Thinking about a new Mac...
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@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
which is mostly a moot point if one has an external graphics card
From the article: Like Intel chips with integrated graphics, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor
What this basically means is that you run out of RAM on the M1 faster than on traditional architectures.
Again from the article: But Apple isn’t integrating memory into its systems-on-a-chip out of spite. It’s doing it because it’s an approach that can lead to some dramatic speed benefits. ... because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.
Please love yourself.
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I have got my M1 MacBook Air with 16GB RAM for maybe two weeks by now. Haven’t use it much yet. Why? Because I have other Macs that are working fine so I don’t have to rush to move everything over to the M1 Air. I don’t bother to install any third party software that does not have native M1 support on it, so I don’t have to deal with Rosetta-2 translated junk that I may not be able to clean up later.
So far I’ve only got Apple’s own pre-installed stuff, Chrome, FireFox, and GraphicConverter on the M1 Air. Yes, running only these native apps, it does feel faster/more responsive compared to my other Intel Air that also has 16 GB RAM.
I have just learnt that Microsoft released native M1 versions of their core Office/365 applications, but I haven’t got around to install these yet.
I really look forward to having the native M1 version for these few things: OBS, Go (programming language/compiler) support, Dell multifunction printer device driver, Zoom, Microsoft Team, Finale (music notation program), Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications (though short term I use only Illustrator).
OBS is about real-time video encoding, that can really make use of fast CPU.
After I get Go with native M1 support, I might try a simple performance comparison using a Go program I wrote to work out one of Jon or Klaus’ puzzles.
I expect Dell’s printer driver with native M1 support will come in last, or such support may be punted by Dell.
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@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
which is mostly a moot point if one has an external graphics card
From the article: Like Intel chips with integrated graphics, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor
What this basically means is that you run out of RAM on the M1 faster than on traditional architectures.
Again from the article: But Apple isn’t integrating memory into its systems-on-a-chip out of spite. It’s doing it because it’s an approach that can lead to some dramatic speed benefits. ... because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.
@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
which is mostly a moot point if one has an external graphics card
From the article: Like Intel chips with integrated graphics, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor
What this basically means is that you run out of RAM on the M1 faster than on traditional architectures.
Again from the article: But Apple isn’t integrating memory into its systems-on-a-chip out of spite. It’s doing it because it’s an approach that can lead to some dramatic speed benefits. ... because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
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@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
which is mostly a moot point if one has an external graphics card
From the article: Like Intel chips with integrated graphics, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor
What this basically means is that you run out of RAM on the M1 faster than on traditional architectures.
Again from the article: But Apple isn’t integrating memory into its systems-on-a-chip out of spite. It’s doing it because it’s an approach that can lead to some dramatic speed benefits. ... because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
That's right, Klaus, I'm an idiot. I'm also completely unaware of your attempt to railroad the conversation by focusing on narrow parameters you've tried to set because only you care about them.
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@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
That's right, Klaus, I'm an idiot. I'm also completely unaware of your attempt to railroad the conversation by focusing on narrow parameters you've tried to set because only you care about them.
@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
That's right, Klaus, I'm an idiot. I'm also completely unaware of your attempt to railroad the conversation by focusing on narrow parameters you've tried to set because only you care about them.
It was you who chose to attack my statement that I can't compare memory sizes.
I happen to be pretty well educated about computer architecture. I don't blame anyone for not knowing much about the subject, but if you choose to attack my statement then it would be more convincing if your knowledge on the matter exceeded a few buzzwords you read in an article.
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@jon-nyc said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
I've been in movie theaters with smaller screens. lol
I decided it wasn't big enough and just ordered a 49" for the big gaming rig.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L9HCJ2V/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
5120 x 1440 at 120Hz
I also scored a top of the line AMD GPU last night. It has 16 Gigabytes of ram. The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 6900 XT. I was one of over 10,000 people doing the refresh battle to wait for the "Out Of Stock" indicator to change to an "Add to Cart" button. I was prepared as the previous attempt to get one, I was not successful due to delays for setting up the account, google-pay etc. You can add the item to your cart, but it is not reserved for you until you actually check out.
Last night I must have won the initial refresh battle because as soon as the page loaded, the "Add to Cart" button appeared! I was in shock. I clicked it, When the new page appeared I clicked three check boxes to agree to the terms, clicked G-Pay button, clicked Pay Now on Google Pay and what do you know? I GOT IT!
So now I am going to have two kick-ass gaming rigs. The other GPU I have on backorder is an Nvidia ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3080 OC. It is 2nd only to the RTX 3090 which costs anywhere from $1,500 to $2,400. The 3080 only has 10 Gigs of ram, but the Ray tracing and DLSS (Upscaling) is currently superior to the AMD RX 6900 XT.
The 49" monitor should be about the limit of what I would ever want in a gaming monitor.
On the business side of the equation I will be able to fit three or four, full page code windows on the screen at once.
@mark said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@jon-nyc said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
I've been in movie theaters with smaller screens. lol
I decided it wasn't big enough and just ordered a 49" for the big gaming rig.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L9HCJ2V/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
5120 x 1440 at 120Hz
The 49" monitor should be about the limit of what I would ever want in a gaming monitor.
Well, that didn't last long. lol
I got to thinking about the refresh rate of 120hz and 4ms GTG rating, and how in 2020 Samsung released a version of this monitor with a 240hz refresh rate and 1ms (GTG).
Because my new GPUs will easily handle high refresh rate 1440 resolutions, I decided that I wanted the monitor to be able to handle the higher refresh rates. The faster GTG (Gray to Gray) rating is not something I will probably notice and the measurement varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, so it is mostly irrelevant except that it does permit the pixel to remain at it's assigned value longer than a slower rate so "ghosting" and motion blur is reduced. Most human eyes will never see the difference. But, it is faster than the same model from the previous year so at least the testing procedure of GTG is consistent here.
So, I cancelled the order for the CRG9 and ordered the Odyssey G9
5120 x 1440 @ 240 Hz 1ms (GTG).
HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB 3.0.
2500:1 Contrast Ratio
Display Colors 1.07 Billion
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@aqua-letifer good for you!
Let us know how it works out, please! @Klaus has said that 16GB of RAM is inadequate. However, I've read that with the new chip, even 8GB is good for most "routine" stuff. The battery life is also another big deal.
Just looking at cost, the MacBook Air, with an external monitor still comes out just a bit cheaper than the iMac if similarly spaced (RAM and SSD), but the convenience of portability is a big factor. The Mac mini is still cheaper, but no portability.
OTOH, for my needs, my iPad does everything I need for portability.
My only concern is the I/O - I have an external 4-bay hard drive enclosure that houses all of my 1) Music/Books 2) Time Machine 3) Time Machine 4) Additional backup. I also need to hook up keyboard and mouse. The mini would do the job, but the portability of the MacBook Air is a strong pull, as long as I can get everything I have now.
I'll probably wait until later
thisnext year and see how the rumored new iMacs spec out. As I've said, my eyes probably won't suffer for a slightly inferior display and I might save a couple of hundred bucks by going with the mini or Air.@george-k said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@aqua-letifer good for you!
Let us know how it works out, please!Just got it in the mail. But it's so cold from being on the UPS truck for hours that I'm actually afraid to turn it on. I'm letting it thaw out first.
It'll be an interesting experiment. I'm firmly in the pocket of Microsoft now, and a lot of my shit is on OneDrive. So we'll see how easy transitioning is going to be without working from a Mac backup.
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@George-K Okay, posting now using the thing.
It's fine. I mean the thing just works. Premiere Pro and After Effects are both running just fine on it.
The keyboard works great but it's got that kind of surface that gets really dingy in a hurry.
Display is awesome. Trackpad's very generous.
Cons:
- No ports whatsoever. I mean holy shit, it's got one damn USB-C when you have the charger plugged in. Oh and a headphone jack.
Because let's bring that back. - Adobe hasn't yet made new Mac-friendly versions of their software, so you have to use Rosetta to run everything. Huh. They're working on it, though, and I doubt many people care.
- No ports whatsoever. I mean holy shit, it's got one damn USB-C when you have the charger plugged in. Oh and a headphone jack.
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@George-K Okay, posting now using the thing.
It's fine. I mean the thing just works. Premiere Pro and After Effects are both running just fine on it.
The keyboard works great but it's got that kind of surface that gets really dingy in a hurry.
Display is awesome. Trackpad's very generous.
Cons:
- No ports whatsoever. I mean holy shit, it's got one damn USB-C when you have the charger plugged in. Oh and a headphone jack. Because let's bring that back.
- Adobe hasn't yet made new Mac-friendly versions of their software, so you have to use Rosetta to run everything. Huh. They're working on it, though, and I doubt many people care.
- No ports whatsoever. I mean holy shit, it's got one damn USB-C when you have the charger plugged in. Oh and a headphone jack.
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I've decided to wait to see what the new iMac has to offer later this year. My 2014 iMac is working fine, so there's really no need to hurry other than the "geek reward."
I have a fair number of peripherals plugged in, so the ability to simplify is a good thing.
Two printers
External hard drive enclosure (4-bay) (Thunderbolt 2)
External drive dock (Thunderbolt 2)
Keyboard
Wireless USB mouse -
Hopefully, Apple will announce new iMacs in the next few months. I love the all-in-one design, but I'm more than willing to consider getting a mini and separate monitor. The loss of desk real estate would be negligible if I plan well.
However, the prices for upgrading to a 2 TB SSD are quite significant. So, I'm wondering, how big of an internal hard drive do I really need? I'm currently booting from a 2 TB external SSD via Thunderbolt. I has 1.2 TB free space right now.
My "Home Folder" is currently at about 430 GB. But 130 GB of that is pictures. So, I think I could easily pare my home folder down to about 250 GB.
How big of an internal drive do I need, if I rely on cloud storage for a lot of stuff?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Hopefully, Apple will announce new iMacs in the next few months. I love the all-in-one design, but I'm more than willing to consider getting a mini and separate monitor. The loss of desk real estate would be negligible if I plan well.
However, the prices for upgrading to a 2 TB SSD are quite significant. So, I'm wondering, how big of an internal hard drive do I really need? I'm currently booting from a 2 TB external SSD via Thunderbolt. I has 1.2 TB free space right now.
My "Home Folder" is currently at about 430 GB. But 130 GB of that is pictures. So, I think I could easily pare my home folder down to about 250 GB.
How big of an internal drive do I need, if I rely on cloud storage for a lot of stuff?
@george-k If you're getting a desktop, be it an iMac or a Mac mini, it will come with many ports. I think you will be fine with many external drives.
If you keep your movies, pictures, and music on external drives, even 128 GB is enough for a "boot drive."
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Hopefully, Apple will announce new iMacs in the next few months. I love the all-in-one design, but I'm more than willing to consider getting a mini and separate monitor. The loss of desk real estate would be negligible if I plan well.
However, the prices for upgrading to a 2 TB SSD are quite significant. So, I'm wondering, how big of an internal hard drive do I really need? I'm currently booting from a 2 TB external SSD via Thunderbolt. I has 1.2 TB free space right now.
My "Home Folder" is currently at about 430 GB. But 130 GB of that is pictures. So, I think I could easily pare my home folder down to about 250 GB.
How big of an internal drive do I need, if I rely on cloud storage for a lot of stuff?
@george-k said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
How big of an internal drive do I need, if I rely on cloud storage for a lot of stuff?
The sweet thing about using OneDrive is that you can decide, folder-to-folder, file-to-file, what lives on your computer and what's only pulled from the cloud when you need it.
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@george-k said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
How big of an internal drive do I need, if I rely on cloud storage for a lot of stuff?
The sweet thing about using OneDrive is that you can decide, folder-to-folder, file-to-file, what lives on your computer and what's only pulled from the cloud when you need it.
@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
The sweet thing about using OneDrive is that you can decide, folder-to-folder, file-to-file, what lives on your computer and what's only pulled from the cloud when you need it.
I have an iCloud account with 2TB of storage.
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@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
The sweet thing about using OneDrive is that you can decide, folder-to-folder, file-to-file, what lives on your computer and what's only pulled from the cloud when you need it.
I have an iCloud account with 2TB of storage.
@george-k said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
The sweet thing about using OneDrive is that you can decide, folder-to-folder, file-to-file, what lives on your computer and what's only pulled from the cloud when you need it.
I have an iCloud account with 2TB of storage.
Maybe iCloud does the same? I really like the option to decide what to save natively.
I just got a 2TB external SSD because I currently find myself just shitting out 1 GB files on the regular. That's gonna get crazy after awhile.
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@Aqua-Letifer what do you do to regularly generate 1GB files? That’s one hour’s worth of HD MP4 video per file!
@axtremus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@Aqua-Letifer what do you do to regularly generate 1GB files? That’s one hour’s worth of HD MP4 video per file!
After Effects and Premiere Pro project files with 4K recordings.
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@aqua-letifer said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
@klaus said in Thinking about a new Mac...:
which is mostly a moot point if one has an external graphics card
From the article: Like Intel chips with integrated graphics, the M1 chip includes a graphics processor
What this basically means is that you run out of RAM on the M1 faster than on traditional architectures.
Again from the article: But Apple isn’t integrating memory into its systems-on-a-chip out of spite. It’s doing it because it’s an approach that can lead to some dramatic speed benefits. ... because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.
So...? That doesn't contradict anything I said. And it doesn't mean that you can't compare 16GB 2010 RAM with 16 GB 2020 M1 RAM. Do you understand what the article says? I have the impression that you are only reacting to single catch phrases but not really parsing the sentences.
