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.
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caribbeanblue - Saturday, October 30, 2021 - link
Lol, you're just a troll at this point.sharath.naik - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
The only reason M1 falls behind 3060 RTX is because the games are emulated.. if native M1 will match 3080. This is remarkable.. time for others to shift over to the same shared high bandwith memory on chip.vlad42 - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Go back and reread the article. Andrei explicitly mentioned that the games were GPU bound, not CPU bound. Here are the relevant quotes:Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
"We have to go to 4K just to help the M1 Max fully stretch its legs. Even then the 16-inch MacBook Pro is well off the 6800M. Though we’re definitely GPU-bound at this point, as reported by both the game itself, and demonstrated by the 2x performance scaling from the M1 Pro to the M1 Max."
Borderlands 3:
"The game seems to be GPU-bound at 4K, so it’s not a case of an obvious CPU bottleneck."
web2dot0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
I heard otherwise on m1 optimized games like WoWAshlayW - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
4096 ALU at 1.3 GHz vs 6144 ALU at 1.4-1.5 Ghz? What makes you think Apple's GPU is magic sauce?Ppietra - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Not going to argue that Apple's GPU is better, however the number of ALU and clock speed doesn’t tell the all story.Sometimes it can be faster not because it can work more but because it reduces some bottlenecks and because it works in a smarter way (by avoiding doing work that is not necessary for the end result).
jospoortvliet - Wednesday, October 27, 2021 - link
Thing is also that the game devs didn't write their game for and test on these gpus and drivers. Nor did Apple write or optimize their drivers for these games. Both of these can easily make high-double digit differences, so being 50% slower on a fully new platform without any optimizations and running half-emulated code is very promising.varase - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
Apple isn't interested in producing chips - they produce consumer electronics products.If they wanted to they could probably trash AMD and Intel by selling their silicon - but customers would expect them to remain static and support their legacy stuff forever.
When Apple finally decided ARMv7 was unoptimizable, they wrote 32 bit support out of iOS and dropped those logic blocks from their CPUs in something like 2 years. No one else can deprecate and shed baggage so quickly which is how they maintain their pace of innovation.
halo37253 - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Apple's GPU isn't magic. It is not going to be any more efficient than what Nvidia or AMD have.Clearly a Apple GPU that only uses around 65watts is going to compete with a Nvidia or AMD GPU that only uses around 65watts in actual usage.
Apple clearly has a node advantage at work here, and with that being said. It is clear to see that when it comes to actual workloads like games, Apple still has some work to do efficiency wise. As their GPU in the same performance/watt range compared to a Nvidia chip in the same performance/watt range on a older and not as power efficient node is able to still do better.
Apple's GPU is a compute champ and great for workloads that avg user will never see. This is why the M1 Pro makes a lot more sense then the M1 Max. The M1 Max seems like it will do fine for light gaming, but the cost of that chip must be crazy. It is a huge chip. Would love to see one in a mac mini.
misan - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Just replace GPU by CPU and you will see how devoid of logic your argument is.Apple has much more experience in low-power GPU design. Their silicon is specifically optimized for low-power usage. Why wouldn't it be more efficient than the competitors?
Besides, Andreis' test already confirm that your claims are pure speculation without any factual basis. Look at the power usage tests for the GFXbench. Almost three times lower power consumption with a better overall result.
These GPUs are incredible rasterizers. It's that you look at bad quality game ports and decide that they reflect the maximal possible reachable performance. Sure, GFXbench is crap, then look at Wild Life Extreme. That result translates to 20k points. Thats on par with the mobile RTX 3070 at 100W.