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by oDot 245 days ago
I read somewhere, but can't remember where, that a major reason those APUs aren't as efficient as the Apple ones is a conscious decision to share the architecture with Epyc and therefore accept worse efficiency at lower wattage as a tradeoff.

Can someone confirm/refute that?
2 comments
jeswin 245 days ago
In this review, Hardware Canucks tested [1] the M4 Pro (3nm 2nd gen) and the 395+ (4nm) at 50w and found the performance being somewhat comparable. The differences can be explained away by 3nm vs 4nm.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7HUud7IvAo

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jamiek88 245 days ago
How the heck is a 3.6x faster single thread M4 Pro 'comparable'? Which by the way you can buy in a $600 prebuilt not $2500 if you can even find this unobtanium chip.
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canucker2016 244 days ago
Where can you buy a $600 mac with an M4 Pro?

The M4 mac mini at $599 comes with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD - see https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/apple-m4-chip-wi...

The M4 Pro mac mini starts at $1399 with 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD - see https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/apple-m4-pro-chi...

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tredre3 245 days ago
Geekbench 6 scores vary based on cooling but the 395+ hangs out around 3000 and the M4 Pro around 3600, how is that 3.6x?
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kllrnohj 245 days ago
where are you seeing 3.6x faster single thread performance???
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aurareturn 245 days ago
It isn’t comparable at all. In MT, maybe it is comparable with the M4 Pro still winning. In ST, it is 3-4x ahead of Strix Halo in efficiency.
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kllrnohj 245 days ago
> In ST, it is 3-4x ahead of Strix Halo in efficiency.

The Hardware Canucks video didn't seem to do any such investigation, where did you get that number from?

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AnthonyMouse 244 days ago
It seems like a comparison of the battery life under light loads (accounting for the vast majority of the difference) multiplied by some unspecified single thread performance benchmark? But under light loads laptop battery life is dominated by things like the screen rather than the CPU, and on top of that the Macbook has a larger battery.

Meanwhile under the heavy loads that actually tax the processor the M4 somehow has worse battery life even with the larger battery and a nominally lower TDP.

Is the infamous efficiency not the processor at all and they're just winning on the basis of choosing more efficient displays and wireless chips?

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christkv 245 days ago
They are ok but yeah they do not have anything like the memory bandwidth of an m3 ultra. But they also cost a lot less. I’m primarily looking to replace my older desktop but just have to make sure i can run an external gpu like the A6000 that i can borrow from work without having to spend a week fiddling with settings or parameters
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