Until I hear differently from very practical benchmarks, I doubt you can get to that performance on a Windows laptop, simply because of the very big difference in power (watts) demanded by the current Intel and AMD CPU architecture vs. the ARM / Apple Silicon architecture. All that extra heat either needs to be moved out of the laptop case or the CPU needs to be seriously throttled.
My benchmark sucked between 170W and 200W of power into the CPU (according to the ASUS utility available for my mobo). That heat required considerable effort by the large CPU fans to move in my very air movement friendly case - even in absence of a separate GPU card.
If/when Windows on ARM becomes mainstream, powerful and widely supported by music software, this difference might be significantly reduced. But until then, Apple would seem to hold a real edge in high performance laptop computing. And their current pricing appears to reflect that.
p.s. I was tempted to consolidate my Apple laptop budget and my Windows studio desktop budget into a single large budget MacBook Pro, but decided against that for mostly a single overriding - and very personal - reason:
I truly enjoy staying proficient in the 3 mainstream OS ecosystems: Windows, MacOS and Linux (for my servers and some IoT gadgets). – This isn’t realistic and efficient for many (most?) people, so I wouldn’t recommend my approach to others, since not everyone is as .
I have to deploy apps to those 3 platforms and have Windows and Linux running on my Apple Silicon macbook via Parallels, and it all works very well.
I really can’t stop gushing about how good the new Macbook’s are. It’s very rare that I buy something and don’t experience buyers remorse… Not one single ounce of regret, just been brilliant.
and 129 track with APPLE NATIVE, it still played but glitchy
-6ms latency (this is how I always produce music, i can put it on much higher latency but that would be unrealistic and not a real show-case for other producers)
-RME UFX II, USB directly in the TB3 port, with one of those small dongle thingies (no hub in between)
-i did the test on BATTERY, just to see (result is the same with power connected)
-i dont hear any fan noise during this test…
-4K screen connected with HDMI 2.1
i just used the machine for a big AI model render project (if that runs you can hear the laptop super loud, like a small vacuum machine), so the machine was pretty hot.
Also, my studio is warm, im wearing tshirt and im pretty warm in here, about to turn on the AC
specs:
Macbook Pro 16" M2 Max
(model 14,6)
64GB mem
4TB hd
max GPU
800 plugins and graphics stuff installed like full waves, komplete, arturia, fabfilter, izotope, Final Cut Pro, Python, Automatic1111, Rekordbox, etc etc
ive been using this machine for a while now, and its pretty stable.
i do have a wierd glitch with the internal sound driver, something this does not load.
im just saying all this, to get a super real world example, so you know what to expect…
Do bear in mind that playing a project (no tracks selected, heavy work on Asio Guard) is a whole lot different to playing a vsti, having MIDI/VSTis track selected and record enabled. If you select ALL your tracks and rec enable them, how many untill it crackles? Even so I expect it to be a lot!
Never owned a Mac in my life, and was honestly never a huge fan of them.
But recently, I needed a new laptop and I thought, ■■■■ it, I’ll bite the bullet and see what all the fuss is with these M1 Pro Chip Macbooks…
I’m sold.
So much so that I am considering swapping out my main PC for an M1 / M2 Mac also, or just sticking with the Macbook full time, it’s THAT good.
Less power draw makes a big difference to the noise floor across my audio devices too.
With my latest windows machine I had to get balanced cables and be careful how they’re connected to reduce interference - In some cases, to the point where touching a cable and hoping it doesn’t move afterwards.
Even then if the GPU goes active it’s hard to suppress the interference it can cause. So a lot of the time I have to disable components in my PC to get a useable, cool system.
Just not an issue with my Mac - it’s been very quiet, and super efficient out of the box. Not something I had ever considered before buying, but the silence across my rig when using it is night and day.
In hindsight it makes sense as going from a 700W Win 11 machine with multiple fans running to a SoC 50W Apple Silicon, that’s a lot of EMI/RFI and acoustic noise to be stripping out the room. Also find there’s less USB chatter too.
Yes Mac is the best but there is a price to pay. I prefer to build myself my own PC (I order the component CPU fan motherboard everything ) ANd build it . You save a lot of money this way I’d say 50% . SO with only 2K you got a 4K PC computer and the real fun is that if something break (last time it was the power supply) You can replace it at home without going anywhere with your precious data inside. But I agree that Apple got the best products , its of course the best cie in the world (My family especially the kids got Ipads Iphones and Mac Book Pro for school of course) They cant live without it so be it
If coding is equal then I’m not so sure Apple’s chips will beat Intel or AMD any time soon for maximum performance. That max costs heat but since the road there isn’t linear it’s easy to feel that the Apple chips are superior because of the lower power usage and low heat generation - but the tradeoff there is performance. It always will be.
The newest Intel and AMD chips are basically clocked to the max out of the box and will run hot, it’s essentially the opposite of where we were like a decade ago where they performed “better” with less power usage but we hade a bigger margin for manual overclocking. These days you can lower temperature significantly by capping power usage and lose like 3-5% only in the process… “underclocking” basically.
Anyway, point being that if we take that into account, and add “legacy” coding etc. it’s not surprising that the Apple chips perform as they do, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying they’re superior to the alternatives.
I think most people realise that max performance can be a bit of a red herring when it comes to real-time audio applications though.
As you state, Apple are walking the path of high efficiency lower power systems and that’s a winner for audio users as it eradicates noise and reduces overall system latencies as a by-product.
Sure, it’s not that their chips aren’t impressive, they are. I guess I’m just pointing out the opposite, that just by power-limiting an Intel or AMD CPU you’ll likely get similar performance to the Apple chips with a silent CPU/fan.
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