AnandTech's Deep Dive Into M1 Pro and M1 Max Highlights Performance and Efficiency Improvements

[TheMacDaddy1]

DAZZZZZZZZZZLING!

I wish MAX would have also rolled out in ANY desktop box: rumored Mac Mini Pro, Mac Pro Jr, iMac 27"-32" or just Mac Mini as a BTO option. Yes, that's probably coming 6 months from now in something(s), but I wish these had a non-laptop home right now too.

No doubt they will come. The M1 powered all of the low end stuff, including the Mini and the 24inch iMac. These new chips will power power laptops and desktops, Mac Mini high end and mid to high end iMac's.

Not sure if the iMac Pro comes back. If so probably a future higher end chip, that is also in the Mac Pro?

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

Apple basically created OpenCL. It surprised me when Apple deprecating OpenCL.

I think it shows that Apple didn't create Metal just to be proprietary. They created OpenCL and watched as the Khronos Group didn't make it competitive with CUDA (the same goes for OpenGL). So Apple decided to go their own way with Metal, instead of waiting around for a committee. This is why they aren't going to support Vulkan.

 

[ValO]

Apple clearly has the hardware... but isn't it up to developers to make the software?

I don't think Apple is doing anything intentional to hinder gaming on the Mac.

It's just always been that game developers tend to focus more on Windows.

That is why it is time to develop an apple silicon based games console in the next 2 or 3 years and have apple negotiating with big developers to develop triple A blockbusters for it.

 

[crazy dave]

I think it shows that Apple didn't create Metal just to be proprietary. They created OpenCL and watched as the Khronos Group didn't make it competitive with CUDA (the same goes for OpenGL). So Apple decided to go their own way with Metal, instead of waiting around for a committee. This is why they aren't going to support Vulkan.

I don’t think they will but theoretically Apple could open source Metal themselves a la Swift and run the open source themselves. Again, I don’t think they will because there’s less benefit to doing so than with Swift, but they could.

Also, gotta admit all those years of Apple not supporting newer versions of OpenGL even before Metal was a thing (well at least before it was not just internal to Apple) didn’t help their or OpenGL’s case with game devs. A lot of game developers abandoned them in that time period specifically citing that. And as impressive as Metal 1.0 was it was not the most fully featured when it came out of the oven.

But yeah they ain’t going back and the Khronos group share a lot of that blame.

 

[Rashy]

Apple first ditching CUDA (understandable) and then OpenGL/CL (far less so) was a grave mistake. Metal, as great and speedy it is, remains a niche, proprietary API. To make things worse, no active support for Vulcan either. Now it's Metal, hopelessly outdated OpenCL, or nothing. Golden cage at its best and a shame for a multi-billion company. This resulted in game studios (even the ones being known as Mac-friendly like Blizzard) turning their back on Apple, or crucial open-source programs like Blender loosing GPU-render capabilities for a far too long time.

Apple may keep pursuing their Metallica madness, fine, but please, support one alternative, cross-platform solution as backup. This would greatly help game studios, that aren't ready to make the transfer to Metal (yet).

 

[rjbenson83]

That is why it is time to develop an apple silicon based games console in the next 2 or 3 years and have apple negotiating with big developers to develop triple A blockbusters for it.

Apple TV pro and pro Max probably already in the works.

 

[theotherphil]

It might be true that Apple doesn’t want to be associated with the classic gamer market, but I would bet the bigger issue is that the market is just too small for it to be worthwhile. At some point, game developers will realize that making games that are huge energy hogs is going to cost them, not just cost the end user.

The top end PC gaming market is tiny. The average PC on steam has 8Gb RAM and a 1060ti gfx card. The top end cards from nvidia and AMD are being bought up for crypto mining, not gaming. All the money is in mobile gaming where Apple already has a huge part of that market. As with anything Apple, they won’t be chasing users where there’s no cash to be made.

With these new MBP’s, there is literally no competition in the laptop market in this segment, so as usual, Apple will take all the profits. People aren’t purchasing $4k - $6k laptops to game on.

With the release of the M2 MBA, Apple will take the profits at the low end as well.

 

[magbarn]

Use VideoToolBox as encoder. That's the native build-in encoder api.

I guess I should've been more specific. When I click that option, the video files are much bigger for the same quality vs. if I use the brute CPU software encoding. The M1 is pretty slow at that with my i9 MBP 16 being faster in this mode. Right now I'm using my 5950x desktop for that kind of encoding. Curious if the new M1Max MBP 16's can run just as fast as my PC desktop.

 

[Homme]

IMO, Apple did NOT develop these with the Game Market in mind.

I believe they did so specifically FOR & exclusively FOR Hollywood, & the like !

Well Duh, everyone knows that apple didn’t develop this for the game market

But then if you even had a brain Apple isn’t even interested in the broader game market (Apple Arcade doesn’t compare in most aspects besides apple getting a lot of money than Sony/MS/Nintendo in terms of services) and has been for many years hence why PC is More favored in that category and you barely see AAA Games on Mac

And um…. This is marketed for much more people and target markets than just Hollywood… I don’t know why you put “exclusively Hollywood”.

Also “your opinion”… mate everyone knew about “your opinion” a long time ago since MacOS and Macs aren’t for AAA Games and the like but in 2021 you had to make it “your opinion”

?‍♂️ ?

 

[tylersdad]

You still won't be playing graphically intensive games on these. Or, perhaps you will, but you'll need to run at a lower resolution with most of the quality settings set to low.

 

[AndrewWx]

My Handbrake files should really fly!

One of the reviews posted today noted that Handbrake did see a very nice improvement.

 

[CalfCanuck]

The top end PC gaming market is tiny. The average PC on steam has 8Gb RAM and a 1060ti gfx card. The top end cards from nvidia and AMD are being bought up for crypto mining, not gaming. All the money is in mobile gaming where Apple already has a huge part of that market. As with anything Apple, they won’t be chasing users where there’s no cash to be made.

With these new MBP’s, there is literally no competition in the laptop market in this segment, so as usual, Apple will take all the profits. People aren’t purchasing $4k - $6k laptops to game on.

With the release of the M2 MBA, Apple will take the profits at the low end as well.

Exactly. Apple DOES have a presence in games, but they are the low end ones played by grandmothers and kids on iPhones and iPads. Bejeweled was downloaded 500 million times, and I’d venture a decent number of those were for iOS.

But the intended users of the new MBPs are different users than gamers. One paragraph from the article’s conclusions:

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 alone is likely going to have many users of that professional background quickly adopt the new MacBook Pro’s.

 

[k27]

Intel is ******** a brick right now.

Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Benchmarks Leaked: Faster Than The Apple M1 Max, Smokes AMD 5980HX, 11980HK

So we have something very interesting for our readers today. We were able to exclusively get our hands on the first-ever benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake mobility processors - which are going to go head to head against the Apple M1 Max processors clawing away market share as well as...

wccftech.com

 

[Michael Scrip]

Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Benchmarks Leaked: Faster Than The Apple M1 Max, Smokes AMD 5980HX, 11980HK

So we have something very interesting for our readers today. We were able to exclusively get our hands on the first-ever benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake mobility processors - which are going to go head to head against the Apple M1 Max processors clawing away market share as well as...

wccftech.com

Lemme guess... laptops with these Intel processors must be plugged into the wall to get these results.

 

[Skewlovevism]

Apple first ditching CUDA (understandable) and then OpenGL/CL (far less so) was a grave mistake. Metal, as great and speedy it is, remains a niche, proprietary API. To make things worse, no active support for Vulcan either. Now it's Metal, hopelessly outdated OpenCL, or nothing. Golden cage at its best and a shame for a multi-billion company. This resulted in game studios (even the ones being known as Mac-friendly like Blizzard) turning their back on Apple, or crucial open-source programs like Blender loosing GPU-render capabilities for a far too long time.

Apple may keep pursuing their Metallica madness, fine, but please, support one alternative, cross-platform solution as backup. This would greatly help game studios, that aren't ready to make the transfer to Metal (yet).

As a non-gamer, could you, please, help me understand something?

At Apple Events, they always show impressive looking games, developers say, how many 1000s of object they can render in real time, … .
What is the difference between that, and some complex looking console/hardcore pc game? Why do those need very expensive graphic cars, gear, when some impressive looking games can run on, let’s say A15?
I understand it is different platform and name companies might not want to develop 2 versions, but I mean, what is the limiting factor, hardware-wise?
Is it, that an impressive frame rate cannot be reached on AS? Is metal not capable for hardcore gaming creation?

As I have said, I am not a gamer, but interested to know.

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

That is why it is time to develop an apple silicon based games console in the next 2 or 3 years and have apple negotiating with big developers to develop triple A blockbusters for it.

Totally agree. Apple should make Apple TV into a console and buy a game studio. They are already pouring billions into original content with AppleTV+, why not gaming? The gaming industry is even bigger than film. Apple could have a unified gaming platform of TV, iPad, and Mac, all on Apple Silicon and Metal... c'mon Apple!

 

[Skewlovevism]

Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Benchmarks Leaked: Faster Than The Apple M1 Max, Smokes AMD 5980HX, 11980HK

So we have something very interesting for our readers today. We were able to exclusively get our hands on the first-ever benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake mobility processors - which are going to go head to head against the Apple M1 Max processors clawing away market share as well as...

wccftech.com

If I am not mistaken, they only “obtained” the benchmarks, not doing any real test.

So until that chip is out, it is just a purely anecdotal article.

Also, IF it will be the usual Intel space heater, for about 3% increased performance over AS, not sure if that would be any impressive.

Time will tell

 

[nikhsub1]

Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Benchmarks Leaked: Faster Than The Apple M1 Max, Smokes AMD 5980HX, 11980HK

So we have something very interesting for our readers today. We were able to exclusively get our hands on the first-ever benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake mobility processors - which are going to go head to head against the Apple M1 Max processors clawing away market share as well as...

wccftech.com

Let's see when those actually come out. Intel needs to step their game up big time. Apple leaving them will hopefully light a fire under their asses. We need true SoCs though from Intel - RAM and high end GPUs all on the CPU.

 

[zapmymac]

Yes and Handbrake can already use T2 chip to accelerate H265 encoding on Intel Macs.

Wouldn’t they de-code using the T2 chip on the new M1 series and use/push that work over to the new dedicated GPU9s)?

 

[tylersdad]

As a non-gamer, could you, please, help me understand something?

At Apple Events, they always show impressive looking games, developers say, how many 1000s of object they can render in real time, … .
What is the difference between that, and some complex looking console/hardcore pc game? Why do those need very expensive graphic cars, gear, when some impressive looking games can run on, let’s say A15?
I understand it is different platform and name companies might not want to develop 2 versions, but I mean, what is the limiting factor, hardware-wise?
Is it, that an impressive frame rate cannot be reached on AS? Is metal not capable for hardcore gaming creation?

As I have said, I am not a gamer, but interested to know.

I don't have a basis of comparison for the number of objects drawn and the speed they can be drawn by Apple Silicon or a "real" GPU from nVidia or AMD. However, if you look at the "GPUPerformance: 2-4x For Productivity, Mixed Gaming" page of the article and scroll down to the bottom, you'll see the benchmarks for graphically intensive games like Borderlands and Tomb Raider. The Macs perform at 1/4 the framerate (M1 Pro) and 1/2 the framerate (M1 Max) as the type-performing PCs in 4K resolution and 1/8 the framerate (M1 Pro) and 1/4 the framerate (M1 Max) in 1080p.

The framerates for the M1 Pro aren't playable framerates. There would be a lot of dropped frames and tearing. In some cases the M1 Max can give playable framerates, but just barely.

Apple has a long way to go before they can match the performance of a PC or console in gaming...if they really care about matching performance. Something tells me their gaming ambitions don't extend beyond games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds.

​

 

[ellsworth]

3228MHz peak!!!? This is crazy. I actually still have my Performa 6400 which was power by a 180MHz PowerPC 603e processor from 25 years ago. Amazing.

 

[theorist9]

Lemme guess... laptops with these Intel processors must be plugged into the wall to get these results.

Almost. They have to be placed inside a freezer, and the freezer is then plugged into the wall.

 

[Fabercon]

They also say "... 224GB/s and this appears to be the limit on the SoC fabric that the CPUs are able to achieve, as adding additional cores and threads beyond this point does not increase the bandwidth to DRAM at all. It’s only when the E-cores, which are in their own cluster, are added in, when the bandwidth is able to jump up again, to a maximum of 243GB/s.

While 243GB/s is massive, and overshadows any other design in the industry, it’s still quite far from the 409GB/s the chip is capable of. More importantly for the M1 Max, it’s only slightly higher than the 204GB/s limit of the M1 Pro, so from a CPU-only workload perspective, it doesn’t appear to make sense to get the Max if one is focused just on CPU bandwidth."

Add in the 90GB/s for the GPU, and you are looking at 333GB/s... with the remaining 74 going for ML and media engine.

 

[Kpjoslee]

If only someone knew what the „R“ in „ARM“ stands for… ????

X86 processors has been using RISC like method for more than 20 years with microops and RISC processors with all those extensions isnt so “Reduced Instructions set” anymore. Nice try though. ??

 

[grkm3]

Let's see when those actually come out. Intel needs to step their game up big time. Apple leaving them will hopefully light a fire under their asses. We need true SoCs though from Intel - RAM and high end GPUs all on the CPU.

They are out in a week and early tests shows the 600 dollar i9 beating everything in it's path! Even the m1 max! In single and multicore