Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The only thing that surprises me so far is that the score of the 10-core should be closer to 13,000.

The 10-core M1 Pro really should be almost 30% faster than the 8-core.

The article mentions the 8-core variant is 20% slower. If you rephrase the article, the 10-core variant is 25% faster than the 8-core.
The only 8-core score available is 9948. The highest 10-core score I've seen is 12833.

12833/9948 = 1.29 or 29% faster.

Interestingly though, the reported clock speed of the 8-core is slightly lower. I don't know for sure if this is just misreporting, or if it's real, since we only have the one score so far. However, given that the single-core score for this 8-core variant is as high as normally expected, I suspect Geekbench may be misreporting the clock speed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PsykX
Apple groups the M1 Pro and M1 Max as the same CPU performance on their graphs. So, CPU performance should be the same (assuming same number of cores)

View attachment 1875949
No, as long as it is using the same SOC as the 16”. the case is not impacting performance only the specific chips. This is a rare case where you can get the same performance options out of both the smaller and larger models. The only differences are because of the size: screen, battery, and maybe maximum cooling.
Actually, if the 16” has an M1 Max chip, it *can* be a bit faster if you put it in “High Power Mode”.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Tagbert
I cancelled my 10-core order and bought the 8-core. And not because of the ground breaking 20% news. Amazon has the base 8-core for $50 off and I just don't need the 20% for $200. I want to be a power user so bad, but deep down I know I'm not.
I feel this time Apple did a great job providing us very reasonable options to choose accordingly to personal needs. Personally, working in AEC, GPU and the 200 vs 400 bandwidth will be my main considerations.
 
  • Like
Reactions: yitwail
seriously though, people are getting over the fact that the information is not correct.
firstly pinned m1pro is not 20% less cpu cores, those 2 missing cores are high performance ones, those are different than low performance ones in m1. if you only use cores number that means pinned-m1pro is same as m1 both 8cores which is wrong.

secondly, the standard m1pro scores 12,700 pinned score is 9,940 the m1 score is 7,650.
meaning standard m1pro is 66% increase over the m1 (consistent with apple 70% claim), pinned m1Pro is 30% increase over m1.
so you are losing about HALF the improvement if you saved 200$ on pinned cpu.
which now makes sense considering there is 2 cores less of the 4 cores increase in the m1pro.

This is a way to skew the results based on how the reporter wants, can show little advantage, or high advantage based on the way you interpret the numbers.
 
seriously though, people are getting over the fact that the information is not correct.
firstly pinned m1pro is not 20% less cpu cores, those 2 missing cores are high performance ones, those are different than low performance ones in m1. if you only use cores number that means pinned-m1pro is same as m1 both 8cores which is wrong.

secondly, the standard m1pro scores 12,700 pinned score is 9,940 the m1 score is 7,650.
meaning standard m1pro is 66% increase over the m1 (consistent with apple 70% claim), pinned m1Pro is 30% increase over m1.
so you are losing about HALF the improvement if you saved 200$ on pinned cpu.
which now makes sense considering there is 2 cores less of the 4 cores increase in the m1pro.

This is a way to skew the results based on how the reporter wants, can show little advantage, or high advantage based on the way you interpret the numbers.
Your calculations are entirely correct, but 9940 is still 78% of 12700 so it doesn’t refute that you only lose 22% of the Geekbench multi core performance with 8 cores.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Falhófnir
Now I kinda feel dumb for not spending the extra cash for the 10-core model. Coming from not having a laptop at all, I bet it will still feel fast!
Well are you going to be doing something heavily multicore that is going to challenge what will be one of the most powerful chips on the market anyway? I would guess if you are you would probably have known and gone for the 10 core chip in the first place, so I’m sure you’ll just be blown away with the system fluidity and how well your applications do run :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: yitwail
The only point where M1 Max/Pro appears to shine is performance on battery, which many professional users rarely use. You can also experience less noise and less thermal throttling compared to mobile high-performance i9 but other than that, I expect similar performance to high-end mobile workstations, based on initial benchmarks. We will see if there is any sub-2,500$ PC laptop on the market that can achieve better CPU performance. Then, you have GPU performance which comes near, but does not match mobile RTX 3080 according to Apple itself. Again you have less noise and less thermal throttling due to the efficiency of the M1 but definitely the new MBPs do not blow out of the water mobile existing workstations from Lenovo, Dell and other major OEMs. The efficiency of Apple Silicon is definitely something very exciting when it comes down to iPhone/iPad/MBA, but for devices like the iMac, or even high-end MBPs, Im sure many people are ready to sacrifice 3-4 hours of battery life, and some fan noise more frequently, but to have vastly superior performance compared to Windows-equivalent laptop. 20 hours battery life is an overkill. It is good to have a few hours of batter life for meeting, while traveling and such, but two-days battery life for a laptop is absolutely not necessary, especially when you sacrifice so much potential performance.

Bottom line:
M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Intel's best mobile CPU in terms of raw performance. M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Nvidia's best mobile GPU in terms of raw performance. With M1 Pro/Max you gain incredible battery life, less noise and less thermal throttling, and of course MacOS optimization, hardware acceleration for certain task and shared memory which may be quite useful for certain workflows. These pros alone are in my opinion a little disappointing. M1 is definitely the best ultrabooks CPU/GPU and outperform any low-voltage CPU/integrated GPU on the market, but the M1 Pro/Max do not appear to do the same in their respective categories, which are mid-tier performance laptops, and high-end mobile workstations. You still have the MacOS/Apple Silicon gaming handicap, software compatibility issue across platforms, and other cons that are hard to ignore.
 
Last edited:
The only point where M1 Max/Pro appears to shine is performance on battery, which many professional users rarely use. You can also experience less noise and less thermal throttling compared to mobile high-performance i9 but other than that, I expect similar performance to high-end mobile workstations, based on initial benchmarks. We will see if there is any sub-2,500$ PC laptop on the market that can achieve better CPU performance. Then, you have GPU performance which comes near, but does not match mobile RTX 3080 according to Apple itself. Again you have less noise and less thermal throttling due to the efficiency of the M1 but definitely the new MBPs do not blow out of the water mobile existing workstations from Lenovo, Dell and other major OEMs. The efficiency of Apple Silicon is definitely something very exciting when it comes down to iPhone/iPad/MBA, but for devices like the iMac, or even high-end MBPs, Im sure many people are ready to sacrifice 3-4 hours of battery life, and some fan noise more frequently, but to have vastly superior performance compared to Windows-equivalent laptop. 20 hours battery life is an overkill. It is good to have a few hours of batter life for meeting, while traveling and such, but two-days battery life for a laptop is absolutely not necessary, especially when you sacrifice so much potential performance.

Bottom line:
M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Intel's best mobile CPU in terms of raw performance. M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Nvidia's best mobile GPU in terms of raw performance. With M1 Pro/Max you gain incredible battery life, less noise and less thermal throttling, and of course MacOS optimization, hardware acceleration for certain task and shared memory which may be quite useful for certain workflows. These pros alone are in my opinion a little disappointing. M1 is definitely the best ultrabooks CPU/GPU and outperform any low-voltage CPU/integrated GPU on the market, but the M1 Pro/Max do not appear to do the same in their respective categories, which are mid-tier performance laptops, and high-end mobile workstations. You still have the MacOS/Apple Silicon gaming handicap, software compatibility issue across platforms, and other cons that are hard to ignore.
So tl;dr Apple have been able to make current bleeding edge levels of performance actually work for a properly mobile form factor where Intel, AMD and Nvidia have failed.

Or to put it another way, you're not getting even a large XPS 17 with a GTX 3070/3080, which is around the level of performance an M1 Max delivers. You need to go for the truly hefty/ chunky Alienware if you want to keep up on performance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage and yitwail
Agreed. It has been enough for me but i went for the 14 inch base anyway because I want the 120hz mini led screen. And I want to be able to connect to two monitors when docked. I know that’s possible via display link but it’s not a great solution.
I got all caught up in people talking about # of cores and I didn't even consider what you've brought up. If I didn't have a 32 inch screen, I would be buying one of these to run multiple high DPI monitors, even though the power of a regular M1 is plenty for me.
 
So tl;dr Apple have been able to make current bleeding edge levels of performance actually work for a properly mobile form factor where Intel, AMD and Nvidia have failed.

Or to put it another way, you're not getting even a large XPS 17 with a GTX 3070/3080, which is around the level of performance an M1 Max delivers. You need to go for the truly hefty/ chunky Alienware if you want to keep up on performance.

As I said, professional are more likely to have their working machine plugged-in most of the time. There are some very very limited situations where extreme mobility and 20 hours battery life are more of necessity rather than convenience. When you transition your whole lineup of computers to a new architecture, the first thing that people would expect is massive increase in raw performance, rather mostly supreme thermal and energy efficiency which are the main features of M1 Pro/Max. Based on Apple's own graphs, their new silicon does not outperform the competition, just offer the same performance for less energy, which in turn reduce thermal throttling and fan noise. Apple also put some hardware accelerators and shared memory in the SoC which in turn may provide some upside in very narrow workflows, but the vast majority of users will not be able to truly leverage these features.
 
  • Disagree
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage and 1Peace
As I said, professional are more likely to have their working machine plugged-in most of the time. There are some very very limited situations where extreme mobility and 20 hours battery life are more of necessity rather than convenience. When you transition your whole lineup of computers to a new architecture, the first thing that people would expect is massive increase in raw performance, rather mostly supreme thermal and energy efficiency which are the main features of M1 Pro/Max. Based on Apple's own graphs, their new silicon does not outperform the competition, just offer the same performance for less energy, which in turn reduce thermal throttling and fan noise. Apple also put some hardware accelerators and shared memory in the SoC which in turn may provide some upside in very narrow workflows, but the vast majority of users will not be able to truly leverage these features.
How are you defining competition? The XPS line is a competitor product, and maxes out at 3060 MQ graphics (17") or 3050 Ti (15"). For someone who is doing site based work, or constantly visiting clients, the size/weight and battery life absolutely will make a difference. For those who are always working in one location, plugged in, a desktop workstation makes more sense.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage
I believe there was some discussion that the M1 max doesn’t destroy the M1 pro. So the better buy is with the M1 pro.
Real world tests will be interesting ! I think for video editing the interesting bit will be how much the extra encode / decode engines and the 400gb/s memory speed on the m1 max speeds up productivity . A lot of that makes more difference than raw cpu power. A Mac Pro still requires an afterburner to handle pro res video and probable thus m1 max will smoke that
 
  • Like
Reactions: yitwail
The only point where M1 Max/Pro appears to shine is performance on battery, which many professional users rarely use. You can also experience less noise and less thermal throttling compared to mobile high-performance i9 but other than that, I expect similar performance to high-end mobile workstations, based on initial benchmarks. We will see if there is any sub-2,500$ PC laptop on the market that can achieve better CPU performance. Then, you have GPU performance which comes near, but does not match mobile RTX 3080 according to Apple itself. Again you have less noise and less thermal throttling due to the efficiency of the M1 but definitely the new MBPs do not blow out of the water mobile existing workstations from Lenovo, Dell and other major OEMs. The efficiency of Apple Silicon is definitely something very exciting when it comes down to iPhone/iPad/MBA, but for devices like the iMac, or even high-end MBPs, Im sure many people are ready to sacrifice 3-4 hours of battery life, and some fan noise more frequently, but to have vastly superior performance compared to Windows-equivalent laptop. 20 hours battery life is an overkill. It is good to have a few hours of batter life for meeting, while traveling and such, but two-days battery life for a laptop is absolutely not necessary, especially when you sacrifice so much potential performance.

Bottom line:
M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Intel's best mobile CPU in terms of raw performance. M1 Pro/Max are not better chips than Nvidia's best mobile GPU in terms of raw performance. With M1 Pro/Max you gain incredible battery life, less noise and less thermal throttling, and of course MacOS optimization, hardware acceleration for certain task and shared memory which may be quite useful for certain workflows. These pros alone are in my opinion a little disappointing. M1 is definitely the best ultrabooks CPU/GPU and outperform any low-voltage CPU/integrated GPU on the market, but the M1 Pro/Max do not appear to do the same in their respective categories, which are mid-tier performance laptops, and high-end mobile workstations. You still have the MacOS/Apple Silicon gaming handicap, software compatibility issue across platforms, and other cons that are hard to ignore.
If you're a video editor, these chips are unparalleled. They include hardware ProRes and ProRes RAW acceleration. In fact, while M1 Pro includes one accelerator, M1 Max includes two of them. This allows M1 Max to beat a $15000 28-core Intel Mac Pro plus $2000 add-on Afterburner card in some ProRes based workflows.

This is a game changer, in the true sense of that phrase.
 
Some high-end, super-duper benchmarking devices were used in a short amount of time to determine that the new 14" MBP is almost exactly two inches smaller than the new 16" MBP.

That's pretty much what this says when I read it. Amazing piece of writing work on display here. The rule of blogging: When there is nothing to say, just repeat the obvious or make something up to boost the page views.

And...

Some of the comments here are comical. No matter the topic, 90% of tech comments on MacRumors are either pointless drivel, completely speculative, and/or made-up B.S. This thread is no different. I'm beginning to wonder if sites like Macworld, Six Colors, DaringFireball, and others have it right by just not having comments at all.
 
20 hours battery life is an overkill. It is good to have a few hours of batter life for meeting, while traveling and such, but two-days battery life for a laptop is absolutely not necessary, especially when you sacrifice so much potential performance.
A friend of mine said once to me, that he dreams of laptops, that would least a week without recharging, even in active use. But he also mentioned, that at actual technology of batteries, this is simply not possible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage and EugW
A friend of mine said once to me, that he dreams of laptops, that would least a week without recharging, even in active use. But he also mentioned, that at actual technology of batteries, this is simply not possible.
The biggest complaint for all my laptops has usually been battery life.

Put it this way. Until a laptop can last more than a complete extended work day purely on battery, then the battery life could be improved.

Similarly, until a video encode or compile can be done in an under a minute, there is always room for improvement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.