5 ms·

It is pretty useless to compare the price of a single CPU with the price of an entire PC…

by semigroupoid 4y ago

seabriez 4y ago
- recuter 4y ago
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Ah yes, the bot accusation comment. Everyone's favorite subcategory of HN musing.
    - recuter 4y ago
      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.
      - ask_b123 4y ago
        Well, I have lower karma than seabriez and I'm neither a bot nor I thought that I had low karma points.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        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.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        recuter 4y ago
        I specifically wrote that the comment is so harsh it reads like spam/bot. Wasn't sarcastic or trying to bash any humans, sincerely.
- sliken 4y ago
  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.
dekhn 4y ago
apple doesn't sell unbundled chips. Adding a motherboard and RAM would still be less than $4K for most configs.
jrockway 4y ago
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 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.
- threeseed 4y ago
  And are you factoring in the power consumption difference ? That can definitely add up over the years as I've experienced with my 10980xe. Also resale value is an important factor. You will struggle to sell that PC in the years ahead which will never be a problem with the Mac.
- hedgehog 4y ago
  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.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  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?
- chadcmulligan 4y ago
  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).

It is pretty useless to compare the price of a single CPU with the price of an entire PC…

seabriez 4y ago

recuter 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Ah yes, the bot accusation comment. Everyone's favorite subcategory of HN musing.
  - recuter 4y ago
    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.
    - ask_b123 4y ago
      Well, I have lower karma than seabriez and I'm neither a bot nor I thought that I had low karma points.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      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.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - recuter 4y ago
        I specifically wrote that the comment is so harsh it reads like spam/bot. Wasn't sarcastic or trying to bash any humans, sincerely.
sliken 4y ago
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.

dekhn 4y ago

apple doesn't sell unbundled chips. Adding a motherboard and RAM would still be less than $4K for most configs.

jrockway 4y ago

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 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.

threeseed 4y ago
And are you factoring in the power consumption difference ? That can definitely add up over the years as I've experienced with my 10980xe. Also resale value is an important factor. You will struggle to sell that PC in the years ahead which will never be a problem with the Mac.
hedgehog 4y ago
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.
Forgeties79 4y ago
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?
chadcmulligan 4y ago
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).