Apple brought a significant leap in performance with its transition to the M1 chip for its Mac and iPad last year. However, this year, at its Unleashed virtual event, the Cupertino giant unveiled its next-gen in-house chips, the M1 Pro and M1 Max, with the launch of the latest MacBook Pro models. These new chips are even more powerful than their M1 predecessor, and on paper, they pack more raw GPU power than Sony’s PlayStation 5 gaming console.
Now, for those unaware, Apple’s highest-end M1 Max chipset can be configured to pack up to a 32-core GPU, which is a massive increase from the previous-gen M1 chipset that can only pack up to an 8-core GPU. As per the Cupertino giant, the M1 Max uses around 70% less power than a laptop device with a discrete GPU when delivering peak graphical performance.
The company says that the M1 Max delivers performance comparable to a “pro laptop with high-performing discrete GPU”. While doing so, the chip uses 100W less power than these devices.
In order to test out the performance of the M1 Max chip, Apple compared a MacBook Pro model with the M1 Max chip with a 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 64GB of RAM to the MSI GE76 Raider and Razer Blade 15 Advanced, both of which are high-end GPU-centric laptops.
Furthermore, folks from Notebookcheck provided an estimate about how many teraflops the M1 Pro and the M1 Max chipsets can handle in their report. You can find out the findings of the test right below.
- M1 8-core = 2.6 TF
- M1 Pro 14-core = 4.5 TF
- M1 Pro 16-core = 5.2 TF
- M1 Max 24-core = 7.8 TF
- M1 Max 32-core = 10.4 TF
Now, as you can, the highest-end M1 Max chipset with a 32-core GPU can tackle 10.4 teraflops at peak performance. This is more than the Sony Playstation 5 that maxes out at 10.28 teraflops. Moreover, as noted by YouTuber ZoneOfTech, the M1 Max chip delivers a read speed of up to 7.4GB per second, which is also higher than the 5.5GB read speed of Sony’s gaming console.
However, it is worth mentioning that these results are based on controlled performance tests and not real-world performance. Nonetheless, it is impressive to see that a thin and light notebook like the MacBook Pro can deliver more GPU power than a high-end gaming console, at least on paper. We will know more about the real-world performance of the M1Max MacBook Pro once they start reaching in the hands of customers in the coming days.
