Sick of Windows PCs, tell me about Macs (Page 2 of 2)
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I switched to Mac back in the Windows NT days, when every other day Win was getting hit with something nasty. I also had a bunch of friends and family who relied on me to be their personal IT guy. I told them I wouldn't help them anymore unless they switched to Macs. I appreciate the Macs and OSX for the longevity and simplicity, but now that MS has worked a lot of the bugs out, and you can get a decent Win laptop for under $200, I've gradually switched back to Windows machines for most things. My wife still has a MacBook Air she uses for work and we have iPhones, so we keep our Apple infrastructure up and running with iCloud subscriptions for photos and such. |
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Originally Posted By thejokker: The thing is I actually know something about computers and none of the top PC's are listed in your graph. In general you are going to be paying more for a Mac that is less powerful than a PC. And as far as my list goes. The Apple A18 Pro which is a phone CPU was released in late 2025, the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX was released in April 2025. It's pretty bad that a phone chip outperforms a high end mobile CPU in single core. While the Ryzen 9 8945HX did beat the Apple M4 chip in multi core scores, it also has 16 cores versus the M4 only having 10 cores. And the AMD did not beat the M4 by much on multi core. The M4 also uses about half the power in watts than the Ryzen 9 8945HX does. Apple Silicon chips are faster with less cores, more efficient with RAM and use less power to do so when compared to AMD and Intel chips. Now on price. The Dell Inspiron 15 2535 cost about the same as the MacBook Neo did. And the Neo beats the Inspiron in single core, multi core, and power consumption. The Dell Optiplex 7010 Micro actually cost more than the M4 Mac mini did. Both came with 512GB of storage. The Dell came with 16 GB of RAM the was upgraded to 64 GB of RAM, The M4 Mac mini has 24 GB of RAM. And again the M4 Mac mini outperforms the Optiplex in all categories. My Minisforum ITX with the Ryzen 9 8945HX did best on compute scores (GPU) but that was to be expected as it has a Intel ARC graphics card installed and that was used instead of the onboard AMD graphics. All others in my test used the onboard graphics. |
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Originally Posted By chumpmiester: I know a little myself since I use hold my MCSE, CCNA, and Linux server certifications and worked in the IT field as a network admin. And as far as my list goes. The Apple A18 Pro which is a phone CPU was released in late 2025, the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX was released in April 2025. It's pretty bad that a phone chip outperforms a high end mobile CPU in single core. While the Ryzen 9 8945HX did beat the Apple M4 chip in multi core scores, it also has 16 cores versus the M4 only having 10 cores. And the AMD did not beat the M4 by much on multi core. The M4 also uses about half the power in watts than the Ryzen 9 8945HX does. Apple Silicon chips are faster with less cores, more efficient with RAM and use less power to do so when compared to AMD and Intel chips. Now on price. The Dell Inspiron 15 2535 cost about the same as the MacBook Neo did. And the Neo beats the Inspiron in single core, multi core, and power consumption. The Dell Optiplex 7010 Micro actually cost more than the M4 Mac mini did. Both came with 512GB of storage. The Dell came with 16 GB of RAM the was upgraded to 64 GB of RAM, The M4 Mac mini has 24 GB of RAM. And again the M4 Mac mini outperforms the Optiplex in all categories. My Minisforum ITX with the Ryzen 9 8945HX did best on compute scores (GPU) but that was to be expected as it has a Intel ARC graphics card installed and that was used instead of the onboard AMD graphics. All others in my test used the onboard graphics. Originally Posted By chumpmiester: Originally Posted By thejokker: The thing is I actually know something about computers and none of the top PC's are listed in your graph. In general you are going to be paying more for a Mac that is less powerful than a PC. And as far as my list goes. The Apple A18 Pro which is a phone CPU was released in late 2025, the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX was released in April 2025. It's pretty bad that a phone chip outperforms a high end mobile CPU in single core. While the Ryzen 9 8945HX did beat the Apple M4 chip in multi core scores, it also has 16 cores versus the M4 only having 10 cores. And the AMD did not beat the M4 by much on multi core. The M4 also uses about half the power in watts than the Ryzen 9 8945HX does. Apple Silicon chips are faster with less cores, more efficient with RAM and use less power to do so when compared to AMD and Intel chips. Now on price. The Dell Inspiron 15 2535 cost about the same as the MacBook Neo did. And the Neo beats the Inspiron in single core, multi core, and power consumption. The Dell Optiplex 7010 Micro actually cost more than the M4 Mac mini did. Both came with 512GB of storage. The Dell came with 16 GB of RAM the was upgraded to 64 GB of RAM, The M4 Mac mini has 24 GB of RAM. And again the M4 Mac mini outperforms the Optiplex in all categories. My Minisforum ITX with the Ryzen 9 8945HX did best on compute scores (GPU) but that was to be expected as it has a Intel ARC graphics card installed and that was used instead of the onboard AMD graphics. All others in my test used the onboard graphics. It's entirely pointless to throw benchmarks around when there are so many different use cases, and things like core counts are meaningless without a ton of caveats and context. I went from a 12700k to a 9850X3D which was a net core count loss but a healthy CPU improvement for gaming. The 12700k was and still is a good gaming CPU. Just a totally different mouse trap. Then when you look at the history of gaming on PC a lot of games used to be single threaded but not so much anymore. But now that games are multithreaded you want every core it uses to hammer it like no tomorrow. When Intel when big core little core or performance cores and efficiency cores you had to be on W11 to even get the CPU instruction set. Lots of people were buying 12th gen or newer then running W10 which AFAIK didn't have support for it. Then there were issues with dual CCD AMD and one CCD being X3D and the other wasn't but Windows was sending instructions to the wrong CCD and that was a mess. The X3D2 CPU's only just now have the stacked cache on both CCDs so it doesn't matter which CCD gets the instruction but it was a big thing not long ago. |
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Originally Posted By Rebel31: It's entirely pointless to throw benchmarks around when there are so many different use cases, and things like core counts are meaningless without a ton of caveats and context. I went from a 12700k to a 9850X3D which was a net core count loss but a healthy CPU improvement for gaming. The 12700k was and still is a good gaming CPU. Just a totally different mouse trap. Then when you look at the history of gaming on PC a lot of games used to be single threaded but not so much anymore. But now that games are multithreaded you want every core it uses to hammer it like no tomorrow. When Intel when big core little core or performance cores and efficiency cores you had to be on W11 to even get the CPU instruction set. Lots of people were buying 12th gen or newer then running W10 which AFAIK didn't have support for it. Then there were issues with dual CCD AMD and one CCD being X3D and the other wasn't but Windows was sending instructions to the wrong CCD and that was a mess. The X3D2 CPU's only just now have the stacked cache on both CCDs so it doesn't matter which CCD gets the instruction but it was a big thing not long ago. As you said, there are many different use cases. Gamers need as many multi cores as they can get along with a good graphics card. But the M series Mac's are favored for running local AI. GO try to buy a Mac mini or Mac Studio right now, you can't because of the chip shortage AND everyone buying them up to run local LLM's |
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100% Mac. Females in the house went thru 2-3 PCs each per my one MacBook over ~10 years. (It still works, just was getting slow and too old for updates). $ for $, I probably came out ahead (Even though really I paid for them all  ) Currently driving MB Air. So easy to just hit the button and it's full speed ahead in 1-2 seconds. Display is top shelf. Silent. 3-4 hours constant run time on a single charge (At full brightness). Plus all the other Apple/ios stuff. Apple care is interesting now... $20/month up to any 3 devises in your household you want. (iCloud is a rip off imo though) |
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Originally Posted By chumpmiester: I'm not a gamer so that doesn't affect me. I run several W11 machines along with two Mac's and an iPad with the M3 chip. The Mac's and iPad outperform my W11 machines on a daily basis. As you said, there are many different use cases. Gamers need as many multi cores as they can get along with a good graphics card. But the M series Mac's are favored for running local AI. GO try to buy a Mac mini or Mac Studio right now, you can't because of the chip shortage AND everyone buying them up to run local LLM's Originally Posted By chumpmiester: Originally Posted By Rebel31: It's entirely pointless to throw benchmarks around when there are so many different use cases, and things like core counts are meaningless without a ton of caveats and context. I went from a 12700k to a 9850X3D which was a net core count loss but a healthy CPU improvement for gaming. The 12700k was and still is a good gaming CPU. Just a totally different mouse trap. Then when you look at the history of gaming on PC a lot of games used to be single threaded but not so much anymore. But now that games are multithreaded you want every core it uses to hammer it like no tomorrow. When Intel when big core little core or performance cores and efficiency cores you had to be on W11 to even get the CPU instruction set. Lots of people were buying 12th gen or newer then running W10 which AFAIK didn't have support for it. Then there were issues with dual CCD AMD and one CCD being X3D and the other wasn't but Windows was sending instructions to the wrong CCD and that was a mess. The X3D2 CPU's only just now have the stacked cache on both CCDs so it doesn't matter which CCD gets the instruction but it was a big thing not long ago. As you said, there are many different use cases. Gamers need as many multi cores as they can get along with a good graphics card. But the M series Mac's are favored for running local AI. GO try to buy a Mac mini or Mac Studio right now, you can't because of the chip shortage AND everyone buying them up to run local LLM's Apple chips are good but the main benefit those Mac's have is the unified memory. They're the most cost effective way to get that much memory (VRAM) for AI models. |
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Originally Posted By Rebel31: Apple chips are good but the main benefit those Mac's have is the unified memory. They're the most cost effective way to get that much memory (VRAM) for AI models. Computer operating systems are like anything else, everyone is going to have their own preferences on what they use. For those that are tired of Microsoft and W11 and do not need W11 only programs then switching to MacOS is simple and easy. For the gamers, things keep improving when it comes to gaming on MacOS. |
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