If a laptop will need to be plugged in to deliver full performance, whilst blasting fans at full throttle, what is the point? (apart from server / workstation use, where you don't like MacOS or need different OS)
Depends on your usecase. For a thin 14" laptop an M4 is probably the closer sweet spot, but for CPU heavy workloads Apple doesn't offer anything comparable to Threadripper or EPYC (lots of fast cores, enough memory and I/O bandwidth).
Maybe wait for the next release of amd mobile cpu? I heard that they throw 384 bit bus on i-gpu. While the main purpose is for faster vram access. It surely will also benefit memory bound cpu tasks.
Server CPUs are hitting those numbers already for many years, including the AMD. The thing here is that Apple optimized their core for a different workload than the rest. I don't think there's a secret sauce AMD isn't aware of given their other line of CPUs - they know how to achieve it.
In multi-threaded scenarios, for example, M chips are not better at all and AFAICR are worse than the Threadripper. So, a different trade-off really
Friend of mine has laptop with Intel Ultra 9 185h. It is always plugged because when you don't plugin in, it is crawling (like even struggles to open Word). Fans are always spinning and it is loud.
For doing any kind of work that requires focus it is an absolute nightmare.
But she need a laptop to occasionally take it to Uni.
Her issue is not the form factor. Is it the RAM ? did she activate all the marketing apps ? Is a bitcoin farmer running in the background ? I don't know, but it's worth looking into it.
For comparison, I have at hand a Surface Pro 8 that should be 3x slower than hers on sheer CPU benchmarks, and I can throw any run of mill task at it (do the taxes with 3~4 word documents, Excel, dozens of tabs in firefox and a call session in the background) and it's fine. It will burn trough battery life within an two or three hours under that load, and yes the fans will be running, but I have no issue of having it crawl when unplugged.
Could be the low power ecores being in use somehow? Meteor Lake has 3 types of core with 2 lpE cores in the SOC to try to turn off the Main P and E core tile. Lunar Lake removed the lpE cores and it does feel faster when surfing pages like reddit than my 12th gen and 5000hz laptops. I also tried the Ryzen AI and it is pretty close but 20% less battery life. They get a pretty crazy 15hr battery life now.
Sounds like my macbook 16" with the Intel i9. Just about anything, full screen video call, backups, patching, etc it sounds like a hair dryer. I'm not surprised there's various docks, stands, etc that include supplemental cooling.
I'm jealous of the m series macbooks, fast, quiet, and cool on wall or battery.
If a laptop will need to be plugged in to deliver full performance, whilst blasting fans at full throttle, what is the point? (apart from server / workstation use, where you don't like MacOS or need different OS)