Apple recently announced M1 Pro and M1 Max, the MacBook Pro chips specifically designed for the 2021 lineup by Apple. Last year, Apple unveiled the M1, a revolutionary Apple silicon chip that had transformed the world of computing. Now, however, Apple claims that these chips are the biggest breakthrough in professional computing, ever. While the M1 Pro offers amazing performance with industry-leading power efficiency, the M1 Max takes those powers to new heights.
Apple claims that M1 Pro and M1 Max deliver up to 70 percent faster CPU performance than last year’s M1 processor, which means that tasks like compiling projects in Xcode are faster than ever before on a MacBook Pro.
The reason why these chips are able to deliver such top-notch performance is due to the introduction of a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture to pro systems. The chips come armed with lots of unified memory, greater performance-per-watt, incredible power efficiency and increased memory bandwidths. The M1 Pro, according to Apple’s stats, delivers up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth and supports up to 64GB of unified memory. The chips have also been designed in a way that they deliver similar levels of performance no matter whether they’re plugged in or not.
According to Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, “M1 has transformed our most popular systems with incredible performance, custom technologies, and industry-leading power efficiency. No one has ever applied a system-on-a-chip design to a pro system until today with M1 Pro and M1 Max.” “With massive gains in CPU and GPU performance, up to six times the memory bandwidth, a new media engine with ProRes accelerators, and other advanced technologies, M1 Pro and M1 Max take Apple silicon even further, and are unlike anything else in a pro notebook.”
M1 Pro: delivering unprecedented levels of performance
The M1 Pro chips for the new MacBooks pack 33.7 billion transistors, more than 2x the amount in the 2020 M1 processors, which was already game changing then. A 10-core CPU, including eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores, is up to 70 percent faster than M1. Compared with the latest 8-core PC laptop chip, M1 Pro delivers up to 1.7x more CPU performance at the same power level.
M1 Pro can be upgraded to a 16-core version that is upto 2 times faster than the M1 processor and up to 7 times faster than any other comparable 8-core laptop. Not only that, the M1 Pro delivers all this amazing performance at a reduced power consumption! The M1 Pro uses 70% less power while delivering many times more performance on power-expensive tasks!
M1 Max: the real ball-game
M1 Max features a 10-core CPU and a 32-core GPU for up to 4x faster graphics performance than the previous M1 processor. With 57 billion transistors — 70 percent more than M1 Pro and 3.5x more than M1 — M1 Max is the largest chip Apple has ever built. In addition, Apple claims that the GPU delivers performance comparable to a high-end GPU in a compact pro PC laptop while consuming up to 40 percent less power.
M1 Max also offers a higher bandwidth on-chip fabric and has double the interface compared to the M1 Pro. This allows M1 Max to be truly compatible with the heaviest of tasks and be up to speed with multiple apps at 64 GB unified memory.
What’s common
Here’s what’s common between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max in terms of performance, compatibility, connectivity, and efficiency:
1. Both chips maximize their battery life by increasing their performance-per-watt output significantly compared to their predecessor chip, the M1
2. The new M1 chips also include dedicated acceleration for Pro Res professional video codec, which allows users to play multiple streams of high-quality 4K and 8K Pro Res videos while using significantly less power than before
3. Both machines are loaded with a 16-core Neural Engine for on-device machine learning acceleration and improved camera performance
4. New misplays that support multiple others
5. Additional integrated Thunderbolt 4 controllers
GeekBench scores and how they compare
2020’s M1 processor only has four high-performance cores, while the M1 Pro has six or eight, depending on your configuration. As is apparent, the older Mchip cannot compete with the newer ones when it comes to intense, threaded workflows. Similarly, the older M1 has only seven GPU cores or eight, while the GPU cores on the M1 Pro range from a minimum of 14 all the way up to 32. On the new MacBook Pro 2021, GPU-intensive tasks are two to three times faster than the previous generation M1s and the older MacBook Pros.
While most users are under the impression that M1 Max would far outperform the M1 Pro in almost all respects, they couldn’t be more wrong. The differences between the two chips is far more nuanced than is apparent. All of the major differences come down to the CPU cores and in both the chips, these cores are somewhat identical.
Here are the comparisons in terms of GeekBench scores:
As you can see, while the M1 Max outperforms the M1 Pro in these respects, the margin by which it does so is negligibly small. Although such a slight increase in performance might benefit some professionals, for the majority of them, the M1 Pro will work as well as the M1 Max.
However, things start to make a little more sense when it comes to performance on Final Cut Pro. The M1 Max significantly outperforms the M1 Pro in a FInal Cut Pro export as shown in the below graph.
The M1 Max exports a Final Cut Pro video file in 769 seconds while the M1 Pro does the same to the same file in an extended 1158 seconds, a whopping 6 minutes and 29 seconds earlier, which makes a huge difference to professionals who export Final Cut Pro videos on a daily basis for filmmaking or editing.
The role of apps and macOS Monterey
macOS Monterey is the latest macOS version that delivers the software power to the new MacBooks. By designing the hardware, software and silicon for these MacBooks, Apple has attempted to do something that’s never been done before. And many say they’ve done it very well. On macOS Monterey, developer technologies like Metal let Mac apps take full advantage of the newfound chip power. Optimizations in Core ML utilize the powerful Neural Engine so that machine learning models can run even faster.
This combination of chip and software also delivers unprecedented security protections, including hardware-verified secure boot, runtime anti-exploitation technologies, and fast encryption.
Conclusion
These MacBook Pros are not for the everyday user. These machines are way too powerful for regular tasks like emails, spreadsheets, or browsing the internet. No. They’re meant for heavy workloads for professionals who use high-performance software, have multiple renders or exports running in the background, or even people who need raw computing power for running complex code.
That being said, every professional has a different kind of workflow. For most of those professionals, the new M1 Pro will be impressively fast. If you know that your work involves multi-threaded CPU-taxing software and high-intensity renders, you should get the 10-core Pro model. On the other hand, if your work involves a lot of GPU processing and ProRes power and enormous amounts of memory bandwidth, the M1 Max is the better choice.
The Pro machine is also limited to 32 GB of unified memory and the Max goes up to 64 GB. If your work requires you to have multiple heavy applications running in the background all the time, the M1 Max with the higher unified memory could be the smarter choice.