Post
by TLW » Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:12 pm
Machinesworking wrote: ↑Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:39 am
Most reports from various benchmark tests put the 13" M1 MBP at the same processor speed and power as the i9 16", but with no heat, fan noise or other issues.
One concern I’ve seen raised is how well the M1 Air in particular will be able to sustain intensive operations before thermal throttling sets in. I guess it’s a matter of seeing what the early adopters report about thermal performance rather than going on figures from synthetic benchmarks which don’t always translate well to real-world usage. Real world battery usage data would be useful as well - DAWs tend to be power-hungry.
It’s pretty obvious that Apple has created a chip that’s well optimised for laptops, though it’s a pity Apple’s continued down the road of providing very few TB/USB sockets, one of which has to be used for power. Which for my purposes makes them not particularly useful without an external TB/USB hub - and audio interfaces tend to dislike being attached to hubs. Though for those who do everything “in the box” using the on-board sound chip and a MIDI controller that’s not really an issue so long as MIDI to audio latency is manageable, which I’ve found it generally already is with the sound chip in Intel Macs and the relatively recent iPads.
Interesting times, especially for Intel and AMD who are now faced with a serious new competitor.
Live 10 Suite, 2020 27" iMac, 3.6 GHz i9, MacOS Catalina, RME UFX, assorted synths, guitars and stuff.
