Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights
by Andrei Frumusanu on October 25, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Apple
- MacBook
- Apple M1 Pro
- Apple M1 Max
CPU ST Performance: Not Much Change from M1
Apple didn’t talk much about core performance of the new M1 Pro and Max, and this is likely because it hasn’t really changed all that much compared to the M1. We’re still seeing the same Firestrom performance cores, and they’re still clocked at 3.23GHz. The new chip has more caches, and more DRAM bandwidth, but under ST scenarios we’re not expecting large differences.
When we first tested the M1 last year, we had compiled SPEC under Apple’s Xcode compiler, and we lacked a Fortran compiler. We’ve moved onto a vanilla LLVM11 toolchain and making use of GFortran (GCC11) for the numbers published here, allowing us more apple-to-apples comparisons. The figures don’t change much for the C/C++ workloads, but we get a more complete set of figures for the suite due to the Fortran workloads. We keep flags very simple at just “-Ofast” and nothing else.
In SPECint2017, the differences to the M1 are small. 523.xalancbmk is showcasing a large performance improvement, however I don’t think this is due to changes on the chip, but rather a change in Apple’s memory allocator in macOS 12. Unfortunately, we no longer have an M1 device available to us, so these are still older figures from earlier in the year on macOS 11.
Against the competition, the M1 Max either has a significant performance lead, or is able to at least reach parity with the best AMD and Intel have to offer. The chip however doesn’t change the landscape all too much.
SPECfp2017 also doesn’t change dramatically, 549.fotonik3d does score quite a bit better than the M1, which could be tied to the more available DRAM bandwidth as this workloads puts extreme stress on the memory subsystem, but otherwise the scores change quite little compared to the M1, which is still on average quite ahead of the laptop competition.
The M1 Max lands as the top performing laptop chip in SPECint2017, just shy of being the best CPU overall which still goes to the 5950X, but is able to take and maintain the crown from the M1 in the FP suite.
Overall, the new M1 Max doesn’t deliver any large surprises on single-threaded performance metrics, which is also something we didn’t expect the chip to achieve.
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caribbeanblue - Saturday, October 30, 2021 - link
Lol, you're just a troll at this point.sharath.naik - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
The only reason M1 falls behind 3060 RTX is because the games are emulated.. if native M1 will match 3080. This is remarkable.. time for others to shift over to the same shared high bandwith memory on chip.vlad42 - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Go back and reread the article. Andrei explicitly mentioned that the games were GPU bound, not CPU bound. Here are the relevant quotes:Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
"We have to go to 4K just to help the M1 Max fully stretch its legs. Even then the 16-inch MacBook Pro is well off the 6800M. Though we’re definitely GPU-bound at this point, as reported by both the game itself, and demonstrated by the 2x performance scaling from the M1 Pro to the M1 Max."
Borderlands 3:
"The game seems to be GPU-bound at 4K, so it’s not a case of an obvious CPU bottleneck."
web2dot0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
I heard otherwise on m1 optimized games like WoWAshlayW - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
4096 ALU at 1.3 GHz vs 6144 ALU at 1.4-1.5 Ghz? What makes you think Apple's GPU is magic sauce?Ppietra - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Not going to argue that Apple's GPU is better, however the number of ALU and clock speed doesn’t tell the all story.Sometimes it can be faster not because it can work more but because it reduces some bottlenecks and because it works in a smarter way (by avoiding doing work that is not necessary for the end result).
jospoortvliet - Wednesday, October 27, 2021 - link
Thing is also that the game devs didn't write their game for and test on these gpus and drivers. Nor did Apple write or optimize their drivers for these games. Both of these can easily make high-double digit differences, so being 50% slower on a fully new platform without any optimizations and running half-emulated code is very promising.varase - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
Apple isn't interested in producing chips - they produce consumer electronics products.If they wanted to they could probably trash AMD and Intel by selling their silicon - but customers would expect them to remain static and support their legacy stuff forever.
When Apple finally decided ARMv7 was unoptimizable, they wrote 32 bit support out of iOS and dropped those logic blocks from their CPUs in something like 2 years. No one else can deprecate and shed baggage so quickly which is how they maintain their pace of innovation.
halo37253 - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Apple's GPU isn't magic. It is not going to be any more efficient than what Nvidia or AMD have.Clearly a Apple GPU that only uses around 65watts is going to compete with a Nvidia or AMD GPU that only uses around 65watts in actual usage.
Apple clearly has a node advantage at work here, and with that being said. It is clear to see that when it comes to actual workloads like games, Apple still has some work to do efficiency wise. As their GPU in the same performance/watt range compared to a Nvidia chip in the same performance/watt range on a older and not as power efficient node is able to still do better.
Apple's GPU is a compute champ and great for workloads that avg user will never see. This is why the M1 Pro makes a lot more sense then the M1 Max. The M1 Max seems like it will do fine for light gaming, but the cost of that chip must be crazy. It is a huge chip. Would love to see one in a mac mini.
misan - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Just replace GPU by CPU and you will see how devoid of logic your argument is.Apple has much more experience in low-power GPU design. Their silicon is specifically optimized for low-power usage. Why wouldn't it be more efficient than the competitors?
Besides, Andreis' test already confirm that your claims are pure speculation without any factual basis. Look at the power usage tests for the GFXbench. Almost three times lower power consumption with a better overall result.
These GPUs are incredible rasterizers. It's that you look at bad quality game ports and decide that they reflect the maximal possible reachable performance. Sure, GFXbench is crap, then look at Wild Life Extreme. That result translates to 20k points. Thats on par with the mobile RTX 3070 at 100W.