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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Alistair - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
you're a typical defensive Apple moron, when the product sucks at gaming, you just insult gaming altogether...coolfactor - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Can your microwave oven cook a turkey? Didn't think so! Macs and gaming consoles are like microwaves and ovens. Different things. But wait a year... the trajectory that Apple is on is going to change the landscape just like iPhone did.BushLin - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/home-applian...Spunjji - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
"video games are for children"Opinion discarded
web2dot0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
The reality is many folks don't game. So to make gaming as your disqualifier for any computer buying decision is absurd.You do you, but millions of folks don't care about gaming.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
If companies want to leave money on the table it's the choice of their boards/CEOs. Some don't have to worry about things like hostile takeovers.Alistair - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
that's not really true, more than half the population plays games, it is the same thing as watching a movie or listening to musiche was basically like "you must create" so I'd say, I guess he doesn't listen to music or watch movies, only makes them... bizarre attitude
even my most non gaming friends have kids and will sit down and play multiplayer party games with them
Speedfriend - Wednesday, October 27, 2021 - link
Making art with a Mac?. More likely a bunch of kidadults cranking out Instagram videos and mindless 'tunes' that they think changes the world....Frenetic Pony - Monday, October 25, 2021 - link
Small correction. GDDR6 is more power efficient than DDR even at high clockspeeds. At lower clockspeeds it compares well to LPDDR in power/bandwidth terms.markiz - Tuesday, October 26, 2021 - link
Is there a simple way for someone to explain what are the main reason for this insane part/watt gap?Like, technical reasons in the chip itself, not reasons why neither Intel nor AMD have ever achieved anything close.
But also, is it realistic to expect anyone in the near future to approach it?