Things only get worse if the Max is doing more work than the Pro. For comparisons where both are doing the same task at the same level of performance, the difference in battery consumption remains smallish. Same should apply with the thermals, since those relate to the amount of work done. May actually be cooler when operating at the same performance, since the Max has a larger heat sink.
Yeah, I've also seen that, with a light light use, diffs are more in the margin 3-5% rather than 15% for the most extreme case I've read, that's why I set a baseline of 10% as an average gain for the Pro with a "normal" use (not saying all the time will be that light) Of course, M1 Max will drain battery faster but also will complete tasks quicker, so one hand washes the other. As I said, not needing GPU rather than the use mentioned, so every gain in this aspect given the fact I wanted 14" for me was very important, at the end, if you're gonna need the M1 Max power, that should be the less of the concerns.
Regarding the thermals, it is true what you say about the heatsink, despite that, since I'm talking purely on 14", the package is smaller and hasn't that much space/mass as 16", checked that with a light use, diffs are negligible or non existing, but when using CPU/GPU mid/intense, M1 Max on the 14" has to spin the fans faster to keep it on-the-line, and even that I saw some spike differences 6-8ºC higher (tests seen always in the 14"), and more fan activity also affects battery life.
TBH with you, my personal feel is M1 Pro "belongs" to 14" and M1 Max suits better on the 16" given the improved airflow and a bigger battery if you really need the Max power, but of course, some folks need all that juice in a compact form factor so some lil sacrifices should be made, but that's just my opinion.
For the 14", the Max 24/32 still performs better for graphics-intensive work than the Pro, as expected, but not as well as the 16" Max versions. Either by design or natural effect of more limited power components, the graphics cores run slower under high load on the 14" Max compared to the 16".
With the information we have now, it seems clear that they did in fact put a limit on the M1 Max 32GPU on the 14" version, and maybe if you decide this form factor, the sweet spot clearly goes to 24GPU, improved bandwidth as you mention for intense memory graphic usage, and more GPU cores that can drive more performance to software that uses that graphic power.
Anyway, I'm still interested in the bandwidth stuff from a math/physics point of view as stated before from a pure FPS prospective, I'll keep reading and I find something interesting, share it with you guys.
