M3 core counts and performance

[Yoused]

When the macOS scheduler has two threads it needs to schedule on P cores, it prefers to wake more than one core in the first cluster rather than lighting up both clusters (presumably because this is less power).

Is L2 cluster-bound? Seems like there would be some disadvantages to having separate L2s in use when you could use the one. Depending, of course, on the nature of workload.

 

[theorist9]

Each P cluster in a M1 Max has a true top speed of 3228 MHz, and this speed is permitted only while 3 of the 4 cores in the cluster are asleep.

Interesting....I was wondering if AS had dynamic frequency scaling (DFS), where the max SC frequency would be higher than the max all-core frequency. And I just realized I can see this from the data @leman collected for the A17.

Let's first look at the performance cores. Multi-core results in red, single-core in blue, clearly indicating DFS. Max SC frequency is 3777 MHz. Max MC frequency is 3504 MHz. So to use Intel's language, the base (max all-core) frequency is 3.5 GHz, and the "turbo" frequency is 3.8 GHz.

And we also see DFS in the A17's efficiency cores though, as expected, it's less pronounced. Max SC frequency is 1344 MHz. Max MC frequency is 1251 MHz.

You'll also find a significant number that are in the region of 100-200 MHz lower than 3228, which I'm not quite sure how to interpret.

Couldn't that just be folks running GB while other processes are running at the same time?

 

[leman]

Yeah I know. Geekbench on Fisher Price OS typically doesn't score as high as Linux/macOS anyway. So while the Linux benchmark benefits from more thermal headroom, I'm inclined to blame the difference more on Windows power management and scheduling.

Edit: plus, unless Qualcomm has gone full Intel and the cores are using >20W at peak boost, thermal headroom should be fine

The thing to keep in mind about Oryon SC is that this is achieved using a fairly substantial overclock (very similar in spirit to Intel's Velocity Boost). It is not really clear how reliably this overclock will happen in practice or what it costs. After all, the overclock is 4.3Ghz vs the normal peak 3.8Ghz (that's almost 15% overclock!). For now, it's not really much more than a PR stunt using an overclocked core.

And of course, most users running Oryon won't see these scores as they will run Windows.

Always happy to bash windows, but in this case, it’s not clear how much of a factor that is. What Anandtech specifically mentioned, is the fact that Linux is getting huge cooling due to unfinished fan control under Linux. While I’m prepared to believe Linux will score higher, I’m not convinced scores will be as high as currently boasted.

GB ST performing higher on Linux than Windows is a known thing. It's the same for x86 CPUs. One has speculated that the difference might be due to different compiler as well as a different power management scheme.

 

[Aaronage]

The thing to keep in mind about Oryon SC is that this is achieved using a fairly substantial overclock (very similar in spirit to Intel's Velocity Boost). It is not really clear how reliably this overclock will happen in practice or what it costs. After all, the overclock is 4.3Ghz vs the normal peak 3.8Ghz (that's almost 15% overclock!). For now, it's not really much more than a PR stunt using an overclocked core.

And of course, most users running Oryon won't see these scores as they will run Windows.

Maybe this is just an issue with semantics, but I don't think it's fair to call it an overclock. A 500MHz boost for single thread workloads isn't crazy. Apple boosts M2 Max by ~400MHz in single thread workloads. All that really matters is power consumption and efficiency. If 4.3GHz is doable in with reasonable power draw (<10W core) it'll be fine.

Intel's boost strategies are in a totally different realm of crazy. They've effectively abandoned power limits entirely in a desperate act to remain competitive on performance. There's no reason to believe Qualcomm is engaging in that kinda thing at this stage.

 

[Agent47]

Still an interestig chip.
If I'm not mistaken, its way more power efficient compared to Intel's offerings. While it may or may not be on par with Mx, it seems to enable mobile computers featuring similar battery runtimes. Hopefully running at full speed when not plugged in (like Intels).
I'd love to see a competitive laptop in that department, in particular if running Linux.
Just one thing bugs me: the lack of GPGPU capabilities (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

[leman]

Maybe this is just an issue with semantics, but I don't think it's fair to call it an overclock. A 500MHz boost for single thread workloads isn't crazy. Apple boosts M2 Max by ~400MHz in single thread workloads. All that really matters is power consumption and efficiency. If 4.3GHz is doable in with reasonable power draw (<10W core) it'll be fine.

Intel's boost strategies are in a totally different realm of crazy. They've effectively abandoned power limits entirely in a desperate act to remain competitive on performance. There's no reason to believe Qualcomm is engaging in that kinda thing at this stage.

The reason why I compare Oryon's frequency scaling with Intel's Velocity Boost is because I see some similarities in their operations. Both appear to be very difficult to achieve in normal means. In fact, we don't see any Windows machines triggering Oryon's boost. Maybe this will be fixed with drivers or Window update. Maybe the conditions for the boost are just too restrictive. Note also that Qualcomm advertises Oryon as operating with up to 3.8 Ghz under normal circumstances. I have a strong suspicion that this is the "normal" boost, and that MC Oryon runs at 3.4-3.5Ghz at most in multicore operation, as indicated by it's relatively low (for a 12-core SKU) 15500 GB6 score — compare this to the 12+4 M3 Max that scores 40% higher while presumably running at 3.8 Ghz. So my impression is that Oryon's single-core boost is a "boost on top of a boost", which is similar to Intel's TVB.

I think there is a bit difference to DFS does by vendors like AMD or Apple, where the peak frequency is achieved much more reliably.

 

[dada_dave]

Let’s check the top forum activity on the other place to see how things are going there:

Par for the course these days? I see a lot of you trying to inject some measure of sense into the whinging. I don’t have the patience for it anymore. I don’t even disagree with every complaint levied against Apple in the OP of these threads, a few of the points are quite valid! (well except maybe the inferior SOC which was just reposted YouTube clickbait) But I am amused that when people (often, though not always, posters here) try to even mildly push back against the more outlandish stuff the reaction is immediately defensive and accusative - “how dare you criticize this criticism! You’re just being a defensive Apple shill!” with no hint of irony or self awareness.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Let’s check the top forum activity on the other place to see how things are going there:

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Par for the course these days? I see a lot of you trying to inject some measure of sense into the whinging. I don’t have the patience for it anymore. I don’t even disagree with every complaint levied against Apple in the OP of these threads, a few of the points are quite valid! (well except maybe the inferior SOC which was just reposted YouTube clickbait) But I am amused that when people (often, though not always, posters here) try to even mildly push back against the more outlandish stuff the reaction is immediately defensive and accusative - “how dare you criticize this criticism! You’re just being a defensive Apple shill!” with no hint of irony or self awareness.

You read my mind. Some of these takes are detached from reality. It seems the better Apple Silicon is, the more deranged they become. People certain their Intel Mac is better because they aren’t a “single tasker”, people saying macs are bad because it doesn’t beat a 4090 etc.

 

[dada_dave]

You read my mind. Some of these takes are detached from reality. It seems the better Apple Silicon is, the more deranged they become. People certain their Intel Mac is better because they aren’t a “single tasker”, people saying macs are bad because it doesn’t beat a 4090 etc.

Aye. Make no mistake, I believe that leaving negative feedback for why you choose to stop using a company’s products can be more valuable than simply voting with your wallet silently. Constructive criticism can be useful but yikes.

The forum should really be called Mac Therapy since it actually seems to serve the purpose of people venting out their pent up frustrations at Apple.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Aye. Make no mistake, I believe that leaving negative feedback for why you choose to stop using a company’s products can be more valuable than simply voting with your wallet silently. Constructive criticism can be useful but yikes.

The forum should really be called Mac Therapy since it actually seems to serve the purpose of people venting out their pent up frustrations at Apple.

My issue is their frustrations often have nothing to do with Apple.

 

[Aaronage]

MR comments/forum is a pretty wild place for sure. It’s like all a concentrated stream of the worst possible takes

Apple does bring on a lot of the drama though. The cost of increasing memory and storage is outrageous, and some of the base configurations are silly (that 8GB MacBook Pro is ridiculous). I think MacBooks are good value overall, and I don’t think people object to paying a premium price for a premium product, but e.g. charging an extra £200 for 512GB storage more is obscene.

 

[dada_dave]

MR comments/forum is a pretty wild place for sure. It’s like all a concentrated stream of the worst possible takes

Apple does bring on a lot of the drama though. The cost of increasing memory and storage is outrageous, and some of the base configurations are silly (that 8GB MacBook Pro is ridiculous). I think MacBooks are good value overall, and I don’t think people object to paying a premium price for a premium product, but e.g. charging an extra £200 for 512GB storage more is obscene.

Agreed! In fact I've got a litany of criticism of Apple products of my own, some of which I'm sure others here would disagree with, others would vociferously agree with ... but that brings me to my next point:

My issue is their frustrations often have nothing to do with Apple.

My main issue with the griping is the assumption of universality - that Apple is doomed and going down hill because everyone must feel the same way as I do and that if they don't they are immediately suspect. It leaves no room for sense. Don't get me wrong, I've seen pro-Apple posters with no sense too and pro-Apple trolls on non-Apple tech sites and etcetera etcetera. This behavior is not confined to MacRumors. For tech forums, it's a lot of drama but often the stakes are simply not that high.

I'm not sure how much is moderation policy and how much of this is community size. I'm sure their are people doing sociology PhD theses on online communities and what makes them all different. Hell I'm sure multiple such theses have probably been done by this point given that online communities have been a thing for ... what 40 years now? Give or take?

 

[Jimmyjames]

We have 68 scores in now. None seem to indicate a frequency above 4.05Ghz. I think that’s the maximum. Highest score is still 3228 single-core.

 

[exoticspice1]

Blender v4.0 has been delayed to 14th Nov.

 

[theorist9]

As there are now 37 M3 Max GB 6 SC results that I know are from the 16" model (b/c they list 16 cores), I determined the mean of the top 5 and compared those with the top 5 of the first 37 16" M2 Max MacBook Pro search results:

m3 = mean[3228, 3227, 3225, 3222, 3220] = 3224.4 ± 3.4
m2 = mean[2843, 2840, 2838, 2834, 2832] = 2837.4 ± 4.4

[The value following the ± is the standard deviation.]

Using these, I calculate a 3.0% IPC increase:

(m3/4.05 GHz)/(m2/3.67 GHz) = 1.030

That's similar to the 2.6% increase in IPC I calculated for M1 -> M2 using my loaner 16" M1 Pro MBP, which scores 2427@3.22 GHz when run cool & unloaded:

(m2/3.67 GHz)/(2427/3.22 GHz) = 1.026

 

[mr_roboto]

I'm not sure how much is moderation policy and how much of this is community size.

Me neither, but man their moderation policy... I just caught a ban for calling sunnyS ignorant. Someone must have reported me and the mod policy the mod quoted says insulting another member is automatically a ban lasting a few days with no recourse, so that was that.

As usual sunnyS was being a disingenuous little shit and his ignorance was probably more performative than actual, but so long as he stays just barely inside the letter of the rules, that's OK and it's apparently what they want in their community. But people who argue in good faith and are therefore subjected to constant insulting but not-technically-insult posts from trolls? Well, if they get a little heated and are provoked into even mild retaliation, they have to be punished and driven away.

 

[KingOfPain]

Let’s check the top forum activity on the other place to see how things are going there:

I know most of these are just trolling, but nevertheless a few comments from me...

Apple killed my interest in ARM and Macs
How could Apple kill the interest in anything ARM? Because a lot of people claimed that ARM wasn't powerful enough for the desktop (ignoring the fact that ARM was originally designed for the desktop in the mid-80s) and Apple proving that it can be done? That just doesn't make any sense...
As for the "Macs" part, well that's obviously a personal take. I can definitely understand people who only switched to Apple, because they could run Windows natively as well, if they now say it a Mac no longer fits their specific feature list.

Mac Sales has [sic] down 27% annually
I recently discussed this with my father, because it apparently was on the news.
Here is my explanation: Apple had a huge surge due to the introduction of Apple Silicon and because a lot of people needed new computers at home due to the pandemic. Obviously there has been some saturation, and unlike PC gamers normal users don't feel the need to upgrade their hardware all the time.
Also, previous to that massive increase was the only computer company with increasing sales anyway. If the numbers were compared, I'm pretty sure that Apple is still better than most other computer manufacturers.

Did Apple rush an 'inferior' SOC to the market?
If they mean the M3, then definitely no. I would have loved more ST performance, but as it stands it's pretty good. And as I would be switching from M1 to M3 it's even better for me.
Remind me, how much better was the 14th generation from Intel exactly? Of course, it's capabilities to be used as a heater during winter are still unmatched...

How can Apple sell a Mac with 8GB of RAM and call it "Pro"?
This one actually makes sense. When I bought a new iMac for my father I thought that 8GB might be enough for him, but went with 16GB nevertheless, because this RAM cannot be upgraded. I recently had to fix something (he still had some very old kernel extensions that macOS was complaining about) and took a look at MenuMeters: 6GB active!
I still think that 8GB could have been enough for his workload, but I'm glad that I went for 16GB.
For someone who wants to use the Mac hardware as a "Pro", I doubt that 8GB is anywhere near enough. My guess is that Apple has this entry to make the starting price look a bit lower, but they probably don't expect too many customers to actually buy it.

 

[leman]

Me neither, but man their moderation policy... I just caught a ban for calling sunnyS ignorant.

Ahahaha, welcome to the club! Happened to me several times now. I decided that I will continue insulting sunnyboy, and if they ban me again, I’m off MR for good.

 

[leman]

Let’s check the top forum activity on the other place to see how things are going there:

To be fair, there are some things to criticise with this release. I think many of us have expected a more significant performance and feature jump with the new generation of Apple hardware. We still have no SVE, the IPC did not improve (despite a significantly wider CPU architecture), the clock increase is rather modest, and there is still no indication of vertical scaling (more aggressive DFS in a chassis that can afford it) I was hoping/speculating we'd see. More specifically, I hoped that Apple CPUs will confidently take a confident first place absolute performance, but instead it seems we have the same cat and mouse game as with M1 — Intel and AMD will surely boost the clocks some more next release and achieve parity (although maybe Apple is speculating that x86 will simply run out of thermal headroom, the cost to reach those 6Ghz figures is already utterly insane). GPU advances instead are very good, even though I was expecting a bigger frequency boost here as well.

In addition, there are all these cost-cutting and revenue optimisation shenanigans that leave a slightly unpleasant taste in my mouth. We haven't seen any progress on the RAM interface in the last three years, in fact, M3 family brings a regression in all but the most premium SKU. We know that Apple is working on ECC support, but it apparently didn't make the cut. The value proposition of M3 Pro has been made weaker, likely to cut costs and push the users into buying the more expensive Max. And finally, the configuration options for these new models are truly confusing and lump CPU, GPU, and RAM capabilities together in a weird and unpredictable way. Which again is a revenue optimisation technique as the consumer is gently nudged towards the more expensive option. I don't think this is a good long-term strategy. Apple became the powerhouse it is by having vision and pursuing excellence, not bean-counting.

But of course, there are different ways to talk about this. One can discuss and analyse issues critically, taking the relevant context into account, or one can just fart out random weird nonsense. The "Mac sales are down, does it change your perspective" really got me. Like dude (because I am sure the poster was a man), learn some basic stats and comprehension skills.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Ahahaha, welcome to the club! Happened to me several times now. I decided that I will continue insulting sunnyboy, and if they ban me again, I’m off MR for good.

Moderation is a disaster there. Possibly because it suits the aims of the site. I have previously reported sunny5 for lying, and was told “moderators aren’t here to fact check”, despite the fact that they state in their rules, that if you make a claim and can’t support it, you should retract. Sunny5 is Mich7y (?) redux.

I also agree that there are legitimate grievances with the M3 machines. Penny pinching and slightly underwhelming single-core improvements, aligned with monstrously expensive ram and ssd price.

That being said, I think it’s possible to tell those who are interested in giving honest appraisals vs trolls, and the latter have inundated the other place.