Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights
by Andrei Frumusanu on October 25, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Apple
- MacBook
- Apple M1 Pro
- Apple M1 Max
Conclusion & First Impressions
The new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are designs that we’ve been waiting for over a year now, ever since Apple had announced the M1 and M1-powered devices. The M1 was a very straightforward jump from a mobile platform to a laptop/desktop platform, but it was undeniably a chip that was oriented towards much lower power devices, with thermal limits. The M1 impressed in single-threaded performance, but still clearly lagged behind the competition in overall performance.
The M1 Pro and M1 Max change the narrative completely – these designs feel like truly SoCs that have been made with power users in mind, with Apple increasing the performance metrics in all vectors. We expected large performance jumps, but we didn’t expect the some of the monstrous increases that the new chips are able to achieve.
On the CPU side, doubling up on the performance cores is an evident way to increase performance – the competition also does so with some of their designs. How Apple does it differently, is that it not only scaled the CPU cores, but everything surrounding them. It’s not just 4 additional performance cores, it’s a whole new performance cluster with its own L2. On the memory side, Apple has scaled its memory subsystem to never before seen dimensions, and this allows the M1 Pro & Max to achieve performance figures that simply weren’t even considered possible in a laptop chip. The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.
On the GPU side of things, Apple’s gains are also straightforward. The M1 Pro is essentially 2x the M1, and the M1 Max is 4x the M1 in terms of performance. Games are still in a very weird place for macOS and the ecosystem, maybe it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, maybe gaming is still something of a niche that will take a long time to see make use of the performance the new chips are able to provide in terms of GPU. What’s clearer, is that the new GPU does allow immense leaps in performance for content creation and productivity workloads which rely on GPU acceleration.
To further improve content creation, the new media engine is a key feature of the chip. Particularly video editors working with ProRes or ProRes RAW, will see a many-fold improvement in their workflow as the new chips can handle the formats like a breeze – this along is likely going to have many users of that professional background quickly adopt the new MacBook Pro’s.
For others, it seems that Apple knows the typical MacBook Pro power users, and has designed the silicon around the use-cases in which Macs do shine. The combination of raw performance, unique acceleration, as well as sheer power efficiency, is something that you just cannot find in any other platform right now, likely making the new MacBook Pro’s not just the best laptops, but outright the very best devices for the task.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
493 Comments
View All Comments
web2dot0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
You just made his case. 😂melgross - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
We’re all ready seeing optimized software from Blackmagic, and others. Blackmagic is claiming anything from 2 times to over 7 times performance gains in Resolve 17.4 with the 32 core Max.Apple also has a power mode that we can access which will turn the fans to max level for extra performance. I’m looking to try that when my 16” comes in a few days. I wonder if that feature was tested, as it wasn’t mentioned.
Gaming, well, yeah. Over the decades most ports were bad. I don’t have any thought that the ones tested here were much better. Then running under Rosetta 2, as good as it is, isn’t helping.
daveinpublic - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Huh, nice way to hijack the top comment.name99 - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
So nothing changes.Gamers have always hated Apple. Doesn't change.
Developers have been uninterested in Apple. Probably doesn't change.
None of this matters to Apple, or most of its customers. Doesn't change.
*Perhaps* Apple will make some attempt to grow Arcade upwards, but honestly, why bother? Almost all the ranting about gaming HW in threads like this is trash talk and aspirational; it does no translate into purchases, certainly not of Apple HW, and usually not of Wintel HW. It's no different from the sort of comments you might read on a Maserati vs Ferrari comment board -- and as uninteresting and unimportant to either the engineers at both companies, or most of the *actual* customers.
web2dot0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Developers love MacBookPro what are you talking about?!?mlambert890 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
He's talking about *game developers* targeting MacOS. Not that in developers in general tend to like MacBooks (although certainly not Windows developers obviously)TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Apple developers love macbook pros. The rest of the world sees them for the overpriced shiny facebook machines they've become. Gone are the days of the 2010 era tank macbook pros that lasted forever, chromebooks have better build quality and longer lifespans then modern apple products.steven4570 - Friday, October 29, 2021 - link
"The rest of the world sees them for the overpriced shiny facebook machines they've become. "Not really
Hrunga_Zmuda - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
It's not M1X. There are two chips, M1 Pro and M1 Max.I'm guessing that next year, the entry level chips will be M2 and the big boys will be M2 Pro and M2 Max.
TedTschopp - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
The money in the gaming space is in mobile gaming, not in AAA gaming, and Apple is the leader in Mobile Gaming Revenue. So the classic pattern here would be for them to leverage themselves from the leader in the low-end market into a leader in the high-end market.And with their first attempt at a gaming class machine, they came out with something in the first quartile. Next year, when the M2 Pro and Max, my guess is that they will be accelerating faster then their competition as their development and design processes have been designed to out compete mobile competitors, not desktop competitors like Intel and NVidia.