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You might get a different reading at different times but this is a pretty good benchmark.
https://web.basemark.com
This is a special multi-Tb SSD custom build 64Gb Apple M1 Max chip with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, 2021 MacBook Pro.



I haven't had a chance to run either of my iMac Pros at home yet, which WERE top of the line at the time when I got them a few years or so ago, but when I get the Mac Studio with Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine it should break through 2000 on this test easily.
If you study the history of home computers, the BEST have been around eleven grand or so fully loaded, for maybe forty or so years now. Something like this
I suppose.
But...the difference is that eleven grand today isn't all that much money compared to what it was in 1979.
My computer is "only" an Intel Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz (not sure if it's 4 cores or 8), with 16 GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX-970
It is surprising to me that "today" there is a laptop that is so fast, but I can only imagine how fast the custom build Mac Studio will be. Of course it all depends on what you are doing. Word Processing, especially using a program like MSFT Office that isn't even so native MAC, won't see any benefit. Movie editing or multi Photoshop windows open at once, would see the benefit.
I spent 18 months watching YouTube videos on a Win 98SE machine with 384 MB of RAM at about 15-30 frames per second, before HD videos came along in late 2008.
There was so little heap memory on it I had to reboot every 2 hours.
I'll have to get a 4K UHD capable computer & TV next. A chip shortage could kill all that in the next few months though, along with a trucking shortage and high fuel prices, and just an overall societal collapse. Gas went up 40-60 cents over the weekend.
Quote: MDawgYou lookin' for hardware? You come to the right place.
You might get a different reading at different times but this is a pretty good benchmark.
This is a special multi-Tb SSD custom build 64Gb Apple M1 Max chip with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, 2021 MacBook Pro.
I haven't had a chance to run either of my iMac Pros at home yet, which WERE top of the line at the time when I got them a few years or so ago, but when I get the Mac Studio with Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine it should break through 2000 on this test easily.
If you study the history of home computers, the BEST have been around eleven grand or so fully loaded, for maybe forty or so years now. Something like this.
I suppose.
But...the difference is that eleven grand today isn't all that much money compared to what it was in 1979.
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Yup, I've got that same model/hardware too. Dang thang is fast.
Quote: UP84Yup, I've got that same model/hardware too. Dang thang is fast.
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Took two months to get it though. Last time I got the prior MBP model special config, I was able to find it in stock at the Apple Store.
The max processor / max memory config might be the issue, or the higher than 1 Tb SSD, but in any case, it's hard to get your hands on any special build Apple computers these days.
What started making the special config desktop Macs more expensive was when the memory became fixed and soldered in, so that you had to pay the premium for Apple genuine memory. A while back Apple laptops could use aftermarket inexpensive memory for upgrade. The SSDs are all fixed too for some time so that you're at the mercy of Apple prices there as well. But right now you have to pay, and wait.
Quote: ksdjdjFast enough to run my old favorite dos games (and that is all that matters to me).
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same
I have a 17" LG gram, it's thin and weighs only about 2 pounds, you can pick it up and fling it around with 2 fingers. You absolutely notice just how light it is especially when traveling, going upstairs and downstairs, and tossing it in a bag and while on your lap. The graphics card is lacking for hardcore gaming, but I don't do that. I play Age of Empires 2 definitive addition and that's it.
I have been thinking about getting the newer LG - gram 17” Ultra lightweight Laptop - Intel Evo Platform 12th Gen Intel Core i7 - 32GB RAM - 2TB NVMe SSD. I have it in my shopping cart, but I haven't pulled the trigger since I don't really need it, I have more Laptops than I know what to do with.
I can't imagine ever using A mac(I once had an Apple 2GS in the '90s, but couldn't afford any programs for it). I just gave away an old MacBook Air that I picked up for super cheap, I only turned it on once to make sure it worked when I got it.
Right now I'm looking to get a budget gaming laptop to run a Skytrak golf simulator I'm putting together.
I haven't played Age of Empires forever still have fond memories I loved that game.
Dropping the Gram isn't likely (I have myself dropped many laptops) because it's so light and if you did it wouldn't hit the ground hard.Quote: rainmanNever heard of Gram before, I may consider one recently dropped my Surface Pro and it didn't survive.
Right now I'm looking to get a budget gaming laptop to run a Skytrak golf simulator I'm putting together.
I haven't played Age of Empires forever still have fond memories I loved that game.
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Yeah, there's a "new" AOE out.
I just put 2 new SSD 2 TB drives in my 10 year old laptop because the laptops I was looking at are near $5K, and for $500 I can keep going until Windows 10 expires. I need a new desktop computer. I'll be looking for 12th gen Intel, probably an i7.
I've been casting YouTube movies to my TV, and some off-brand videos are 4K on YouTube.
Back in the mid-90s, my computer had 500 MEGABYTES of hard drive space. I had all the usual stuff... internet browsers, Microsoft Office, multiple games, other random computer programs, image files, video files, etc. I don't think I ever filled up the hard drive.
Nowadays I would need multiple GIGABYTES of space just for Microsoft Word alone.
What's going on? Where is all this extra bloat coming from?
Windows 98 SE had a heap memory issue that required me to reboot every hour. Just looking at 75 photos of 1024 x 768 resolution would run out the heap memory.
I only had 384 MB of RAM and I had a program that would defrag the RAM when the RAM was full and it would save 100 MB of RAM for a little while.
I just upgraded my 11 year old computer with 32 GB of RAM and a new 2 GB video card (it's really a 5 year old model, so it isn't optimized to play games newer than 2020) and a new 2 TB SSD drive and a reinstallation of Windows 10. The computer no longer takes half an hour to log into Windows each day, it takes a handful of minutes if that. A new desktop computer would cost more than a couple thousand dollars at this time with graphics cards as expensive as ever and new Intel 12th or 13th gen chips costing a lot. My computers are too old to render 4K video, but they might be able to play 4K video if I had a 4K TV/monitor. I'm not sure what upload speed is needed to stream 4K content, but it's probably more than 10 mbps, so I'd have to hotspot to my phone to do that somehow.
Back in the day, antivirus was the load that made computers I had unusable. Norton, Panda, AVG, etc. would just jam the computer with their bloat. I've shifted to AVAST! but that is getting to be exceptionally bloated with all the subscriptions. Me having 50 to 99 tabs open in Chrome is probably a 10-20 GB bloat now too.
Quote: ChumpChangeMe having 50 to 99 tabs open in Chrome is probably a 10-20 GB bloat now too.
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Why on earth do you have so many tabs open....
Quote: TigerWuQuote: ChumpChangeMe having 50 to 99 tabs open in Chrome is probably a 10-20 GB bloat now too.
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Why on earth do you have so many tabs open....
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I regularly have between 25 and 50 tabs open in Chrome. In general it doesn't cause many problems as I have 16GB of RAM.
Quote: TigerWuSpeaking of computers, how come it takes exponentially more hard drive space to run the exact same stuff that I had in the '90s?
Back in the mid-90s, my computer had 500 MEGABYTES of hard drive space. I had all the usual stuff... internet browsers, Microsoft Office, multiple games, other random computer programs, image files, video files, etc. I don't think I ever filled up the hard drive.
Nowadays I would need multiple GIGABYTES of space just for Microsoft Word alone.
What's going on? Where is all this extra bloat coming from?
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I assume the switch from a 32-bit architecture to a 64-bit one has something to do with it. Remember when an "int" was 16 bits by default instead of 32, and a "long" was 32 instead of 64?
Quote: ThatDonGuyQuote: TigerWuSpeaking of computers, how come it takes exponentially more hard drive space to run the exact same stuff that I had in the '90s?
Back in the mid-90s, my computer had 500 MEGABYTES of hard drive space. I had all the usual stuff... internet browsers, Microsoft Office, multiple games, other random computer programs, image files, video files, etc. I don't think I ever filled up the hard drive.
Nowadays I would need multiple GIGABYTES of space just for Microsoft Word alone.
What's going on? Where is all this extra bloat coming from?
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I assume the switch from a 32-bit architecture to a 64-bit one has something to do with it. Remember when an "int" was 16 bits by default instead of 32, and a "long" was 32 instead of 64?
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The answer is a lot less complicated than that, it's because companies developing these programs want to jam all of the latest and greatest features to compete with other companies, and they are most likely developing these products on completely overkill systems, so if they can pack a feature into something even if maybe 90% of the people don't use it, they will.
You also have to remember that computers today have better screen resolution as well, which means that the "graphics" required for modern programs are more than they were way back when. Back then a pixelated logo would have been fine for a program, nowadays it wouldn't pass (unless it's the intention but I'm talking in general).
Also consider the fact that even a typical computer nowadays casually has 8 GB of RAM in it, if you took all that time to optimize for space and memory usage, it simply wouldn't be cost effective anymore for the companies developing these programs, by the time a program comes out nowadays that is equivalent in space/memory optimization as back then, the requirements for the program would have changed already and you simply just wasted your time while your competition just jammed a bunch of features in and released their product before you did. And of course, most programs today even without all the extra bloated features nobody uses are more capable than they were way back when in the 90s.
When I have large arrays of floating point numbers, I often check and see if 32-bits provides enough accuracy for the calculation.
Feature bloat is most of the problem. Among the worst offenders is caching tremendous amounts of web data to make a web page more responsive.
Quote: DRichQuote: TigerWuQuote: ChumpChangeMe having 50 to 99 tabs open in Chrome is probably a 10-20 GB bloat now too.
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Why on earth do you have so many tabs open....
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I regularly have between 25 and 50 tabs open in Chrome. In general it doesn't cause many problems as I have 16GB of RAM.
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But....why so many tabs?? Is it for your job?
So the programs I write (C++ Visual Studio) get priority relative to the OS (Windows 7) and the browser (Chrome).
I will also bump thread and process priorities (sometimes real-time).
I only have a quad processor now (64 bit i5-3570 @ 3.4GHz) with 16GB RAM, but it's plenty fast.
The bottleneck is the video processor memory of only 8GB.
But it's fast enough right now for business purposes (very large screen).
I will also block several outgoing program sockets like Mr. Softy's telemetry, etc.
Can't block the outgoing browser though.
Quote: TigerWuQuote: DRichQuote: TigerWuQuote: ChumpChangeMe having 50 to 99 tabs open in Chrome is probably a 10-20 GB bloat now too.
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Why on earth do you have so many tabs open....
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I regularly have between 25 and 50 tabs open in Chrome. In general it doesn't cause many problems as I have 16GB of RAM.
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But....why so many tabs?? Is it for your job?
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Yes, I multitask
Then along came visual based operating systems (Mac OS, Windows) and memory needs took a quantum leap. Since then, operating systems have move up and down in size, but remained huge compared to non-visual predecessors.
And eventually programs like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, increased the need for memory especially in order to open multiple images or videos at once, such that today we have laptops like the MacBook I use with 64Gb of memory, and iMac Pros (I have one) and Mac Studios with 128Gb. MSFT Office, which is a very clumsy emulation as programs go, and is a standard install on most people's computers, needs a lot of memory too relative to some other programs.
The configuration I need (or want, anyway), is
Apple M3 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
128GB unified memory
2TB SSD storage
16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display
140W USB-C Power Adapter
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, headphone jack, MagSafe 3 port
Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID - US English
which comes in at $5399.
On my last one, configured similarly, I got one of the casinos to buy it for me free a couple years ago, or rather, I got it via accumulated "points/dollars" from ongoing play (builds via theo loss, not actual loss - most of these programs don't give you much for actual loss, but a lot for continued play).
I still have my at that time top of the line maxed out iMac pro that I paid a hefty sum for end of 2018, something like twelve grand, haven't upgraded that. Nowadays the Mac Studio or Mac Pro are the top of the line, but neither has the new M3 Max chip. The new iMacs which do have the M3 chip are more hobbyist machines, can't even go beyond 24Gb memory or 2Tb HD.
Many years ago when I first got one of the newer fastest Apple computers a friend of mine who owned a graphics pre press company got annoyed, saying to me, You don't even NEED a machine like that. I had a better machine than he had in a professional company.
Now, one reason I like the faster more advanced machines is for stock trading, and I do write off the cost of any machines I paid against that "business" so there's another reason why it pays for me to just spend, as a deduction against income, but otherwise, I'll admit that I just like to update all my machines and phones generally, every other year.
But you're right in that over all, I won't really notice the difference between what I have right now with a 2Tb HD, 64Gb memory, Apple M1 Max chip with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, versus the newest one I want to get. It's not like the difference between a machine of today and one of say, twenty years ago.
Buying a computer with casino points is a novel way to spend points. Not sure they would approve my specific purchase if I had the points. Maybe I could buy gas.
The Macintosh II came out in 1987 and was $5500 back then. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II
I kind of wanted an Amiga 500 back in the day but was priced out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500
College kids could get their parents to get them computers for class, but if you weren't a student, no parent is gonna spring for a computer for their kid.
Quote: MDawgIt's a now almost four decade debate, but ever since MSFT jettisoned DOS, Windows machines just try to be "Mac like." Why go for the imitation, why not the original?
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If you think the Mac was the original graphical OS you are mistaken. the first GUI was in 1968 if my memory is correct.
They are super light weight. No joke, you can pick it up with one finger, assuming you can balance it, you could spin it on your finger.
When I first seen it on display and picked it up, I thought for sure it was just a shell with nothing inside.
I was a bit concerned at first that it might be to flimsy, but I have put it thought the ringer while traveling and at home and it's held up fantastic. Now whenever I pick up a regular laptop it feels like a brick and heavy on my lap. I haven't ever noticed it getting too hot, even when leaving it running on a blanket(obviously something I don't recommend).
I can see a situation where if you pinched the lid and screen recklessly to hard while picking it up, there could be an issue with possible screen damage.
If you're a graphics heavy gamer you probably need to get the latest model that has the better graphics card, there are a few different versions.
Quote: DRichQuote: MDawgIt's a now almost four decade debate, but ever since MSFT jettisoned DOS, Windows machines just try to be "Mac like." Why go for the imitation, why not the original?
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If you think the Mac was the original graphical OS you are mistaken. the first GUI was in 1968 if my memory is correct.
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I didn't say that, the discussion was between Windows and Mac OS.
"I'm not talking about Buddhists or Amish" - The Wolf of Wall Street