Our long national nightmare is over: M4 Macs base memory reported to be 16GB, no more 8GB Macs

[saltycaramel]

Basically with this doubling of the Thunderbolt I/O blocks

- a 600$ M4 Mac Mini may get almost the same external I/O as a 2000$ M2 Max Mac Studio

- a 1300$ M4 Pro Mac Mini may get almost the same external I/O as a 4000$ M2 Ultra Mac Studio

 

Which would be a great upgrade.

 

This in terms of full fat TB4 ports, not sure what's the story in terms of number of external monitors supported. 

[saltycaramel]

12 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

- still internal PSU even in its new diminutive form factor

 

I didn't expect them to retain the internal PSU in the new form factor. 

They're moving from 1.4L of the current Mac Mini design to I guess sub-1L (if it's roughly the same shape and size of a Beelink SER8 mini PC, which is 0.9L but with external PSU). 

 

Sub-1L with internal PSU and the power of an M4 Pro with up to (maybe) 64GB of unified memory and graphically in the ballpark of a laptop RTX 4060 (but with a lot more VRAM) is gonna make someone in the SFFPC community happy.

[thechinchinsong]

36 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I didn't expect them to retain the internal PSU in the new form factor. 

They're moving from 1.4L of the current Mac Mini design to I guess sub-1L (if it's roughly the same shape and size of a Beelink SER8 mini PC, which is 0.9L but with external PSU). 

 

Sub-1L with internal PSU and the power of an M4 Pro with up to (maybe) 64GB of unified memory and graphically in the ballpark of a laptop RTX 4060 (but with a lot more VRAM) is gonna make someone in the SFFPC community happy.

Thats actually pretty awesome. My parents have a M1 mac mini and its already great size. A Mac mini the size of those Beelink/Minisforum PCs tempts me greatly.

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

Sub-1L with internal PSU and the power of an M4 Pro with up to (maybe) 64GB of unified memory and graphically in the ballpark of a laptop RTX 4060 (but with a lot more VRAM) is gonna make someone in the SFFPC community happy.

A laptop 4060 is hardly amazing it's a good 30% below the desktop model in capability.

If the

M1 == GTX 960,

M1 Pro == GTX 1650

M1 Max == GTX 1080 Ti

M2 == GTX Titan/Quadro P3000 (pretty far from other recent nvidia parts, basically GTX 1060)

M2 Pro > M3 Pro

M2 Max == GTX 2080

M2 Ultra = RTX 3070/2080S

M3 == Nvidia GTX 970

M3 Pro == GTX 1070

M3 Max == 3060/2060S

 

If the M4 actually has a guaranteed 14% uplift over M3, that should make it equal to a GTX 1060 Desktop based on above. That's still not even half the way to a 4060 laptop, closer to a third.

 

(this is from the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark and is actually less fair to Apple since it depreciated native OpenCL.) 

 

A 4060 desktop unit is between a RTX 2070S and a 3070 Laptop

A 4060 laptop unit is between a RTX 3060/2060S and a ... a RTX 3060/2070 Desktop.

 

 

 

[saltycaramel]

Did I mention we’re talking sub-1L with internal PSU? 

 

That makes it kinda impressive. 
The best AMD mobile APUs used in MiniPCs are pretty impressive as well nowadays but no MiniPC maker that I know of is putting in the extra design effort (and cost) to make them with internal PSU at that sub-1L size. 

Also, someone could find some use for that insane amount of VRAM (up to probably 64GB of unified memory), again at sub-1L with internal PSU. 

[saltycaramel]

M4 in a fanless 5mm thick iPad Pro on battery does almost 50fps in gfxbench Aztec Ruins 4K.

Let's be conservative and (based on the M3 Pro from last year) just double that to 100fps for the actively cooled and wall powered M4 Pro in the next high end Mac Mini. 

 

RTX 4060 laptop edition does around 100fps in gfxbench Aztec Ruins 4K. 

 

I'm a simple man with broad ballparks. 

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

If the M4 actually has a guaranteed 14% uplift over M3, that should make it equal to a GTX 1060 Desktop based on above. That's still not even half the way to a 4060 laptop, closer to a third.

 

(this is from the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark and is actually less fair to Apple since it depreciated native OpenCL.) 

 

A 4060 desktop unit is between a RTX 2070S and a 3070 Laptop

A 4060 laptop unit is between a RTX 3060/2060S and a ... a RTX 3060/2070 Desktop.

That may be accurate enough for gaming but in application use cases the GPU, as well as the decoders/encoders, in the M series SoCs absolutely spank Nvidia and AMD GPUs which I would say is more important for the majority of Mac users right now and for a good while yet.

[thechinchinsong]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

That may be accurate enough for gaming but in application use cases the GPU, as well as the decoders/encoders, in the M series SoCs absolutely spank Nvidia and AMD GPUs which I would say is more important for the majority of Mac users right and and for a good while yet.

I'd say that a bigger stumbling block for Mac in gaming is the compabilitily with the M series. Apple's done a great job with running non-graphics intensive apps natively or through translation, but tons of game engines and games don't work natively or don't work well through free translation. If there wasn't that roadblock in the way, having GTX-1060 desktop class graphics with the M4 + chips would be amazing. But I definitely agree that outside gaming, the M series GPUs are awesome.

[atxcyclist]

On 9/2/2024 at 2:56 PM, thechinchinsong said:

I'd say that a bigger stumbling block for Mac in gaming is the compabilitily with the M series. Apple's done a great job with running non-graphics intensive apps natively or through translation, but tons of game engines and games don't work natively or don't work well through free translation. If there wasn't that roadblock in the way, having GTX-1060 desktop class graphics with the M4 + chips would be amazing. But I definitely agree that outside gaming, the M series GPUs are awesome.

My biggest gripe with Apple Silicon is the lack of 32-bit Intel software support in Rosetta 2. It's a translation layer anyway, it would be great to be able to run older 32-bit MacOS-compatible games and software. 

[saltycaramel]

10 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

My biggest gripe with Apple Silicon is the lack of 32-bit Intel software support in Rosetta 2. It's a translation layer anyway, it would be great to be able to run older 32-bit MacOS-compatible games and software. 

To run 32-bit games you're gonna need an Intel Mac running macOS 10.14 from 2018, since in 2019 macOS 10.15 dropped support for 32-bit apps even on Intel Macs. 

Would be a nice little game preservation project. 

 

On modern Macs you might try to run the Windows version of said games via Crossover. 

[jordanbuilds1]

yet another apple inovation that will end up costing us through the roof. i love the idea that we dont have to deal with 8gb macs, but this seems like another sceem to make us pay more. (this is coming from a former apple fanboi) 

[atxcyclist]

12 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

To run 32-bit games you're gonna need an Intel Mac running macOS 10.14 from 2018, since in 2019 macOS 10.15 dropped support for 32-bit apps even on Intel Macs. 

Would be a nice little game preservation project. 

 

On modern Macs you might try to run the Windows version of said games via Crossover. 

I have Parallels and Windows 11 ARM on my M2 MacBook, but it's not great for gaming.

[saltycaramel]

2 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

I have Parallels and Windows 11 ARM on my M2 MacBook, but it's not great for gaming.

You may have better luck with CrossOver or Whisky.

You can follow this guide

https://youtu.be/JrkvFOiTph4

but at this point I would wait for macOS Sequoia (with its AVX2-enabled Rosetta and GPTK2) to be released, and then for CodeWeavers to integrate the newly available tools into CrossOver. (or use Whisky for free, or Heroic Games Launcher)

 

A compatibility wiki

https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home
 

Lastly, another (more preposterous but effective) option would be to acquire a Windows 11 PC (like a mini PC based on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 as soon as they become available in desktop mini PCs) and let it sit on a shelf (even headless, you can use a dummy hdmi/dp dongle) as a Sunshine server. You would then use Moonlight on your MacBook to remote into the Windows PC, and hence have your personal self-hosted “Windows cloud gaming service” with little added latency on your local network. Such a setup would have the added benefit of letting you play all your Windows games on iPad, iPhone, AppleTv and Vision Pro too, not just on your MacBook. 

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

You would then use Moonlight on your MacBook to remote into the Windows PC, and hence have your personal self-hosted “Windows cloud gaming service” with little added latency on your local network. Such a setup would have the added benefit of letting you play all your Windows games on iPad, iPhone, AppleTv and Vision Pro too, not just on your MacBook. 

This is generally not worth the effort. If you want to play windows game, have a windows PC and just play it on that. This was always the argument about why cloud gaming is stupid. Why would you buy a second computer JUST to play it on the first one? Cloud gaming only makes sense when the "host" machine is superiorly overpowered, but the devices you want to play it on are not. Eg SmartTV's or Mobile phones.

 

 

 

 

Apple needs to actually fix it's build process so it's not "worse than Linux"

 

The fuller part of this video is basically "Compile on Windows, no problem, and if the Linux build breaks, they can still use proton."

 

What isn't mentioned, but I'll mention it from personal experience, is that the "Windows" development environment is god-awful, but at least if you stick to windows-native libraries, it's usually not hard to develop software on, but porting it to Linux requires avoiding using Windows-exclusive API's for which there is no equivalent (like the entire GUI, which is why games are more practical to port.) Linux is actually worse than MacOS if you develop a GUI-driven application, because MacOS doesn't change the API's needlessly. But if you just want to develop command-line stuff, Windows is the worst because of things like glib on linux do things not only differently, but incompatible with Windows and MacOS c libraries. Like the header containing the list of variable bit lengths is completely incompatible so if you want to program something that uses glib on windows, you are refactoring the entire program.

 

[saltycaramel]

31 minutes ago, Kisai said:

1) This is generally not worth the effort.

 

2) If you want to play windows game, have a windows PC and just play it on that. This was always the argument about why cloud gaming is stupid.

 

3) Why would you buy a second computer JUST to play it on the first one?

 

4) Cloud gaming only makes sense when the "host" machine is superiorly overpowered, but the devices you want to play it on are not. Eg SmartTV's or Mobile phones.

 

1) Not my experience. If set up properly and on a good home network, local streaming via Sunshine is awesome. It's basically like using a non-gaming monitor with bad input lag, which all things considered is pretty good. The added latency is a non-issue in most games and for most players. Visual quality is superb (I use the max setting of 150Mbps AV1 or HEVC 10bit, at 120fps and with HDR). 

 

2) Or, have a Windows PC and play Windows games on every screen you own (including the amazing 120Hz tandem OLED of the iPad Pro or the 100Hz micro-OLED of the Vision Pro), wherever you are around the house. Sounds even better, right?

 

3) To have "Windows as an app" and open said "Windows app" on a whim on whatever device you happen to have in your hands. Maybe you like the first computer for everything else except gaming, so you add a second computer as a "crutch" to scratch that Windows gaming itch. The recent wave of pretty competent mini PCs based on the Radeon 780M (and soon the even more powerful Radeon 890M) make scratching that itch more accessible than ever. It's not that crazy to rationalize such a mini PC as a little dedicated "gaming server" to have around one's house, they are small, cute, ready to use and not crazy expensive.

 

4) Nope, it also makes sense if the client device is just as powerful as the host machine but has crap game compability (because of architecture, OS or both). Speaking of which, even Snapdragon X Elite WoA laptop users would be probably better off gaming via local streaming with Sunshine using a dedicated x86 gaming server in their home network. Enjoy the efficiency of the Snapdragon/AppleSilicon laptop during the day while you're out and about, and then in the evening when you're back home you game on that same laptop streaming locally from your headless gaming server. Some Steam Deck (or other handheld) users are doing it too. 

[Kisai]

5 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

1) Not my experience. If set up properly and on a good home network, local streaming via Sunshine is awesome. It's basically like using a non-gaming monitor with bad input lag, which all things considered is pretty good.

Again, why would you do this if the gaming computer is RIGHT THERE. 

 

Cloud gaming is when the computer is somewhere else, like you're at your mothers place, and your gaming PC is across town. Unless you have a 10000sq ft home that the computer is in a separate room and you want to play on a 50" SmartTV every so often, it just would have made more sense to plug the TV into the computer.

 

If you have 5 kids, and don't want to buy everyone top-of-the-line gaming computers to play together, I could see a point of buying one overkill 4K machine for yourself, and your kids all have 1080p systems, but one of them prefers a mac, being able to play with their siblings via your machine, but this is an edge case. If your kids all want to play together, you'd probably just buy them identical machines in the first place.

 

[saltycaramel]

Just now, Kisai said:

Again, why would you do this if the gaming computer is RIGHT THERE. 

 

Cloud gaming is when the computer is somewhere else, like you're at your mothers place, and your gaming PC is across town. Unless you have a 10000sq ft home that the computer is in a separate room and you want to play on a 50" SmartTV every so often, it just would have made more sense to plug the TV into the computer.

 

 

Bed, sofa, another room, bathroom, porch, backyard, etc. doesn't take a 10000sqft home to find reasons to bring Windows gaming away from its dedicated desk (or maybe you don't even have a dedicated desk). 

 

Also technically Sunshine could be accessed from across town, via Tailscale, NordVPN Meshnet, etc. 

So it could be used as a "double duty" gaming server

- for local access at max quality when you're home

- for remote access at reduced quality when you're out of home

[Donut417]

On 9/3/2024 at 11:37 PM, atxcyclist said:

My biggest gripe with Apple Silicon is the lack of 32-bit Intel software support in Rosetta 2. It's a translation layer anyway, it would be great to be able to run older 32-bit MacOS-compatible games and software. 

Mac OS dropped 32bit support when Apple was still using Intel chips. I think that Catalina was when it was dropped. So not really a Rosetta 2 issue, but more a Mac OS issue. 

[leadeater]

On 9/6/2024 at 3:48 AM, saltycaramel said:

Bed, sofa, another room, bathroom, porch, backyard, etc. doesn't take a 10000sqft home to find reasons to bring Windows gaming away from its dedicated desk (or maybe you don't even have a dedicated desk)

I think the better reason is not needing to have a KVM and also one that supports HDR and high refresh rate if you use that so you don't need a separate screen, keyboard and mouse that you can't use that is in the way or you need to constantly swap around.

 

Most people aren't going to have two entire computer setups including a desk and as easy as it is to move a MacBook Pro out of the way that's still not a great experience for a primary Mac user that  has a desk with a larger monitor and keyboard/mouse for that, not only for a Windows gaming computer.

 

Personally I don't like local game streaming myself but I'm also not a primary non-Windows user so it's a solution I don't need.

[Kisai]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I think the better reason is not needing to have a KVM and also one that supports HDR and high refresh rate if you use that so you don't need a separate screen, keyboard and mouse that you can't use that is in the way or you need to constantly swap around.

There are monitors that you can plug the mouse and keyboard into (eg most DELL's) and do input switching. At one office this was done with the USB-C docking station and a Desktop. The instruction was "just plug USB docking station into desktop to use desktop, otherwise plug into laptop (leave everything else alone.) USB-C monitors also let you use the KVM feature to swap between upstream ports, but I've only seen this on ... well the MSI monitor I have right now.

 

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Most people aren't going to have two entire computer setups including a desk and as easy as it is to move a MacBook Pro out of the way that's still not a great experience for a primary Mac user that  has a desk with a larger monitor and keyboard/mouse for that, not only for a Windows gaming computer.

 

Personally I don't like local game streaming myself but I'm also not a primary non-Windows user so it's a solution I don't need.

 

I think local game streaming is pointless unless you have some really strange reason for not having the gaming computer and the Mac in the same room. Like I have two desktops and two laptops in the same room and none of these are more than 6' away from each other. You can get viable HDMI cables of that length, just risk tripping over cables since they aren't all along the same wall.

 

Like I never understood what the purpose of the Nvidia shield was. You gonna stick your $5000 gaming rig in the basement and then play on the dinky little box plugged into the TV? Why not just put the PC beside the TV? Unless it has a special power requirement that keeps it from being in another room. You're not going to get any kind of better experience streaming it, you end up with latency and muddied up h.264 compression at low bit rates.

 

I played Stadia while it was operational, despite my misgivings about it likely going to be a failure, and pretty much the only stuff that was viable to play on that had to have no "Twitchy" input. 

[saltycaramel]

On 9/5/2024 at 5:12 PM, saltycaramel said:

4) Nope, it also makes sense if the client device is just as powerful as the host machine but has crap game compability (because of architecture, OS or both). Speaking of which, even Snapdragon X Elite WoA laptop users would be probably better off gaming via local streaming with Sunshine using a dedicated x86 gaming server in their home network. Enjoy the efficiency of the Snapdragon/AppleSilicon laptop during the day while you're out and about, and then in the evening when you're back home you game on that same laptop streaming locally from your headless gaming server. Some Steam Deck (or other handheld) users are doing it too. 

https://youtu.be/g5NYct6I2cg?feature=shared&t=564

 

 

My spirit animal.

 

Sunshine+Moonlight is the most well kept secret on the internet.

 

Idea for a silent hybrid macOS+W11 desk setup:

- have an M4 (or M4 Pro) MacMini on your actual desk for everything but gaming

- make sure to connect it to a 4K 120Hz display

- have a W11 gaming PC with 7800x3D and RTX 4090 in a completely different room (or basement, etc.) so you can’t hear it

- wire both the M4 MacMini and the W11 gaming PC via Ethernet, do not use WiFi (c’mon)

- install the Sunshine server on the W11 gaming PC in the basement and the Moonlight client on the M4 MacMini on your actual desk

- enjoy

 

There you go, silent 4090 gaming within a macOS environment.

 

macOS is actually a better Moonlight client than iOS/iPadOS ‘cause on iPhone/iPad the mouse polling is capped at 120Hz, whereas on macOS there’s no such a cap (I tried a 1000Hz wireless mouse and via macOS Moonlight I got around 700Hz on those test sites). 

[leadeater]

On 9/7/2024 at 9:34 AM, Kisai said:

There are monitors that you can plug the mouse and keyboard into (eg most DELL's) and do input switching. At one office this was done with the USB-C docking station and a Desktop. The instruction was "just plug USB docking station into desktop to use desktop, otherwise plug into laptop (leave everything else alone.) USB-C monitors also let you use the KVM feature to swap between upstream ports, but I've only seen this on ... well the MSI monitor I have right now.

If you use a docking station then you are limited to what that supports the same as a KVM and then you need to get one that supports HDR (the best versions and ideally Dolby Vision) as well as multiple 4K monitors which I can tell you know isn't possible. A docking station is a KVM just with a different name. Simply using multiple inputs of a monitor solves a lot of this issue but then you need to have more than one HDMI 2.1 input for example if you want the maximum possible feature support on both connected computers as well as having to either reach to the monitor to change it or get a monitor with a remote.

 

There simply isn't a "perfect" way of sharing monitors and keyboards with multiple computers, there is always some kind of drawback to it so it really comes down to what anyone is willing to accept i.e. don't need HDR on second PC etc.

 

Same issue with game streaming, you are always dealing with drawbacks so it's on each person to accept or not.

[saltycaramel]

On 9/5/2024 at 6:53 AM, saltycaramel said:

Lastly, another (more preposterous but effective) option would be to acquire a Windows 11 PC (like a mini PC based on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 as soon as they become available in desktop mini PCs) and let it sit on a shelf (even headless, you can use a dummy hdmi/dp dongle) as a Sunshine server. . 

 

It's happening: Beelink just announced the (Strix Point based) Beelink SER9 mini-PC

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/beelink-officially-presents-amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-370-based-mini-pc-with-built-in-speakers

 

Compared to the Hawk Point based SER8 it's got

- 20-30% more GPU power (890M vs 780M)

- soldered RAM (as per AMD specifications)

- (apparently HDMI 2.0 instead of HDMI 2.1? I can confirm the SER8 has HDMI 2.1 working at 4K 120Hz 4:4:4 HDR)

 

MacMini M4 and Beelink SER9: a tale of two diminutive and pretty quiet mini-PCs (probably with similar exterior design too, but the MacMini is gonna have an internal PSU). Having both on one's desk may be the key to using both macOS (for everything but gaming) and still being able to do some native x86 Windows gaming. If they happen to be on the same desk, KVM switching may be the preferred (zero latency) switching method (with the caveats described in the above post). Although using low-added-latency local game streaming has its perks (like still seeing macOS notifications overlayed on the fullscreen Moonlight streaming, or using Moonlight windowed, and in general being able to go back to using macOS at a moment's notice). 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

It's happening: Beelink just announced the (Strix Point based) Beelink SER9 mini-PC

 

https://videocardz.com/newz/beelink-officially-presents-amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-370-based-mini-pc-with-built-in-speakers

That looks like a really nice system, obvious Mac Mini copy but I like it more than other similar mini PCs like this.

[saltycaramel]

So, it had been known for days that there were a bunch of unreleased base M4 MacBook Pros in the wild (probably out of a "rogue" warehouse or something?). Now a pair of these MBPs have been unboxed by Russian youtubers.

 

 

Geekbench:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8171874

 

Of course the SC score is higher than previous gens, but it is also notable that the MC score of the base M4 is now:

- higher than the M1 Pro

- higher than the M2 Pro

- on par with the M3 Pro

 

The base M4 (when properly and actively cooled), not the M4 Pro. 

Let that sink in. 

 

Of course the Pro chips still have an edge on the GPU front. 

 

Also of note: the base MBP now has 3 thunderbolt ports, not 2. And now on both sides.