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Comment by wil421 | Hacker News Reader

My M1 air is only a few minutes behind my old i7-7700k in handbrake encoding a 4k 10 bit HDR movie into a 1080p version. I still have a 2017 16inch MBP that throttles horribly on any major task.

I’m going to some personal benchmarks for all all 3 machines plus my new Ryzen 7950x. It still amazes me the fanless M1 Air is nearly as fast as my old desktop and laptop.

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Not to cause any arguments or anything but comparing an Apple Intel laptop go their new ARM units isn’t a great comparison because I swear apple started thermally gimping them several years before releasing the M1s to make them look even better.

Seriously. The thermals the the last couple of intel apple laptops are atrocious. And I mean from a design standpoint point. With shitty coolers and fan arrangements etc. its kinda wild.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is they just wanted to optimize for size and weight as much as possible, and the copper/aluminum budget is a natural target.

Probably. But that’s not as fun of an answer! :)

This feels somewhat charitable considering they made other aspects worse for several generations, then brought back good stuff for the M1 launch.

> I swear apple started thermally gimping them several years before releasing the M1s

I'd certainly hate to have had an Intel Mac that was louder and hotter than it already was.

I think this conspiracy theory could go the other way: they let the thermals go nuts in old intels to make the M1s look better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygy_JfE0cMA

i watched this long time ago and i have a new appreciation for "my phone", not to speak of other general computing devices like laptops or desktops

I’m unsure of the quality of the hardware encoder for snapdragon. Intel QSV had noticeable changes and Nvidia’s nvenc is the worst.

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