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
Power Behaviour: No Real TDP, but Wide Range
Last year when we reviewed the M1 inside the Mac mini, we did some rough power measurements based on the wall-power of the machine. Since then, we learned how to read out Apple’s individual CPU, GPU, NPU and memory controller power figures, as well as total advertised package power. We repeat the exercise here for the 16” MacBook Pro, focusing on chip package power, as well as AC active wall power, meaning device load power, minus idle power.
Apple doesn’t advertise any TDP for the chips of the devices – it’s our understanding that simply doesn’t exist, and the only limitation to the power draw of the chips and laptops are simply thermals. As long as temperature is kept in check, the silicon will not throttle or not limit itself in terms of power draw. Of course, there’s still an actual average power draw figure when under different scenarios, which is what we come to test here:
Starting off with device idle, the chip reports a package power of around 200mW when doing nothing but idling on a static screen. This is extremely low compared to competitor designs, and is likely a reason Apple is able achieve such fantastic battery life. The AC wall power under idle was 7.2W, this was on Apple’s included 140W charger, and while the laptop was on minimum display brightness – it’s likely the actual DC battery power under this scenario is much lower, but lacking the ability to measure this, it’s the second-best thing we have. One should probably assume a 90% efficiency figure in the AC-to-DC conversion chain from 230V wall to 28V USB-C MagSafe to whatever the internal PMIC usage voltage of the device is.
In single-threaded workloads, such as CineBench r23 and SPEC 502.gcc_r, both which are more mixed in terms of pure computation vs also memory demanding, we see the chip report 11W package power, however we’re just measuring a 8.5-8.7W difference at the wall when under use. It’s possible the software is over-reporting things here. The actual CPU cluster is only using around 4-5W under this scenario, and we don’t seem to see much of a difference to the M1 in that regard. The package and active power are higher than what we’ve seen on the M1, which could be explained by the much larger memory resources of the M1 Max. 511.povray is mostly core-bound with little memory traffic, package power is reported less, although at the wall again the difference is minor.
In multi-threaded scenarios, the package and wall power vary from 34-43W on package, and wall active power from 40 to 62W. 503.bwaves stands out as having a larger difference between wall power and reported package power – although Apple’s powermetrics showcases a “DRAM” power figure, I think this is just the memory controllers, and that the actual DRAM is not accounted for in the package power figure – the extra wattage that we’re measuring here, because it’s a massive DRAM workload, would be the memory of the M1 Max package.
On the GPU side, we lack notable workloads, but GFXBench Aztec High Offscreen ends up with a 56.8W package figure and 69.80W wall active figure. The GPU block itself is reported to be running at 43W.
Finally, stressing out both CPU and GPU at the same time, the SoC goes up to 92W package power and 120W wall active power. That’s quite high, and we haven’t tested how long the machine is able to sustain such loads (it’s highly environment dependent), but it very much appears that the chip and platform don’t have any practical power limit, and just uses whatever it needs as long as temperatures are in check.
| M1 Max MacBook Pro 16" |
Intel i9-11980HK MSI GE76 Raider |
|||||
| Score | Package Power (W) |
Wall Power Total - Idle (W) |
Score | Package Power (W) |
Wall Power Total - Idle (W) |
|
| Idle | 0.2 | 7.2 (Total) |
1.08 | 13.5 (Total) |
||
| CB23 ST | 1529 | 11.0 | 8.7 | 1604 | 30.0 | 43.5 |
| CB23 MT | 12375 | 34.0 | 39.7 | 12830 | 82.6 | 106.5 |
| 502 ST | 11.9 | 11.0 | 9.5 | 10.7 | 25.5 | 24.5 |
| 502 MT | 74.6 | 36.9 | 44.8 | 46.2 | 72.6 | 109.5 |
| 511 ST | 10.3 | 5.5 | 8.0 | 10.7 | 17.6 | 28.5 |
| 511 MT | 82.7 | 40.9 | 50.8 | 60.1 | 79.5 | 106.5 |
| 503 ST | 57.3 | 14.5 | 16.8 | 44.2 | 19.5 | 31.5 |
| 503 MT | 295.7 | 43.9 | 62.3 | 60.4 | 58.3 | 80.5 |
| Aztec High Off | 307fps | 56.8 | 69.8 | 266fps | 35 + 144 | 200.5 |
| Aztec+511MT | 92.0 | 119.8 | 78 + 142 | 256.5 | ||
Comparing the M1 Max against the competition, we resorted to Intel’s 11980HK on the MSI GE76 Raider. Unfortunately, we wanted to also do a comparison against AMD’s 5980HS, however our test machine is dead.
In single-threaded workloads, Apple’s showcases massive performance and power advantages against Intel’s best CPU. In CineBench, it’s one of the rare workloads where Apple’s cores lose out in performance for some reason, but this further widens the gap in terms of power usage, whereas the M1 Max only uses 8.7W, while a comparable figure on the 11980HK is 43.5W.
In other ST workloads, the M1 Max is more ahead in performance, or at least in a similar range. The performance/W difference here is around 2.5x to 3x in favour of Apple’s silicon.
In multi-threaded tests, the 11980HK is clearly allowed to go to much higher power levels than the M1 Max, reaching package power levels of 80W, for 105-110W active wall power, significantly more than what the MacBook Pro here is drawing. The performance levels of the M1 Max are significantly higher than the Intel chip here, due to the much better scalability of the cores. The perf/W differences here are 4-6x in favour of the M1 Max, all whilst posting significantly better performance, meaning the perf/W at ISO-perf would be even higher than this.
On the GPU side, the GE76 Raider comes with a GTX 3080 mobile. On Aztec High, this uses a total of 200W power for 266fps, while the M1 Max beats it at 307fps with just 70W wall active power. The package powers for the MSI system are reported at 35+144W.
Finally, the Intel and GeForce GPU go up to 256W power daw when used together, also more than double that of the MacBook Pro and its M1 Max SoC.
The 11980HK isn’t a very efficient chip, as we had noted it back in our May review, and AMD’s chips should fare quite a bit better in a comparison, however the Apple Silicon is likely still ahead by extremely comfortable margins.
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sthambi - Wednesday, November 3, 2021 - link
Hi Anand, I stumbled across your blog post, and I enjoyed reading it. I'm a professional video editor, photographer. Ordered the 32 core, 64GB, M1 Pro Max for $3900. I'm upgrading from the iMac 5k, late 2015 model. I personally feel like am overkilling my configuration. I don't want to look back 2 years from now, and feel like I lost 4k, and now apple doubled again. Do you think I really need this much heavy configuration to use premiere pro cc, max 5k video editing, and canon raw images, and simultaneous creative cloud application running? what would you recommend, which can help me save money and not compromise on the performance? is my decision of going full configuration bad?MykeM - Sunday, November 14, 2021 - link
Read the byline (the names under the headlines). The site’s namesake- Anand- left a few years ago. He no longer writes here. The people replacing him are every bit as capable but none of them are actually named Anand.razer555 - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMgCsvcMIaQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN8ve8Hp4I4
Anandtech, your tests about the graphic seems wrong.
Sheepshot - Sunday, November 7, 2021 - link
Anand tech = Apple shills.M1 beats both the M1Pro and max in power efficiency. Draws 50% of watt butt provides almost 65-70% of the performance in most relevant benches.
Hrunga_Zmuda - Sunday, November 7, 2021 - link
Shills?The 90s called and want your insult back.
evernessince - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
HWUB just did a review of the M1 pro in actual applications and performance is good but not nearly as impressive as Anand suggests. These chips are competitive with laptop chips but you certainly don't need to bust out server class components as suggested in the article. Performance is very good in certain areas and in others it's very poor. Most of the time it's about as good as X86 laptop chips. GPU is decent but given the price, you can get much much more performance on X86 at a much lower price.Motti.shneor - Sunday, November 14, 2021 - link
I think I heard M1 Max and M1 Pro have different number of CPU cores? Here you say they're identical?Also, I keep asking myself why a tech visionary like yourself doesn't see the "big picture" and the bold transitional step in computing taken here.
For me, that sheer "horse power" means very little - I'm using a 1st generation M1 Mac-Mini, with medium configuration, beside an i9 MacBookPro from 2020 - and the Mini is SO MUCH BETTER in each and every way and meaning (except of course for the terrible bugs and deteriorating quality and bad behavior at boot time, the EFI and such)
As a power user, and Mac/iOS software engineer/tech-lead for over 35 years, and with my pack of 400 applications installed, some native, some emulated, and my 0.5TB library of photos and 0.5TB library of music.... well, with all this, I can testify that MacMini "feels" 5 times faster than the MBP, in most everything I DO. Maybe it'll fail on benchmarks, but I couldn't care less. Rebuild a project? snap. Export a video while rescaling it? Immediate! heavy image conversion? no time. Launch a heavy app? before you know it. It FEELS very very fast, and that's 1st generation.
What I think IS IMPRTANT and not being said by anyone, is that the whole mode of computing goes back from "general purpose" into "specialized hardware". You can no longer appreciate a computer by its linear-programming CPU cycles, and if you do - you just get a completely wrong evaluation.
Moreover - you CANT just "port some general C code from somewhere" and expect it to run fast. You MUST be using system APIs at SOME LEVEL, that will dispatch your work onto specialized hardware, so you gain from all those monstrous engines under the hood. If you will just compile some neural-networks engine or drag it over in python or something, it'll crawl and it will suck. But if you use Vision Framework from Apple, you'll have jaw-dropping performance. You MUST build software FOR the M1, to have the software shine. This is a paradigm shift, that contradicts everything we've seen in the last 40 years (moving from custom hardware into general-purpose computing devices).
If history is to repeat itself like so many times in the past - soon enough all the competitors in the Computing arena will be forced into similar changes, so not to lose market share - and we'll have a very strange market, much harder to compare - because the Apple guys will always bring in Apple software highly optimized to use the hardware, and the "other" guys will pull their "specialized" software for their special processors... I
I am quite thrilled, and I really want to have one of them M1 Max machines, just to feel them a little.
Despite the long threads underneath, I think Gaming is not even secondary in the list of important aspects - And I also predict that Game makers will skip the Mac in the future just like today. It's not because they don't like it, but because of tradition, and because of the high priced entry point of Powerful Mac computers. Still - Corporate-America is buying MBPs like mad, and they'll keep doing that in the coming 3-5 years.
stevenLu - Tuesday, December 7, 2021 - link
I am a fan of Apple technology. And I am only glad to read news about their development and some new technologies. Another new technology is used by Lucid Reality Labs. You can read more on their website https://lucidrealitylabs.com/blog/5-vr-headsets-ma...Cloakstar - Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - link
One reason this M1 Max performs so well is that even though the CPU is in control, the memory hierarchy is more GPU+CPU than the typical CPU+GPU, so the typical APU memory bottleneck is gone. :D AMD APUs, for example, are highly memory bound, doubling in performance when you go form 1 stick of RAM to 4 sticks with bank+channel interleaving.wr3@k0n - Friday, December 24, 2021 - link
For a $3499 no shit it's competing with server grade, if it comes with that price. Though PC still ends up being cheaper and infinitely more repairable and upgradeable. This article doesn't address many of the drawbacks of the Apple ecosystem and it will take more than "close to PC" performance.