M1 Mac vs Ryzen 7?

[Donnie Fisher]

M1 is an interesting idea, unwelcome, not really needed, doomed to fail in the long run, but interesting.

I'd be very surprised if it was doomed to fail, nor do I see it as a novel whim idea either. I'd say it was welcome to be honest. Apple have been consistently moving along more powerful and powerful chips in the phone and tablet lines. The iPad Pro being an example of almost reaching a glass ceiling against the lower mid PC ... do Apple just stall behind Intel, or carry on and make the jump. Unwelcome ? More like inevitable ... There was nothing out there that suited Apple, so they made the jump their selves. Good on them.

I very much see the M1 devices as a test the water family, and to get the ARM train running. By offering devices which quite frankly nail the amateur / prosumer market*, they'll be generating a movement towards the platform which is only going to build.


* By that, I mean a device which is reasonablly priced for Apple and offers very very good performance going by the reviews out ... that will influence many more to buy.

Heck, even think the wee mini is looking a solid buy for what I want to do.

 

[visibleman]

Precisely as above...

Nope.

What i essentially said was that being on the 'bleeding edge' for a lot of (money earning) workflows can be a hindrance due to lack of support costing time and money - no bueno! Better to wait until the support is there and transition accordingly.

I certainly don't think Apple Silicon is "doomed to fail" but i'm also not doing the Apple CircleJerk™, unlike some reviewers, due to already experiencing one architecture transition (PowerPC to Intel; arguably when Apple PowerPC had a pretty hefty performance advantage compared x86 at the time) where it took Apple a few years to get it right. Ultimately, time will tell.

 

[hartgeh3]

I have a Ryzen 2700x (16GB / 1TB NVME) Hackintosh and have the M1 Mini on order so will compare the two.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Have we somehow forgotten the mac mini cots £650?

A Ryzen 5800, motherboard, cooler and ram costs more than that, let alone the rest of the system. It's not even in the same league in terms of cost verses a 'professional workstation'.

For me the mini represents excellent value at that price point. It's OI is limiting but it is what it is and you get what you pay for at the end of the day. It ultimately runs rings around anything X86 you can buy for £650 and its tiny.

 

[englishpremier]

This is simple just compare your machine against published video editing figures of the M1 Mac Mini.

Hackintosh FCPX and test the speed, then compare it to a Mini

Do your Premier tests, then compare it to a Mini running Premier through Rosetta.

Substitute for whatever software you use.

Job done.

 

[v0n]

You're aware you're listing features of an entry-level product, and pretend like they are architectural compromises? Do you seriously think the size of ram, SSDs or the number/availability of ports on a product are architectural compromises?

Dude, it's architecturally compromised vs itself from earlier this year. Right now, this second, you can still order Apple to build you a 13" MBP with Intel, 32Gb of DDR4 memory, 4TB SSD and 4x TB3 ports. But M1 MBP is maxed out at 16Gb of "unified memory", 2Tb of storage and 2 TB ports. You can still order Apple to build you a previous gen, nearly three years old Mac Mini with 64Gb of DDR4, 10 gigabit ethernet and 4 USB-C + 2 USB-A ports, but M1 Mac Mini is maxed out at 16Gb, Gigabit ethernet and 2 x USB-C + 2 USB-A ports. These are architectural compromises of the M1 lineup.

This is only correct on the MBP, the Mac Mini can display 2x 4k Monitors, or in fact 1x 6k and 1x 4k.

Second 4k monitor via HDMI.

I'd be very surprised if it was doomed to fail, nor do I see it as a novel whim idea either.

I touched on it previously in main apple silicon thread and got yelled and called names - but I'll mention it again - I worked on "non-Intel" machines since nineties. I worked with and owned all kinds of SGIs, DEC Alphas, Suns, Apple Macs with PowerPC, both by Motorola and IBM. And I enjoyed every minute of it. With maybe exception of DEC, I would still pick them over Windows on x86 at the time, every time. And all of them were unsinkable industry giants of their era and thought their reign would last forever. And they all at some point lost their status, fortunes and eventually entire companies in a race for speed and power to watt ratio with Intel. I've done it, I've been through it all, I have a shelf full of t-shirts. Apple Silicon (and to a degree AMD's Ryzen) is only possible because Intel is deep asleep right now. For several years. They're busy doing some other important and highly lucrative ****. Like they've done many a time in the past. Those moments when Cray/SGI were faster (for a while). When Sparcs were faster (for a while). When PowerPCs were faster (for a while). And then they wake up, chuck some resources into R&D and jut go "whoosh". Interflippinggallactic. By the end of next Decade we'll be going through it again, with MacOS shipping with Rosetta 3 moving back to Intel, because they can't develop fast enough internal buses, memory speeds, external graphics support or handle entire generations of accessories on arm. That's how I see it, because that's how the adventures with "non x86" architectures ended every single time in the past. Sooner or later.

Nope.

I certainly don't think Apple Silicon is "doomed to fail" but i'm also not doing the Apple CircleJerk™, unlike some reviewers, due to already experiencing one architecture transition (PowerPC to Intel; arguably when Apple PowerPC had a pretty hefty performance advantage compared x86 at the time) where it took Apple a few years to get it right. Ultimately, time will tell.

PowerPC was lagging way behind Intel when Apple decided to switch. It was actually said in presentation note - they tried every single avenue and they just couldn't get the chips to run any faster without getting much, much hotter. Speed of memory, speed of graphics, speed of everything was lagging behind at that point. Which is why I'm surprised they want to try it again.

 

[visibleman]

Have we somehow forgotten the mac mini cots £650?

£699

A Ryzen 5800..

Has anyone compared it to the 5800 other than yourself?
Seems a bit silly to do so.

PowerPC was lagging way behind Intel when Apple decided to switch.

You mean clockspeeds, which IBM struggled with getting above 2GHz, but that isn't real world performance as such. Certainly Protools and the Adobe packages at the time outperformed their 'PC' equivalents.

 

[englishpremier]

By the end of next Decade we'll be going through it again, with MacOS shipping with Rosetta 3 moving back to Intel, because they can't develop fast enough internal buses, memory speeds, external graphics support or handle entire generations of accessories on arm. That's how I see it, because that's how the adventures with "non x86" architectures ended every single time in the past. Sooner or later.



PowerPC was lagging way behind Intel when Apple decided to switch. It was actually said in presentation note - they tried every single avenue and they just couldn't get the chips to run any faster without getting much, much hotter. Speed of memory, speed of graphics, speed of everything was lagging behind at that point. Which is why I'm surprised they want to try it again.

These days Apple is a much larger company than Intel, and spends more on R&D.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

£699



Has anyone compared it to the 5800 other than yourself?
Seems a bit silly to do so.



You mean clockspeeds, which IBM struggled with getting above 2GHz, but that isn't real world performance as such. Certainly Protools and the Adobe packages at the time outperformed their 'PC' equivalents.

Like the £50 makes any material difference to what you can actually buy.

Also isn't that the premise of the thread, how the M1 compares to a Ryzen 7, why compare to any other CPU given the 5800X is the newest Ryzen 7 available to buy (sort of). The point I was making is that you can't actually buy a Ryzen 7 PC for £699 so the comparison is completely meaningless.

Likewise are comparisons to products which cost significantly more, you would expect them to be better. The reality of it is, you cant buy something as powerful from the likes of Dell for £700 and anything you can buy from Dell isn't even close to the form factor of a Mac Mini.

For £600 from Dell you get an i5-10400, 8gb ram and 512gb SSD.
For £709 from Dell you get an i5-10400, 8gb ram and 256gb SSD, a 1TB HDD and a cheap 1080P monitor.
For £799 from Dell you get an i5-10400, 8gb ram and 256gb SSD, a 1TB HDD and a 1660 Super.

The above are mid towers, the first two have intel 630 GPU's which are terrible and have single channel memory. Dells SSD's at this price are also incredibly slow, Dell won't even tell you how fast it even is.

In their business line you can get an i5-10500, 16gb ram (dual channel - as if that even needs to be clarified in 2020) and 256gb SSD.

I'm fairly sure a mac mini will run rings around this in most workloads.

 

[visibleman]

Also isn't that the premise of the thread, how the M1 compares to a Ryzen 7, why compare to any other CPU given the 5800X...

The OP was talking about their 3800x if you read the post.

I'm fairly sure a mac mini will run rings around this in most workloads.

Maybe, if whatever workload is supported under Apple Silicon. But in my case those Dell's would (currently) run my Avid hardware whereas the M1 doesn't/wouldn't/couldn't/can't (who knows if it'll be supported), so no, the M1 Mini wouldn't "run rings around" it, as it can't

 

[HACO]

Dude, it's architecturally compromised vs itself from earlier this year. Right now, this second, you can still order Apple to build you a 13" MBP with Intel, 32Gb of DDR4 memory, 4TB SSD and 4x TB3 ports. But M1 MBP is maxed out at 16Gb of "unified memory", 2Tb of storage and 2 TB ports. You can still order Apple to build you a previous gen, nearly three years old Mac Mini with 64Gb of DDR4, 10 gigabit ethernet and 4 USB-C + 2 USB-A ports, but M1 Mac Mini is maxed out at 16Gb, Gigabit ethernet and 2 x USB-C + 2 USB-A ports. These are architectural compromises of the M1 lineup.

You're comparing high-end, much more expensive Macs with these new entry-level ones, and you say the lack of features in comparison means architectural compromise. No, it means you're comparing entry-level products with high-end products. If you want to compare features, you need to do that against Apple's old (or competitors') products at the same price point (£699). Those products also don't have 64GB ram, 8 TB of SSD or 4 thunderbolts (usually, any thunderbolts or USB 4.0).

There's a reason Apple still sells you those old Intel macs - they haven't been replaced yet.

I touched on it previously in main apple silicon thread and got yelled and called names - but I'll mention it again - I worked on "non-Intel" machines since nineties. I worked with and owned all kinds of SGIs, DEC Alphas, Suns, Apple Macs with PowerPC, both by Motorola and IBM. And I enjoyed every minute of it. With maybe exception of DEC, I would still pick them over Windows on x86 at the time, every time. And all of them were unsinkable industry giants of their era and thought their reign would last forever. And they all at some point lost their status, fortunes and eventually entire companies in a race for speed and power to watt ratio with Intel. I've done it, I've been through it all, I have a shelf full of t-shirts. Apple Silicon (and to a degree AMD's Ryzen) is only possible because Intel is deep asleep right now. For several years. They're busy doing some other important and highly lucrative ****. Like they've done many a time in the past. Those moments when Cray/SGI were faster (for a while). When Sparcs were faster (for a while). When PowerPCs were faster (for a while). And then they wake up, chuck some resources into R&D and jut go "whoosh". Interflippinggallactic. By the end of next Decade we'll be going through it again, with MacOS shipping with Rosetta 3 moving back to Intel, because they can't develop fast enough internal buses, memory speeds, external graphics support or handle entire generations of accessories on arm. That's how I see it, because that's how the adventures with "non x86" architectures ended every single time in the past. Sooner or later.

The good old "Intel is unbeatable" argument.

 

[v0n]

You're comparing high-end, much more expensive Macs with these new entry-level ones, and you say the lack of features in comparison means architectural compromise. No, it means you're comparing entry-level products with high-end products. If you want to compare features, you need to do that against Apple's old (or competitors') products at the same price point (£699). Those products also don't have 64GB ram, 8 TB of SSD or 4 thunderbolts (usually, any thunderbolts or USB 4.0).

Haco, there is no such thing as high end mac mini, there is just mac mini. In 2018 from day one at launch you had 4 thunderbolts on it and you could max it out to 64Gb and add better CPU. There never was "entry level" mac mini with less ports. M1 Mac Mini is step sideways in terms of CPU and step backwards in terms of spec of everything else than CPU. For the same money. You simply cannot upgrade £699 M1 Mac Mini to the same level as you could with £699 Mac Mini in 2018. That's compromise. That's the reality.

The good old "Intel is unbeatable" argument.

No, Intel has been beaten many, many times and by many, even by complete nobodies and imposters like Cyrix. But those victories were/are always short lived. Intel specialise in delivery of complete architectures to what - 65-70% of desktop/laptop/workstation/server market, it's their thing. But - why argue - let's just wait and see - I'm not joining you on M1 victory parade because minimalistic laptops aren't my thing. I would still pick 2015 MBP over M1 because 2015 would be more Pro for a Pro in MacBook nota-bene "Pro" - ports, card readers, ethernet. Over the last 5 years we've literally gone back 15 years to docking stations. That's like a car with better engine, better fuel economy but no seats, no windows and three wheels for me. Minimalism over spec - that's not for me. Not at that price point anyway. But I for one would like to see an Apple Silicon Mac Pro with super fast graphics beating AMD and Nvidia. That would be my kind of "wow", my kind of thing.

 

[Throrik]

Haco, there is no such thing as high end mac mini, there is just mac mini. In 2018 from day one at launch you had 4 thunderbolts on it and you could max it out to 64Gb and add better CPU. There never was "entry level" mac mini with less ports. M1 Mac Mini is step sideways in terms of CPU and step backwards in terms of spec of everything else than CPU. For the same money. You simply cannot upgrade £699 M1 Mac Mini to the same level as you could with £699 Mac Mini in 2018. That's compromise. That's the reality.

I don't think he's saying that there was ever less ports, but there was definitely an entry level Mac Mini with an i3 and 8GB RAM... That is what this current Mac Mini has directly replaced, your argument around the amount of TB ports is the only thing that has much merit. This is their first entry into a whole new architecture and if you are criticising them for taking their baseline, cheapest models and refining the whole solution prior to releasing their higher end, more expensive models then that's a bit silly to me. This is a direct improvement on CPU, GPU, Memory Speed/Latency and SSD performance. If you see that as a side grade then fair enough, I see it as an improvement. The argument of 16GB vs 64GB is completely pointless, they're very different memory types, and for a baseline model you won't need more than 16GB, hell we're seeing people edit 4k footage and compile large projects without running into memory problems - and they will release higher end models with more memory when they're ready, they said from day one that this would be a multi-year transitional process and yet you're expecting all options on day one...

 

[Armageus]

Over the last 5 years we've literally gone back 15 years to docking stations.

Yes we have, and they make more sense than ever now that technology has caught up.

A single cable now powers my laptop, connects it to two external monitors, a keyboard, mouse, gigabit network and any other usb devices I require.

Why would I want individual ports for all of those, and have to plug all of those in separately.

 

[englishpremier]

I would still pick 2015 MBP over M1 because 2015 would be more Pro for a Pro in MacBook nota-bene "Pro" - ports, card readers, ethernet. Over the last 5 years we've literally gone back 15 years to docking stations. That's like a car with better engine, better fuel economy but no seats, no windows and three wheels for me. But I for one would like to see an Apple Silicon Mac Pro with super fast graphics beating AMD and Nvidia. That would be my kind of "wow", my kind of thing.

Pro at what? I'm a professional, I don't need more ports. My 2015 Macbook Pro only has two USB sockets. I will admit that the SD Card Reader has been useful in the past but less and less so these days.

If ever the MBP or Mac Mini is connected to monitor, then it might as well be connected to hub also, then you can have as many ports as you like.

 

[v0n]

I don't think he's saying that there was ever less ports, but there was definitely an entry level Mac Mini with an i3 and 8GB RAM...

I don't know how many ways I could say this over and over again - that i3 with 8Gb of RAM could from day one be upgraded to 64Gb and so on, so forth, because architecture allowed it. M1 maxes out at the specs available and those specs are - in many ways - step backwards.

The argument of 16GB vs 64GB is completely pointless, they're very different memory types

I'm sorry, but they're not. MacOS on arm may get away with less memory for the same 'feel', but a resource hungry program that run like **** with 16Gb of RAM natively on Catalina last week won't magically get wings when emulated through Rosetta on BigSur. That's not how emulation works and that's not how memory requirements work.

A single cable now powers my laptop, connects it to two external monitors, a keyboard, mouse, gigabit network and any other usb devices I require. Why would I want individual ports for all of those, and have to plug all of those in separately.

And when you unplug it from external monitors and take it to work, standing in presentation room, how is your keyboard and mouse and gigabit network? You still need individual ports, it's just you didn't get them within the price of the laptop this time, you had to buy them separately at premium, no?

But let's make it simpler - let's stick to the task at hand of this thread. We just bought ourselves an M1 Mac Mini each, for audio and video production. We're not using any external programs - everything is native - just FCPX and Logic. You have a bit of a footage on your camera (SD card), some on your phone and some on external TB2 drive from another Mac user. You also have to record some voice over for it, but that's ok - you have both professional mic and lavalier mic, big and small jack. What do you need and how quickly do we see your video?

 

[Throrik]

I don't know how many ways I could say this over and over again - that i3 with 8Gb of RAM could from day one be upgraded to 64Gb and so on, so forth, because architecture allowed it. M1 maxes out at the specs available and those specs are - in many ways - step backwards.

I like how you cherry picked the very beginning of my post and then completely took out the relevant bit... The baseline model, aka without any upgrades selected... That's what baseline means... See the Apple store, they haven't removed any of the none above baseline configurations of the devices.

I'm sorry, but they're not. MacOS on arm may get away with less memory for the same 'feel', but a resource hungry program that run like **** with 16Gb of RAM natively on Catalina last week won't magically get wings when emulated through Rosetta on BigSur. That's not how emulation works and that's not how memory requirements work.

I didn't mention emulation... The fact is that all components on the new SoC can directly access the memory, CPU, GPU and SSD can all access the new 'Unified Memory' and this will be much more performant and have less delays and will mean that memory management should be better, for the people that these devices are directed at, this means that 16GB will not be a limitation for them, as shown by being able to do huge video edits, huge code compilations etc. Same reason as an iPhone doesn't need to bulk out it's hardware with huge RAM like Android does.

 

[HACO]

Haco, there is no such thing as high end mac mini, there is just mac mini. In 2018 from day one at launch you had 4 thunderbolts on it and you could max it out to 64Gb and add better CPU. There never was "entry level" mac mini with less ports. M1 Mac Mini is step sideways in terms of CPU and step backwards in terms of spec of everything else than CPU. For the same money. You simply cannot upgrade £699 M1 Mac Mini to the same level as you could with £699 Mac Mini in 2018. That's compromise. That's the reality.

This is all pretty obvious. This M1 Mac Mini is an entry-level product, there is a higher end Mac Mini with more features that still uses Intel.

You want to make a point that the M1 Mac Mini has fewer ports than the £700 Mac Mini it replaced? Fine. It has fewer USB ports. That one also had a Core i3 8300, 128GB of SSD, 8GB of ram and an Intel 630 GPU. Also, didn't support 6K displays. But yeah, more USB ports. And if you think M1 against Core i3-8300 is a step sideways in terms of CPU and GPU, you sadly don't live in reality.

No, Intel has been beaten many, many times and by many, even by complete nobodies and imposters like Cyrix. But those victories were/are always short lived. Intel specialise in delivery of complete architectures to what - 65-70% of desktop/laptop/workstation/server market, it's their thing. But - why argue - let's just wait and see - I'm not joining you on M1 victory parade because minimalistic laptops aren't my thing. I would still pick 2015 MBP over M1 because 2015 would be more Pro for a Pro in MacBook nota-bene "Pro" - ports, card readers, ethernet. Over the last 5 years we've literally gone back 15 years to docking stations. That's like a car with better engine, better fuel economy but no seats, no windows and three wheels for me. Minimalism over spec - that's not for me. Not at that price point anyway. But I for one would like to see an Apple Silicon Mac Pro with super fast graphics beating AMD and Nvidia. That would be my kind of "wow", my kind of thing.

Nobody took a victory parade, It was YOU who said it's doomed to fail, do I need to remind you? Now you say let's wait and see, which I agree with. That's progress.

What people are excited about is that for the first time in a very long time, there is now a third player (besides Intel and AMD) who are making competitive laptop/desktop chips. This means more competition, which is only good.

I don't know how many ways I could say this over and over again - that i3 with 8Gb of RAM could from day one be upgraded to 64Gb and so on, so forth, because architecture allowed it. M1 maxes out at the specs available and those specs are - in many ways - step backwards.

It had nothing to do with architecture which allowed much more than 64GB, it was about product design decision to make that happen. Macbooks didn't have upgradable ram, on the same Intel architecture, because again it was a product design decision.

Do you seriously think Apple can't put more than 16GB on a product and this is an architectural limit that they've hit? There are ARM chips that support 4TB of ram. M1 has PCIe 4.0 -- mind you, Intel does not yet -- and other ARM chips do as well (even up to 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes), there are 10GbE ethernet on ARM boards. You're living in a fantasy if you think any of these stuff are exclusive to Intel (or x86).

 

[v0n]

We are somewhat running in circles, all of my exchanges with you end up that way so far, but hey - what can I do.

M1 may support PCIe 4.0, but it doesn't support TB4, and since there are no other expansions, and it's certainly not going to start featuring Vegas or RTX in PCIe 4.0 slot, it's is so deeply in a "so what" territory at the moment that we'll just have to wait for another Apple product to actually benefit from it directly. Everything else we already discussed to death:

Is M1 a step forward? It's a step in completely different direction. Side step if you will. Does M1 Mac Mini have less expansion ports, less factory upgradability and less memory than outgoing Intel Mac Mini? Yes it does (btw, it used to have more TB3 ports, not USB, but that's ok). Does M1 MBP have less expansion ports, less factory upgradability and less memory. Yes it does. Beside CPU is the rest of the hardware a step forward then? Not in realistic terms. Do I think Apple can't put more than 16Gb on it at the moment. Yes I do. Are these limitations dictated by the way Apple designed this product? Yes they are. Did apple optimise the **** out of MacOS and the scarce few apps that run on it natively? Yes they did. Did I say this was a good "tech demo, dev box". Yes I have. To answer OP's question - is M1 Mac Mini a good alternative to Ryzen 7 desktop for audio and video production. Not in this world or any other parallel worlds. Do I "live in reality"? Certainly not one you'd share. Do I "live in fantasy"? I can only hope not yours. Have I spoken. Yes, I have.

Have a good night Castiel.

 

[HACO]

We are somewhat running in circles, all of my exchanges with you end up that way so far, but hey - what can I do.

M1 may support PCIe 4.0, but it doesn't support TB4, and since there are no other expansions, and it's certainly not going to start featuring Vegas or RTX in PCIe 4.0 slot, it's is so deeply in a "so what" territory at the moment that we'll just have to wait for another Apple product to actually benefit from it directly. Everything else we already discussed to death:

Food for your thought, basic computer stuff:

It's not the CPU that supports (or doesn't support) thunderbolt. There are thunderbolt controllers that you put inside a computer, they connect to the CPU via PCIe. As long as your computer has PCIe, you can add thunderbolt to it. Apple, ARM, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, doesn't matter. I didn't feel like I needed to explain this, being on a computer forum and all, but now I know that I do.

I agree that we've exhausted this, so peace out.