New 16" M1 Pro MBP compared with M1 MBA, 2016 MBP and 2014 iMac

[James_C]

Just received my new MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD - have run a number of benchmarks and compared with a number of other Macs.

Table with benchmark results ;

Compared to my current M1 MBA is looks like the new 16" MBP is pretty much in line with Apple's 60% faster promise.

Hopefully this is useful for anyone who has one of these other Macs, to what sort of performance gain you can expect with the base(ish) 16" M1 Pro MBP.

 

[baddogmax]

Nice, thank you!

 

[prism]

hmm, im getting 5gb/s writes and 6gb/s reads on my 14" MBP with 512gb

 

[willed]

Nice work, thanks... But am I reading it wrong, or does it seem kinda slow that the average increase over a 5 year-old laptop (the 2016 MBP) is 'only' around 150%? I thought these new M1s were supposed to run rings around previous hardware, but this is below where Moore's Law would expect us to be. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

[aevan]

Nice work, thanks... But am I reading it wrong, or does it seem kinda slow that the average increase over a 5 year-old laptop (the 2016 MBP) is 'only' around 150%? I thought these new M1s were supposed to run rings around previous hardware, but this is below where Moore's Law would expect us to be. Maybe I'm missing something?

150% increase means 2.5x faster (A 100% increase is twice as fast). So 2.5x faster computer in five years? That’s unheard of. Compare the 2016 MBP with the 2019 MBP, it’s what? 50% faster? This is a huge jump.

 

[willed]

150% increase means 2.5x faster (A 100% increase is twice as fast). So 2.5x faster computer in five years? That’s unheard of. Compare the 2016 MBP with the 2019 MBP, it’s what? 50% faster? This is a huge jump.

I guess Moore's Law has been failing for a while now, but wasn't the classic version that computers got roughly twice as powerful every two years?

Not throwing shade on the M1, just genuinely interested. It certainly didn't feel like the Intel models were getting any better in recent years, so this is definitely an improvement.

 

[Beau10]

I guess Moore's Law has been failing for a while now, but wasn't the classic version that computers got roughly twice as powerful every two years?

Not throwing shade on the M1, just genuinely interested. It certainly didn't feel like the Intel models were getting any better in recent years, so this is definitely an improvement.

It's actually 2x the number of transistors every 2 years... I don't think that's translated quite to 2x the speed though for 20+ years or so. Although as a rule it started faltering around 2010, I think Apple's helping to ramp it up again.

If you think back then (10 years ago), it seemed every refresh you might get 10-15% improvement, so in actuality you might be lucky to get about 30-40% over a tick-tock cycle, which might be more like 3 years to complete. 2.5x over 5 years is very good.

 

[James_C]

Nice work, thanks... But am I reading it wrong, or does it seem kinda slow that the average increase over a 5 year-old laptop (the 2016 MBP) is 'only' around 150%? I thought these new M1s were supposed to run rings around previous hardware, but this is below where Moore's Law would expect us to be. Maybe I'm missing something?

Moore’s law has not been true for many years now. The jump from Intel to M1 was huge in the M1 Entry level Macs last year. With Apple Silicon it’s not just about performance, but the machines are silent under normal working conditions and have significantly better battery life. With the M1 Pro and Max you can edit multiple 8k video streams which needed a Mac Pro costing 10,000’s.

 

[Sdtrent]

Nice stuff. What kind of graphics did the 2014 iMac have?

 

[Onimusha370]

Nice stuff. What kind of graphics did the 2014 iMac have?

Would be good to know this! Currently holding onto by late 2014 with M295X but may upgrade very soon…

 

[James_C]

Nice stuff. What kind of graphics did the 2014 iMac have?

It has a AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4 GB

 

[James_C]

Would be good to know this! Currently holding onto by late 2014 with M295X but may upgrade very soon…

Yep same as mine. It's been a fantastic computer, but now starting to show its age. I am going to be upgrading it next year when they update the larger screen iMacs with Apple Silicon.

 

[tivoboy]

150% increase means 2.5x faster (A 100% increase is twice as fast). So 2.5x faster computer in five years? That’s unheard of. Compare the 2016 MBP with the 2019 MBP, it’s what? 50% faster? This is a huge jump.

Moore’s law would have indicated faster speed advancement in less time (2x in 18 months) but, that will soon be forgotten with Quant compute coming. It never really translated down to an actual MACHINE, but more processor/computer power of a leading CHIP, but that wasn’t always the one people put in their machines, so it didn’t always translate down to a year over year or bi-year over year compare for a specific laptop type.

 

[aevan]

Moore’s law would have indicated faster speed advancement in less time (2x in 18 months) but, that will soon be forgotten with Quant compute coming. It never really translated down to an actual MACHINE, but more processor/computer power of a leading CHIP, but that wasn’t always the one people put in their machines, so it didn’t always translate down to a year over year or bi-year over year compare for a specific laptop type.

I don’t know what you’re trying to say. First of all, Moore’s law is about transistor count, not performance. Second - it doesn’t matter, because judging by performance jumps in the last two decades, this is most likely the biggest jump in performance we’ve seen.

 

[tivoboy]

I don’t know what you’re trying to say. First of all, Moore’s law is about transistor count, not performance. Second - it doesn’t matter, because judging by performance jumps in the last two decades, this is most likely the biggest jump in performance we’ve seen.

Don’t worry about it, I can’t help everybody.

We have seen faster rates of compute evolution and advancement before this In the early aughts

 

[aevan]

Don’t worry about it, I can’t help everybody.

We have seen faster rates of compute evolution and advancement before this In the early aughts

Not sure what early aughts are, but we haven’t seen anything like this in decades. We were lucky if we got 20% speed increase between generations, this is twice as fast as last year’s model.

 

[bryo]

Not sure what early aughts are, but we haven’t seen anything like this in decades. We were lucky if we got 20% speed increase between generations, this is twice as fast as last year’s model.

Decades? ehhh, maybe since around the time intel i core started and amd fell behind with bulldozer. The 2000's had crazy leaps every year.

 

[James_C]

I noticed that my SSD Speed tests appeared a little off now that more benchmarks are coming out. I re did mine and it looks like something impacted the initial tests that I did, as I run them almost as soon as the new Mac was ready to go. Also at the time I was running 12.0, I am now running 12.0.1. So not sure if it was indexing or 12.0.1 brought some new improvements. So I updated all the tests. It looks like SSD performance was the main change, but that has probably helped a number of other tests.

 

[ikramerica]

Your charts give a great look into why the iMac 27” still has Intel chips. The M1 isn’t compelling enough to outpace the iMac as it was built 5 years ago, let alone now. These are great laptop chips, but considering the cost, would underperform in an iMac compared with an i9 with discrete graphics.

 

[coolbreeze2]

Just received my new MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD - have run a number of benchmarks and compared with a number of other Macs.

View attachment 1879612

Table with benchmark results ;

View attachment 1879613


Compared to my current M1 MBA is looks like the new 16" MBP is pretty much in line with Apple's 60% faster promise.

Hopefully this is useful for anyone who has one of these other Macs, to what sort of performance gain you can expect with the base(ish) 16" M1 Pro MBP.

Thank you!!! This is the information I’m searching for. I traded in my 2020 MBA M1 for a MBP 14" M1 Pro 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD (it hasn’t arrived yet) and hoping I would be getting a huge performance jump. Thanks again.

 

[James_C]

Thank you!!! This is the information I’m searching for. I traded in my 2020 MBA M1 for a MBP 14" M1 Pro 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD (it hasn’t arrived yet) and hoping I would be getting a huge performance jump. Thanks again.

You will see a significant performance boost, congratulations on your new MBP.

To be honest the performance gain is great, but these new 'Pro' MBP's give improvements everywhere, better screen, more ports, Magsafe, No touchbar, better speakers, longer battery life.

 

[Onimusha370]

Yep same as mine. It's been a fantastic computer, but now starting to show its age. I am going to be upgrading it next year when they update the larger screen iMacs with Apple Silicon.

Snap! was hoping they would update them alongside the MBP but i can hold off till spring. Going to be one hell of an upgrade the dream would be an 8K screen (given how capable M1 Max is) but 5k mini LED will do!