News Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max: Specs, Performance, Everything We Know

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Apple's rollout for these M1xyz processor lines is quite brilliant and commendable.

The original M1 gets a bunch of companies to port their software or at least evaluating, and after some time has passed now the laptops are here which will complete the process of mainstreaming it all. The IMac Pros are probably not far behind.

The real fun song and dance will be later when they cram some M1 derivative with 128 cores into the Mac Pro tower and charge a fat $30,000 dollars or more for it.

People also overlook - these SoCs have video capabilities in them. When is Apple going to do what Intel is doing with the Arc and split off the GPU into a PCI-E (Mac only of course) product and dump Radeons to the curb?
 
Yeah, I don’t see how this relates to Apple vs Intel? Two different platforms. Now if Apple were to allow Windows PC’s to run on their chips then okay. As impressive as the specs are you are not going to play the latest and greatest AAA PC games in ultra mode on a Macbook Pro.

I’m not throwing shade on Apple silicon. Their chips are designed to run exclusively on Apple hardware.
 
Hopefully the M1 pro finds its way into the 24in iMac sooner rather than later.... without a price hike.
That would be an interesting computer if it had enough RAM, storage, and GPU power to justify its high price.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
Yeah, I don’t see how this relates to Apple vs Intel? Two different platforms. Now if Apple were to allow Windows PC’s to run on their chips then okay. As impressive as the specs are you are not going to play the latest and greatest AAA PC games in ultra mode on a Macbook Pro.

I’m not throwing shade on Apple silicon. Their chips are designed to run exclusively on Apple hardware.
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Pat was saying Intel wanted to win Apple business back. This pretty much kills that idea anytime soon. Intel could have pushed to sell Apple for higher end chips, desktop etc but seeing this no way Apple goes for it as they have powerfull chips.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
Yeah, I don’t see how this relates to Apple vs Intel? Two different platforms. Now if Apple were to allow Windows PC’s to run on their chips then okay. As impressive as the specs are you are not going to play the latest and greatest AAA PC games in ultra mode on a Macbook Pro.

I’m not throwing shade on Apple silicon. Their chips are designed to run exclusively on Apple hardware.
Click to expand...
Well, the two previous MacBook Pro models that were replaced by these new models did use Intel processors, so that is a fairly direct relationship.
 
ezst036 said:
Apple's rollout for these M1xyz processor lines is quite brilliant and commendable.

The original M1 gets a bunch of companies to port their software or at least evaluating, and after some time has passed now the laptops are here which will complete the process of mainstreaming it all. The IMac Pros are probably not far behind.

The real fun song and dance will be later when they cram some M1 derivative with 128 cores into the Mac Pro tower and charge a fat $30,000 dollars or more for it.

People also overlook - these SoCs have video capabilities in them. When is Apple going to do what Intel is doing with the Arc and split off the GPU into a PCI-E (Mac only of course) product and dump Radeons to the curb?
Click to expand...
When the power of them actually comes up. Apple already got a taste of it when mRDNA2 in the Samsung phones started slapping their GPU around. In a desktop, the speed of the GPU on the SOC would never be high enough to compete with RDNA2 compute GPU. There would be so many cores, that it would nearly double the size of the M1 Max just to compete with the capabilities AMD gives them in a discrete GPU.
 
darknate said:
When the power of them actually comes up. Apple already got a taste of it when mRDNA2 in the Samsung phones started slapping their GPU around. In a desktop, the speed of the GPU on the SOC would never be high enough to compete with RDNA2 compute GPU. There would be so many cores, that it would nearly double the size of the M1 Max just to compete with the capabilities AMD gives them in a discrete GPU.
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What Apple had with M1 Max is actually comparable to what's inside the PS5: A very large SoC with discrete-GPU grade compute and memory bandwidth, and some reasonably-capable CPU cores.

M1 Max had 57B transistors, Nvidia GA104 GPU(RTX 3070/3060Ti/3080M/3070M) had 17.4B, Zen 3 APU had 10.7B.

Certainly a newer way of doing things, when compared to traditional CPU-iGPU combo limited by the classical dual-channel RAM interface.
 
ezst036 said:
People also overlook - these SoCs have video capabilities in them. When is Apple going to do what Intel is doing with the Arc and split off the GPU into a PCI-E (Mac only of course) product and dump Radeons to the curb?
Click to expand...
They would need to get the get go from arm though since they don't own the soc or the igpu IP and even then I don't know if any of the IP needed to make a discreet card is free to use to anybody.
 
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Apple is a plague. All those years we had upgradable CPUs, RAM, GPUs. If their SoC design starts to compete with AMD/Intel, this will push the whole world try to stretch CPU/GPU/RAM in one single chip like GPUs do. Of course, you won't be able to upgrade, you won't be able to repair. And you will SURELY need repairs with that much of a silicon (as GPUs prove).
 
teodoreh said:
Apple is a plague. All those years we had upgradable CPUs, RAM, GPUs. If their SoC design starts to compete with AMD/Intel, this will push the whole world try to stretch CPU/GPU/RAM in one single chip like GPUs do. Of course, you won't be able to upgrade, you won't be able to repair. And you will SURELY need repairs with that much of a silicon (as GPUs prove).
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This is already a thing in laptops. At least, the inability to upgrade because everything is soldered down.

However this is very unlikely to happen in the desktop space given the allure of swapping parts around in such.
 
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Love the juxtaposition of the MSI Laptop sale on the front page vs. the cost of these new Apple laptops.

MSI - $849 for a 15.6" screen with, i5-10500H, 8gb of Ram, nVidia 3060, and 512gb SSD.

Lowest price Macbook - $1,999 for a 14" screen with, M1 Pro 8 core, 16gb of Ram, 14 core integrated GPU, 512gb SSD.

So for $1,150 more you double the RAM and two more cores but fewer threads, smaller L1 cache, no turbo clockspeed, a smaller screen, worse video card, no ability to upgrade anything yourself, and having to pay out the ear for extra dongles if you want it to be compatible with pretty much any normal product or cables.
 
philged said:
So for $1,150 more you double the RAM and two more cores but fewer threads, smaller L1 cache, no turbo clockspeed, a smaller screen, worse video card, no ability to upgrade anything yourself, and having to pay out the ear for extra dongles if you want it to be compatible with pretty much any normal product or cables.
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A few counterpoints here:
  • The M1 is no slouch in terms of CPU performance. It handily beats the i5-10500H in PassMark. And I'm sure you can find reviews of the Mac Mini and 13" MacBook Pro running the same tasks with the M1 coming out ahead in most of them. Apple has a beast of a CPU here.
    • I would argue simultaneous multithreading isn't really a hard plus at this point. Idle tasks on an OS don't take up that much CPU time for it to really matter. If the cores are much weaker than the competition, then it doesn't matter if you add another thread on it. It's like saying you can make the dollar menu hamburger as good as the fancy one if you add another patty.
    • Cache size is irrelevant. How much cache is needed depends on the CPU architecture. This is like saying Athlon 64's suck because they have a smaller cache size compared to Pentium 4's.
    • It's not like the i5's turbo boosting is a plus when it's not going to be anywhere near that in a highly threaded task. (And according to Notebookcheck, it settles at 2.6 GHz playing a game, 3.3GHz in a CPU only stress test)
  • I'll give it that it has a worse GPU, but gaming, or at least "hardcore" gaming isn't something people get a Mac for anyway. But what it does do, it'll certainly do it more efficiently than having a discrete GPU. And at least in GFXBench, the M1 in earlier Apple computers can go toe-to-toe against a GTX 1050 Ti or a Radeon RX 560
    • As an aside, I'm sure the GTX 3060 configuration in the MSI laptop is the worst configuration available. Or close to it.
  • Smaller screen is subjective. My productivity isn't any different if I do my work on a 13" laptop or my desktop with a 27" monitor.
  • About "paying out the ear for dongles", it depends on what you want. In my case, I haven't really found a dire need for such because:
    • Most of my peripherals connect via Bluetooth anyway.
    • USB-C to Displayport cables aren't that more expensive than a DisplayPort one. Similar story with USB-C to HDMI cable.
    • Even then, you can find affordable USB-C port hub thingies. You don't have to use Apple's official stuff.
And add a few points against the MSI laptop:
  • I'm pretty sure MSI doesn't have the best reputation for customer service if it exists.
  • The build quality doesn't look that great. Maybe it's the pictures Best Buy is showing, but the palm rest area looks like it was 3D printed.
  • The USB-C ports are USB only.
  • The 144Hz panel is a joke. Its response time is ~33ms, which practically negates the benefit of having a high refresh rate display. And I've also experienced this before in another laptop and wondered why they even bothered other than for marketing to put higher numbers on something.
  • 4.5 hours of practical battery life is kind of pathetic these days. I've had "budget gaming" laptops that could last 50% longer in similar use cases. And if we were to compare it to the MacBook Pro, it's no contest.
At the end of the day however, I don't see a point in comparing a budget laptop meant for gaming versus a laptop for multimedia work (at least that's where I see Macs used the most) built around an ecosystem.
 
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elementalRealms said:
They simply cant ... Remember that MS bought RARESOFT and snatched it away from Nintendo to start the XBOX ... Apple does not have anything worthy left to buy to start their own exclusive titles.
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I doubt he meant that apple themselves will start making games but rather that game devs will start to find the platform attractive enough to port/code games for it.

Not that apple doesn't have the money to hire talented coders and open a new studio from the ground up. (applesauce game studios)
 
TerryLaze said:
I doubt he meant that apple themselves will start making games but rather that game devs will start to find the platform attractive enough to port/code games for it.

Not that apple doesn't have the money to hire talented coders and open a new studio from the ground up. (applesauce game studios)
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Any title can be made on any modern hardware. What ANY console needs to succeed is exclusive titles. For example , If you want a Title that exists on all consoles , you will choose the console that has exclusives that you prefer. Apple cant survive without exclusives. Maybe if they buy SEGA just maybe .
 
waltc3 said:
Fight against Intel? Intel's only fight atm is with AMD...😉 Apple need not apply...😉
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Actually it was Apple who made intel take the ultra low voltage CPU seriously ... it was all Steve Jobs idea ... now that they left intel CPU for good , I tink tat in the coming years they will take over all the Ultra low Voltage Laptop market.
 
elementalRealms said:
Any title can be made on any modern hardware. What ANY console needs to succeed is exclusive titles. For example , If you want a Title that exists on all consoles , you will choose the console that has exclusives that you prefer. Apple cant survive without exclusives. Maybe if they buy SEGA just maybe .
Click to expand...
Succeed at what, for whom?
Apple users are locked to apple, having games available would just be a bonus for them, nobody that has other ways of playing games will go out of their way to buy an apple system no matter the exclusive.
 
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