a Titan A200 with a Ryzen 9 5950X. This CPU is really fast, and dissipates only 105W. The Titan workstation is the quietest I have ever had. It's really incredible. Price tag: $3600.
> According to Passmark, the 5950X is beating Intel's 12900X.
As a 5950X owner I thought this sounded off. Looking at the link it made a lot more sense, it only beats the 12900K in multi-core but in single core it is significantly behind. Really it's behind for the first 8 cores, until the Intel CPU starts using efficiency cores. Compared to the M1 Ultra the 5950X is behind in both metrics at nearly double the power consumption.
Not that the 5950X is a bad CPU, particularly if you need x86 support, it's just not really the topper it used to be against these 1 year newer chips. It'll be interesting if all 3 (AMD, Apple, and Intel) manage to get the next major iterations out by the end of the year and we get a fresh comparison on more even ground.
I think you’re right—we’re still on the first generation of Apple computer chips (and honestly I think the performance is still very impressive, even if overpriced), and there is a lot more motivation now on the others. We might start seeing some big improvements.
Though you'd have a possibly noisy large black box, compared to a small quieter silver box. This is a factor in computer design - cooling is hard. A quiet small box with performance of a noisy large black box is something a lot of people would pay for (including me).
I really don't know. I suffer in both directions. I build large projects on a daily basis, so picked a Threadripper. It destroys large builds, especially C++ ones. Then I use the same computer to play games, and the CPU can only spit out 300 frames per second when my monitor can display 360, which is annoying. (It's CPU limited, not GPU limited, sadly.) So really, I want both, and nobody has both.
Single thread performance is going to be especially relevant if you are developing an older language. I'm always surprised how slow webpack is (and don't do enough frontend stuff to mandate that people switch to that Go equivalent), for example. If you have good single thread performance, you make a lot of Typescript developers happy. If you have good multi thread performance, you make a lot of C++ developers and gamers happy. So having both would be great ;)
To save the click a 12900K machine from Dell is about $3k. If you need CUDA or say SolidWorks get the PC, for video and multithreaded workloads the Mac would probably be faster, but really only benchmarks of your use case can tell you.
So made a build to essentially show how expensive an M1 Mac is compared to an intel machine but left out a critical component because it’s too expensive?
Umm, running a 1990s fortran code that's a CFD simulation is a "real" workload. Seems relatively likely that any floating point heavy code would act similarly. Hard to say if it's the matrix multiple or the memory bandwidth that's giving apple such a large lead.
Normally I'd discount using a 28 core Intel CPU from 2019, but from what I can tell Intel hasn't improved much since then. Keep in mind that Intel has a specialized vector unit (AVX256 or AVX512 depending on the model), and the listed CPU is pretty high end (with 6 memory channels) where the normal i5/i7/i9 is only 2.
So sure it's not a video compression, gaming, or web browing benchmark, but some folks do run floating point heavy codes. Unlike CUDA, which requires a rewrite, this code wasn't specifically optimized for the M1.
Hey man, maybe I'm a bot too. Who knows. Blip bloop. But these are just computer chips and fresh low karma accounts with vitriol dialed to the max is a-typical of HN. By all means, M1 is the worst, why froth at the mouth about it in this manner? You explain it.
I don't have to explain anything, HN is based on the ideals of arguing in good faith and not vilifying people for their opinions. If you think they're being harsh, then say that. If you think they're wrong, then refute them. But if you're solely seeking to bash them, why even comment in the first place? How does that advance anyone's understanding of the topic, or sway anyone's belief? It's the opposite of productive conversation, if you think they're encouraging a harmful or counterproductive dialogue then you can downvote them and move on. It's not rocket science.
It's amusing that you're concerned about someone making a joke turning this into Slashdot, because the actual discussion here comparing specs and cost of Intel vs. Mac could be lifted directly from the Slashdot archives circa the late 90s (adjusting for the specs).
Intel certainly wins on single core, but the m1 Ultra multicore scores are still impressive in comparison being generally 23-24000, while the 12900k are around 15-20000.
Sure, Intel focuses on single thread perf, high power (241 watt max tdp), and automatically overclocks to 5.1 GHz, only if you have enough power, cooling, and a bunch of idle cores. Thus the 15% variation in submitted scores. It's also rather memory bandwidth constrained, and shows impressive numbers with a single core running.
Apple on the otherhand doesn't overclock, focuses on multi-core performance, has great memory bandwidth, and all the submitted scores are within 1%.
The M1 ultra is also 1.32x faster in the multiprocessing benchmark. Looks pretty impressive to me, even ignoring the much less power the M1 ultra uses.
I'll never understand religious loyalty to a corporation.
The computer in the OP is fully assembled and has a 128GB of memory, a nice GPU, and 8TB SSD. Why be so obtuse.
If you're just trying to compare to the entry level Mac Studio at least have the decency to throw in a full parts list, like you know, with a graphics card..
Why do you need a dedicated graphics card for CPU compute? If anything GPU is your concern you're not really interested in an M1 Ultra nor in a 12900K anyways. The CPU itself includes a GPU that is sufficient for anything except GPU heavy workloads, so the parts list is fully complete.
The M1 Ultra version starts at 4000$ dollars with a 1TB hard drive and 64GB memory, but I thought a 32GB option was available, so that's what I went with. By all means add another 32GB for 120$, that's why I sent a link that's fully configurable.
As for a parts list, I sent one because the request was to spec out. If you actually go look for a fully assembled machine you are likely to find one with a similar price.
If you want to add an RTX3070, 256GB of RAM, and an 8TB SSD, you can go ahead, it will still be over a thousand dollars cheaper than the corresponding Mac Studio. Again, that's why I sent the link, so you can play around with it.
Lastly, I don't see how this is any kind of loyalty to a corporation. It's simply pointing out the truth that the computer in question is just very expensive if you care about performance. As far as I'm concerned, it's trying to deny the obvious that the M1 Ultra is slower in workloads that can't use 16 cores efficiently at multiple times the price that looks like religious loyalty to a corporation to me. Especially when the corporation in question does what it can to lock you in, which just isn't the case for AMD or Intel.
If you really need 4 more cores and at the same time do not care about single core performance enough to go with a 12900k, but at the same time care about it enough not to go with a threadripper, to such a degree that you can justify spending 2000$ more, and don't care about GPU performance either, then sure the Mac Studio is for you. Otherwise, it only makes sense if you love macOS at thousands of dollars worth (or are locked into the ecosystem). There's nothing wrong about acknowledging it's an extremely niche product that is almost never justifiable on performance grounds.
I think it is important to compare comparable things.
> If you want to add an RTX3070, 256GB of RAM, and an 8TB SSD, you can go ahead, it will still be over a thousand dollars cheaper than the corresponding Mac Studio.
If you want something comparable to a Mac Studio you would need to add those things. I'm glad you managed to agree to that. A thousand dollar delta on a $4000 computer is nothing to sneeze at, however yours is a parts list and a Mac Studio is a complete product.
> Lastly, I don't see how this is any kind of loyalty to a corporation.
It read as if you were carrying water for Intel.
> It's simply pointing out the truth that the computer in question is just very expensive if you care about performance.
People care about all kinds of things. Obviously if you have no software to run that would benefit from the combination of hardware the Mac Studio offers you would be better off with something else. Horse for courses.
If you enjoy spending time assembling hardware that's great too.
> There's nothing wrong about acknowledging it's an extremely niche product that is almost never justifiable on performance grounds.
>If you want something comparable to a Mac Studio you would need to add those things. I'm glad you managed to agree to that. A thousand dollar delta on a $4000 computer is nothing to sneeze at, however yours is a parts list and a Mac Studio is a complete product.
There is no corresponding product at that price. The 4000$ Mac Studio 7TB less RAM, half of the memory, and a fraction of the GPU performance. The Mac you're describing costs 8000$ dollars, and were comparing it to a 2500-3000$ dollar computer.
It's not a 1000$ dollar delta on a 4000$ computer, it's a 2000+$ delta on a 4000$ computer and a 5000$ delta on an 8000$ computer.
> It read as if you were carrying water for Intel.
I honestly can't see how that came across. Someone asked for the spec out of a 12900K computer because comparing the price of a CPU to that if a full computer is unfair, so I gave it. I personally wouldn't buy a 12900K myself, it's ridiculously overkill and on everything except the highest of single core performance Intel is currently a worse proposition than AMD.
> People care about all kinds of things. Obviously if you have no software to run that would benefit from the combination of hardware the Mac Studio offers you would be better off with something else. Horse for courses.
Sure, but the point I'm trying to make is that there is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of use-cases where there is a genuine performance advantage. The original assertion that the 12900K (or in half of the use cases, a Threadripper) is superior in performance is generally accurate for the 80% of people that run single threaded or lightly threaded workloads on the CPU, and for the 10% of people that only care about multi threaded workloads a Threadripper is better. For the 10% of people that run a particular mix of both, half of them have the GPU of the M1 Ultra as a deal-breaker. Obviously it's all dependent on the particular use case, it's just that those are much rarer than most think on the performance front. There are other valid reasons besides performance of course.
> If you enjoy spending time assembling hardware that's great too.
You don't have to - pre-assembled computers are generally cheaper than building them yourself these days. The reason I have given a parts list is because that's the fairest way to compare various configurations without listing off 20 different SKUs.
That seems like a poorly thought out theory considering the $500 12900K needs 50 watts to beat the 2 year old M1 in single core performance. Whether you're a laptop user or an enterprise server customer you care about efficiency.
where did you come up with the 12900K pulling 50W? The 12900K is a 240W-class processor at full boost, so the M1 is pulling 1/6th the power...
(the 12700K is much more reasonable but the 12900K and 12900KS are a "win the benchmarks" SKU and intel turned everything to 11 to get it over the top of the 5900X.)
For a workload that is optimized on M1 for 10 more watts you get way faster and better functionality than a 2 yo M1 that uses 40 watts and cant even export h264 format video faster than a 5 year old computer.
For any Android devs out there. I built a linux beast workstation just for running Android Studio/Gradle et al. Then used NoMachine to headless into it. Kept my 2013 MBP and got a 4-5x improvement in build/deploy cycles without leaving OSX completely behind. Highly recommended.
You wouldn't happen to know where to get a decent NoMachine 3 replacement would you? I'm completely sold on the compressed/cached X forwarding that 3 offered, even if the server can only be an X11/*nix based machine. It was so fast it beat my school's on-LAN citrix server when I was remoting home through my house's DSL! I'm sad they abandoned it for more server compatibility in 4 and won't provide old 3 downloads that I could find...
NoMachine, in the Workstation version uses the exact X protocol compression of the version 3, even improved, with the same brilliant performance. Anyway the Workstation is a commercial product, so I understand some may dislike it or prefer completely “free” stuff.
X2Go is a remote access program which is based on nx3. It worked pretty well when I was messing with it. I've never been on to do a lot of day-to-day work on rdp/vnc/nx but if I wanted to using an x11 system, it would be my choice.
I actually might do the same thing, just not with OS X, but instead using Linux as a desktop OS and a virtual Windows for specific stuff that Linux doesn't do, can't remember off the top of my head right now. I'd like to build a beefy server and put a few VMs on it for my family and have them use linux PCs as dumb thin clients and use the VMs, so I can roll-back changes and keep it always fresh, and of course benefit from a fast CPU.
