Apple silicon optimization

[Koub]

Off topic rambling

[...]
The results:
Windows: 70W
M1: 20W
[...]
This difference in energy consumption equates to around £1.00 vs £0.50 in energy costs per day.[...]

I did some napkin math. I've seen that electricity price cap in the UK is 0.28£ per kWh (I used this source).
One would need about 1.786 kWh to achieve an additional cost of 0.50£, which, at 50W, would take around 35 hours and 40 minutes.
I'm wondering how you can squeeze over 35 hours of Factorio in a day.

If you manage to squeeze 5 hours of Factorio every day (which is a LOT once one has a job), one day of Factorio on Windows would cost around 7p per day. Just having a second laptop costed you so much more that it would take shy of 10 years to compensate for it (with current electricity price I reckon).

[Edit] I read somewhere that the x64 emulation on the M1 totally rocks, what kind of performance (both UPS wise and electricity wise).

Back to topic

That being said, I'm not fundamentally against the optimizations for a new architecture, whether it's for M1, RISC-V, or a quantum computer. The only thing is : would it benefit to enough potential players to give the devs the will to invest time on it (knowing that in this case, it's not a linear investment, keeping ALL the versions compatible and desync-free will probably be exponentially complex with every new supported architecture).

[SupplyDepoo]

I did some napkin math. I've seen that electricity price cap in the UK is 0.28£ per kWh (I used this source).
One would need about 1.786 kWh to achieve an additional cost of 0.50£, which, at 50W, would take around 35 hours and 40 minutes.
I'm wondering how you can squeeze over 35 hours of Factorio in a day.

If you manage to squeeze 5 hours of Factorio every day (which is a LOT once one has a job), one day of Factorio on Windows would cost around 7p per day. Just having a second laptop costed you so much more that it would take shy of 10 years to compensate for it (with current electricity price I reckon).

Ah, you're right of course. I did the math in my head and messed up somehow, I think I forgot that I included the energy usage for some other games that are >100W. That said, 35h per day sounds about right to me. *looks at soaring Steam play time statistic* Thanks for correcting me, I'll delete that paragraph.

[ptx0]

everything used by Factorio has native M1 support internally. they don't need to "optimize" for Apple silicon, merely provide a build for it that uses the correct ISA.

[Ida-Marie]

One important thing that follows when optimizing is less RAM usage. When using my 8GiB RAM M1 Air, I very soon finds that swapping occurs heavily. If it was compiled directly, it would be able to build a lot larger bases before swapping starts.

When swapping starts, it is only a slight performance degradation due to the unified architecture, however it wears down the NAND very fast.

[ptx0]

One would need about 1.786 kWh to achieve an additional cost of 0.50£

this is a pretty egocentric view of the world's power grids. not everyone lives at that scale. i have a 10kWh battery bank off grid but it cost me about $10k to get this setup.

more likely you'll find small off-grid setups with about 3kWh of total capacity and the incoming power is under 1kW in general. you need a fair amount to charge the batteries. in winter time with low sun, Factorio consuming more CPU is a real consideration as to whether we play or not.

that's why I got the Steam Deck.

[spleut]

As of version 1.1.71 wube has added native apple silicon support, and a little benchmarking from a redditor indicates Apple silicon users should see some performance improvements with this update.

Very excited to see this. When I originally opened this thread, based on what I'd read from various sources, I wasn't optimistic about getting native support for apple silicon. I can't afford to be sucked into the black abyss of addiction right now so I can't test it out, but I'm curious to hear everyone else's experiences.

[ptx0]

I can't afford to be sucked into the black abyss of addiction right now so I can't test it out

oh come on i'm sure it'll just be a few hours til you launch a rocket! it's so easy.

[matt3224]

The Apple Silicon version is much better when running on an M1 Max, fans take a fair while to spin up and dont spin as high as the old build, generally feels more responsive on bigger factories too.

I am very interested what Apple Metal could do to further boost performance and whether this is on the cards, im sure the devs are dabbling!