At Apple’s ‘unleashed’ event, Apple launched two new Silicon chips, The Apple M1 Pro, and M1 Max along with new Macbook Pro models and Airpods 3. Today we will see the comparison between the Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max. These new silicon chips bring immersive performance compared to last year’s 8 Core M1.
Comparing the M1 Pro vs M1 Max, both are built on the same 5nm architecture but feature far greater power and performance. They’re all System-On-a-Chips (SoCs) that combine the CPU, GPU, and RAM into a single package. That leads to higher efficiency overall, as well as decreased latency between the RAM and CPU.
Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max Specs
Both the Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max are built on 5nm architecture, TSMC’s N5 node, which is the smallest manufacturing process TSMC currently has available. But if we talk about transistors, the Apple M1 Pro has 33.7 Billion transistors, whereas the Apple M1 Max has 57 Billion transistors.
The M1 Pro has a new much wider and faster 256-bit LPDDR5 interface, where it can deliver system bandwidth of up to 200GB/s. We don’t know if that figure is exact or rounded, but an LPDDR5-6400 interface of that width would deliver 204.8GB/s.
And, the M1 Max memory interface width is from 256-bit to 512-bit. As per Apple, it can deliver a massive 400GB/s of bandwidth, which if it’s LPDDR5-6400, would possibly be more exact at 409.6GB/s.
Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max CPU
The M1 Pro SoC comes in two variants, one with an 8-core CPU and another one with 10 core CPU. The 8-core CPU model has 6 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores. where the 10-core model has 8 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores.
Whereas the M1 Max comes with 10-core CPUs. With the M1 Max, you will get the same 8 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores.
The high-performance 8-core CPU features 24MB L2 cache, 192KB instruction cache, and 128KB data cache. And, the other 2 high-efficiency cores feature a 4MB L2 cache, 128KB instruction cache, and 64KB data cache.
The presented performance/power curves showcase that at the equal power usage of 30W, the new M1 Pro and Max are 1.7x faster in CPU throughput than the Intel i7 11800H. Apple says that the new M1 Pro/Max achieves the same performance with 70% lower power consumption.
Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max GPU
In the new Apple Soc, the GPU is the biggest upgrade from last year’s M1. The new M1 Pro also has two variants. With the 8-core CPU, you will get 14 core GPU and with the 10-core model, you will get 16 core GPU with an advertised compute throughput performance of 5.2 TFLOPs.
Apple opted to make direct comparisons to medium-end laptop graphics. In this case, they compare the M1 Pro against a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 4GB. The M1 Pro achieves similar performance at 70% less power. The power levels here are showcased as being at around 30W – it’s not clear if this is total SoC or system power or if Apple just comparing the GPU block itself.
On another side, the M1 Max comes with up to 32-core GPU which Apple advertises as reaching 10.4 TFLOPs.
In terms of performance, Apple compared the performance of the M1 Max to that of a mobile GeForce RTX 3080, at 100W less power (60W vs. 160W). Apple also includes a 100W TDP variant of the RTX 3080 for comparison, here, outperforming the NVIDIA discrete GPU, while still using 40% less power.
Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max Memory
Coming to memory, the M1 Pro supports up to 32GB of Unified memory, whereas the M1 Max supports up to 64GB of Unified Memory. This Unified Memory gives the CPU and GPU a single pool of memory depending on the task at hand. It helps to give you great performance with less power.
Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max other features
Both, the M1 Pro and M1 Max support 16-core Neural engines with 11 trillion operations per second. Also, these chips now support ProRes Media encoding and decoding. The M1 Pro has 1 ProRes Media encode/decode Engine, whereas the M1 Max has 2 ProRes Media encode/decode Engine.
Both chips have Thunderbolt 4 controller and Display engine for multi-monitor support. The M1 Pro supports 2 additional displays and the M1 Max Supports 4 additional displays.
So, that’s everything about Apple M1 Pro vs M1 Max. Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max look like incredibly differentiated designs, much different than anything we’ve ever seen in an SoC. What’s your opinion about these chips comment down below.
