90K+ Performance limited by the Apple M1 — more cores, faster cores, or back to x86?

rsaeon

rsaeon

Herald
A few quick questions — I seem to be hitting the performance limits of the Apple M1 in my mac mini a lot more often these days and I'm considering something faster/better.

Has anyone else managed to max out their Apple silicon based computer? Do you live with it or upgrade?

Do I get more cores with the M1/M2 that are maybe 10% faster in single thread performance?

Or do I stay with the same or a little more number of cores with M3 that is about 25% faster?

Or do I set up a separate x86 linux compute box for the more cpu intensive tasks I have?

x86 would have to be Ryzen 7000/Intel 13th or better because the 5900X was slower.

I don't know if it's impressive or horrific but this is what a few hours of my days is like:

Screen Shot 2024-10-11 at 3.45.24 AM.png


(encoding/optimizing videos/photos)


  1. What is your budget?
    • Around 100K to 150K, the lower the better, have too many emi's already
  2. What is your existing hardware configuration (component name - component brand and model)
    • M1 mac mini
  3. Which hardware will you be keeping (component name - component brand and model)
    • Everything
  4. Which hardware component are you looking to buy (component name). If you have already decided on a configuration then please mention the (component brand and model) as well, this will help us in fine tuning your requirement.
    • Another Apple computer (desktop or laptop) or CPU + Motherboard + Memory
  5. Is this going to be your final configuration or you would be adding/upgrading a component in near future. If yes then please mention when and which component
    • Not looking to upgrade anything after this purchase for at least 2 years
  6. Where will you buy this hardware? (Online/City/TE Dealer)
    • Amazon India
  7. What is your intended use for this PC/hardware
    • Editing Photos/Videos
  8. Do you have any brand preference or dislike? Please name them and the reason for your preference/dislike.
    • None
  9. If you will be playing games then which type of games will you be playing?
    • None
  10. What is your preferred monitor resolution for gaming and normal usage
    1. Not relevant
  11. Are you looking to overclock?
    • Absolutely not
  12. Which operating system do you intend to use with this configuration?
    • macOS or Debian
 
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Looks like Apple ecosystem is limited by the number of cores. (At least at the relevant price points)

If your workload is lightly threaded, fast M3/M4 maybe the way. If well multi threaded, a 16 core 7950X running at 150W PPT would wipe the floor, with potential used deals on HW too!!
 
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nitin_g3 said:
In case you want to just upgrade your Mac mini, there are rumours of new mac mini with M4 and minimum 16 gb ram which is rumored to launch within this month itself.
Click to expand...

That sounds promising, I think I'll wait until then.

Psycho_McCrazy said:
Looks like Apple ecosystem is limited by the number of cores. (At least at the relevant price points)
Click to expand...

I really would want something with the M3 (or better) because the single-threaded performance of anything else just doesn't seem any better and a lot of my image optimizing scripts rely heavily on single-threaded performance. Also, it's not a fun club to be in (cost conscious apple user).

Psycho_McCrazy said:
If well multi threaded, a 16 core 7950X running at 150W PPT would wipe the floor, with potential used deals on HW too!!
Click to expand...

Ha, yeah, I was pleasantly surprised with how affordable (what?!) the 16 core processors were — when compared to this upgraded mac mini. A 9950X, board, and memory should fit in whatever credit limit I have left.

jayanttyagi said:
You should be using gpu for video encoding ? Utilise NVENC? Or maybe intel gfx card no?
Click to expand...

Ideally, yes, but with videos I'm generating captions and translating them (so it's more like audio work).
 
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rsaeon said:
Where were you five years ago? Ha, thanks for the reminder. This animated infographic haunts me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/wo6fpu
Click to expand...
It really makes a difference. In my case it (+ family support ) allowed me to exit IT ( burned out of it, got very boring) and have an extended period ( 5 + years) of no income until i finally could make my current profession work.

So, it could mean an early retirement, or less stress against uncertainty etc etc.
Anyway, two sides to it always. I could be dead tomorrow and all money made and not spent was for nothing.
So some kind of balance and/or very high income should allow both spending and saving.
Good luck.
 
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I think I have had the same predicament as you on the windows side though. Have mostly used many laptops with U series processors(Intel 6th gen, 10th gen, ryzen 4800u-8c/16t) and have been starved of performance or battery or both. Eventually was fed up and just decided to retire both my many laptops and my gaming desktop.
  • For CPU, I jumped like most to MiniPC - Minisforum UM780XTX - Ryzen 7840HS (8C/16T 5.1GHz)- dead silent on full load. Even my gaming laptops used to cry in front of android studio and IDEs, this doesn't. I get 8C/16T, twin Gen 4 m.2 slots, upto 92 gb ram and oculink port and the ability to take it to work when I need. Cost - 50k
  • For gaming (1440p), i just DIY'ed an oculink eGPU with RX 6800 and I connect it to the above mini PC for gaming when I have to game. Cost - 32k
  • For laptop, now that my compute needs are met, I realised I can get a thin-and-light laptop with other fun stuff (touch, pen, lightweight) as long as I am willing to go with a crappy processor. Got a used Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen5. Only 1.3 kg, its build like a tank. Love the 2 in1 feature for reading books,youtubing on bed and drawing architecture during teams meeting and just taking it anywhere. Cost - 35k
Enjoying the monolithic-to-microservices shift to personal computing. May not be applicable to you as you are on Apple side, but sharing my two cents.
 

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cskartikey said:
I wonder if I should start investing. For context, I'm 17 and I have a decentish salary (engineering). However, I'll be moving to the US for higher ed/gap year (job) & I'm not sure if I should invest or spend that money on myself to get better books, tools, etc.
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Not an expert -
1) In studying years, priority should be study and skills. If better stuff helps you improve, then that should take precedence so that you can do better, maybe get to better schools, do better there and then maybe get better job. Just don't make it an excuse to spend though ( imo).
2) Investing ( once you are able) early makes a large difference, but much later too. So that money has to be kept invested for few decades. Also, there is some uncertainty there, even though generally it has worked out and should work out in a growing country like India but there is no guarantee. Higher income/skills especially early in life is > investing at that stage. Buffet also said that best protection against inflation is your own skills as you can then command higher income too. Good luck.
 
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cskartikey said:
I wonder if I should start investing. For context, I'm 17 and I have a decentish salary (engineering). However, I'll be moving to the US for higher ed/gap year (job) & I'm not sure if I should invest or spend that money on myself to get better books, tools, etc.
Click to expand...

If you invest Rs 1111 every month in something that gives you 9% pa (per annum/year), you'll have 10 lakhs by the time you're 40.

Invest 5k and you'll have 50 lakhs. Try and stick with "safe" investments like non-debt equity funds or gold.

Skip the fast food, the movies, the drinks. You'd have a much better life waiting for you when you're older, when life actually means something.

I'd have a fleet of supercars right now if I resisted those temptations.

Life when you're young doesn't really add up to anything, I cherish my years now than anything I lived and experienced when I was your age — and skydiving was one of them. Wish I'd put that $1100 in gold instead.
 
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rsaeon said:
eveI'd have a fleet of supercars right now if I resisted those temptations.
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You probably don't mean to buy supercars, but just highlighting this as an example -

As an investor, we need to realize that we don't want supercars, luxury watches, bags etc etc.

Say with investing you double capital in 5 years ( on average over long term its within reason in equity). In same time, car will depreciate say by 25% ( probably more, but i dunno)
In another 5 years, capital doubled again and is now 4x starting point, while say car depreciates again and is now say 0.5x original amount ( seems conservative).
So in 10 years, you have 8x more than car worth. This applies everywhere and should probably be at the back of your mind when you make an expensive purchase.

But that doesn't mean we don't spend at all. I could be dead in 10 years with useless money. But need to choose.
Choice becomes easier with time once you have much more capital/income and then spending what seems large amount may only be say less than 5% of your income and it doesn't really matter that much.

Until then, need to make choices ( or be already loaded with money ).
 
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Pat said:
How do you setup a "mac" cluster?
Click to expand...

I manage linux clusters with Ansible, there are people who the same with Macs. All you need is a terminal. I rely on Automator heavily and it can easily send out commands through SSH.

Here's something that I'm working on: I have a scanned PDF of a few thousand pages that I need to OCR and then translate. The PDF is easily split into individual pages. The script then logs into my router, accesses a list of designated compute nodes, and returns back with a list of those nodes which have active DHCP leases (it runs another script on the router that confirms availability with a single ping). Each page is then SCP'd over to each of the nodes in a round robin method and the OCR/Translate script on the compute node is executed afterwards. Files are outputted to a folder on the compute node that is set up with syncthing on my main machine, so I see the results coming in real-time.

My main pc remains free and this whole thing is platform independent, since it relies only just SSH access (and syncthing for simplicity).
 
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