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New Apple Silicon Macs: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini

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According to Macrumors, the new M1 based MacBook Air lays to waste even the mighty 16 inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench:

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Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-air-first-benchmark/

A fanless chip outperforms a chip with active cooling.

I know this is just one benchmark, but considering the performance uplifts that will be realized when 3 nm and beyond comes, it’s soon time to move on. We cannot/will not be able to purchase components for an x86 hackintosh that will have the same performance.

I’m just waiting for Apple to fix I/O. I need more than just two thunderbolt ports...
 
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A reputable YouTube channel (don’t remember which one) mentioned that either the 4 high performance cores or the 4 high efficiency cores can be used at a time. Cannot use all 8 at once or some combination of the two types.

So it’s really a 4-core chip. They are fast cores to be sure, but still four cores at a time.

Anyone have more definitive information about this?
 
A reputable YouTube channel (don’t remember which one) mentioned that either the 4 high performance cores or the 4 high efficiency cores can be used at a time. Cannot use all 8 at once or some combination of the two types.

So it’s really a 4-core chip. They are fast cores to be sure, but still four cores at a time.

Anyone have more definitive information about this?

I did not watch a Youtube channel but I did read a article previously about the A12z chip that did say that it could only leverage the high end or the low end cores not both low and high end cores at the same time. That would lead me to believe that your observation that it really is just a 4 core chip would be inline with that thinking.
 
If the M1 performs well even when passively cooled, imagine what it can do if they slap a Noctua on it.
Apple's definition of cooled is bordering on Tj Max with one year of warranty. And it seems that the difference between a MacBook Air vs a MacBook Pro is now thermal throttling, although in Apple's language, is probably "optimising the speed to provide the best user experience". But in 5-10 years time, we are probably all using cloud computing.
 
Apple's definition of cooled is bordering on Tj Max with one year of warranty. And it seems that the difference between a MacBook Air vs a MacBook Pro is now thermal throttling, although in Apple's language, is probably "optimising the speed to provide the best user experience". But in 5-10 years time, we are probably all using cloud computing.

This was true with the Intel CPUs. Any further cooling would probably have forced fan noise beyond what Apple deemed acceptable.

With Apple Silicon, they probably don't need anywhere near as much cooling and fan noise would be much easier to contend with.
 
According to Macrumors, the new M1 based MacBook Air lays to waste even the mighty 16 inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench:

View attachment 495253
Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-air-first-benchmark/

A fanless chip outperforms a chip with active cooling.

I know this is just one benchmark, but considering the performance uplifts that will be realized when 3 nm and beyond comes, it’s soon time to move on. We cannot/will not be able to purchase components for an x86 hackintosh that will have the same performance.

I’m just waiting for Apple to fix I/O. I need more than just two thunderbolt ports...

Nice scores. My overclocked 9900K multi-core score is only in the mid-9000s in Geekbench... I bet the Mac mini and MacBook Pro with active cooling come really close to the 9900K.

Now I'm even more excited about what they will do with the iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro. Maybe an M2 with 8 "big" cores and no "baby" cores?
 
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With this kind of performance the simple desirability of Hackintosh is going to go out the window...

I’ll be onboard next year at some point I think
 
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