Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max

[Grim5]

First GPU benchmark, we don't know if this is the 24 core or 32 core model

the M1 Max has 3.5 times higher performance than the M1. The M1 Max's 69k geekbench 5 GPU score is on par with the desktop 5700xt

https://wccftech.com/m1-max-vs-m1-gpu-performance-results/

 

[HACO]

the M1 Max has 3.5 times higher performance than the M1. The M1 Max's 69k geekbench 5 GPU score is on par with the desktop 5700xt

I'm guessing it's the 24-core version, because the M1 GPU was memory/bandwidth limited and that's massively improved now, so ~3.5x improvement for 3x cores seem reasonable. If that's the case, we should expect ~90K from the 32-core version.

 

[Grim5]

I'm guessing it's the 24-core version, because the M1 GPU was memory/bandwidth limited and that's massively improved now, so ~3.5x improvement for 3x cores seem reasonable. If that's the case, we should expect ~90K from the 32-core version.

90k would get it to within 10% of the 6700xt.

And the that would mean the tflops number quoted is correct and rasterisation is at the level of a PlayStation 5

 

[jigger]

The 24 core might be the pick of the bunch, although the full M1 Max looks as if it could be over 4.5x the performance of the M1.

So trying to figure where the 155watt version of the RTX 3080m sits, it seems to perform from desktop RTX3060ti - RTX3070 depending on how CPU limited the system is.

 

[Semel]

It will be a great laptop for productivity, video editing and such (on supported software, mind you, which is very limited due to ARM architecture), but I see no future here for Macgaming unfortunately.

Two major reasons for this:

1) Metal API.

There are two major APIs out there: DX12 and Vulkan.

They are both low-level API so they much better utilize hardware than the old and abandoned OpenGL and the not so abandoned but dying out DX11.

DX12 works only on Windows and it's proprietary., so it's not really an option for any OS other than Windows

Vulkan supports all major OS and is cross-platform. And it supports all major features of DX12 if not more.

Thanx to Vulkan Linux users can now use Steam Proton or Wine+dxvk and play 80+% of all native Windows games on Linux with little to no performance loss. And Valve is pushing hard for Linux (or rather Linux+Proton) support especially now with their Steam Deck.

Apple decided not to adopt Vulkan and invented their own proprietary API- Metal.

It's worth noting though that Metal was released several years earlier than Vulkan's first release. However, later on nothing prevented Apple from embracing Vulkan when it got much better than Metal especially after seeing what wonders it did for Linux gaming, but Apple just didn't..

Keeping going Metal route instead of Vulkan was a huge mistake.

I'll let myself quote one guy from Reddit:

Metal is missing much of the newer functionality available in Vulkan and DX12. Vulkan isnt the easiest to kick-off in but it's one of the best APIs out there for multicore + added Ray tracing support now. Now mind you MoltenVK doesn't support any of these RT extensions as you can't really translate BVH intersections from one api to another on the fly (it's an intense process anyways). So could Apple put some skin in the game and add vulkan support ? Maybe. Will they do it to kill off their own Metal? eff no. So unless they add hardware Ray tracing accelerators to their Silicon, there is no effin way software ray tracing will render 40-60 fps on M1, M2, whatever in the next few years.

2) They decided to make a drastic move and change architecture from x86 to ARM.

Metal API was issue enough but now ARM? Developers of console\PC games just don't want to bother with this. The tiny market of Macbook fans who can afford a $4-5k laptop and even tinier % of these people who wanna play AAA games on these $4-5k laptops just isn't worth the hassle..

Writing for Metal probably isn’t any more difficult than any other API.

It lacks features of DX12 and Vulkan used in games... It's not suitable for modern gaming industry.. And why should devs target Metal? It's not worth the hassle..At all.

 

[Minstadave]

It will be a great laptop for productivity, video editing and such (on supported software, mind you, which is very limited due to ARM architecture), but I see no future here for Macgaming unfortunately.

Two major reasons for this:

1) Metal API.

There are two major APIs out there: DX12 and Vulkan.

They are both low-level API so they much better utilize hardware than the old and abandoned OpenGL and the not so abandoned but dying out DX11.

DX12 works only on Windows and it's proprietary., so it's not really an option for any OS other than Windows

Vulkan supports all major OS and is cross-platform. And it supports all major features of DX12 if not more.

Thanx to Vulkan Linux users can now use Steam Proton or Wine+dxvk and play 80+% of all native Windows games on Linux with little to no performance loss. And Valve is pushing hard for Linux (or rather Linux+Proton) support especially now with their Steam Deck.

Apple decided not to adopt Vulkan and invented their own proprietary API- Metal.

It's worth noting though that Metal was released several years earlier than Vulkan's first release. However, later on nothing prevented Apple from embracing Vulkan when it got much better than Metal especially after seeing what wonders it did for Linux gaming, but Apple just didn't..

Keeping going Metal route instead of Vulkan was a huge mistake.

I'll let myself quote one guy from Reddit:




2) They decided to make a drastic move and change architecture from x86 to ARM.

Metal API was issue enough but now ARM? Developers of console\PC games just don't want to bother with this. The tiny market of Macbook fans who can afford a $4-5k laptop and even tinier % of these people who wanna play AAA games on these $4-5k laptops just isn't worth the hassle..




It lacks features of DX12 and Vulkan used in games... It's not suitable for modern gaming industry.. And why should devs target Metal? It's not worth the hassle..At all.

I'm not sure reasoned discussion works with jigger, he'll start telling you that your ignorance has been humoured and go back to deflecting and making more unsubstantiated claims about the glorious future of Apple gaming (still hasn't managed to tell us how any of these games will work though).

 

[KompuKare]

Anyone remeber the Apple Bandai Pippin?

If Apple were to revisit the console market, that's when they'd have to make Metal feature level with the others (or bring over Vulkan).

Until then, well the M1 Max is technical impressive but why spend so much silicon on a GPU which almost nobody will be able to use?

Seems very unbalanced.

If Apple have some specific video editing or similar program in mind, fixed-function hardware would be even more efficient.

Apple are very stingy, so they must have a reason, but what it is? If they want to run their own data centres on their hardware, again fixed-function hardware would make more sense.

 

[jigger]

It will be a great laptop for productivity, video editing and such (on supported software, mind you, which is very limited due to ARM architecture), but I see no future here for Macgaming unfortunately.

Two major reasons for this:

1) Metal API.

There are two major APIs out there: DX12 and Vulkan.

They are both low-level API so they much better utilize hardware than the old and abandoned OpenGL and the not so abandoned but dying out DX11.

DX12 works only on Windows and it's proprietary., so it's not really an option for any OS other than Windows

Vulkan supports all major OS and is cross-platform. And it supports all major features of DX12 if not more.

Thanx to Vulkan Linux users can now use Steam Proton or Wine+dxvk and play 80+% of all native Windows games on Linux with little to no performance loss. And Valve is pushing hard for Linux (or rather Linux+Proton) support especially now with their Steam Deck.

Apple decided not to adopt Vulkan and invented their own proprietary API- Metal.

It's worth noting though that Metal was released several years earlier than Vulkan's first release. However, later on nothing prevented Apple from embracing Vulkan when it got much better than Metal especially after seeing what wonders it did for Linux gaming, but Apple just didn't..

Keeping going Metal route instead of Vulkan was a huge mistake.

I'll let myself quote one guy from Reddit:




2) They decided to make a drastic move and change architecture from x86 to ARM.

Metal API was issue enough but now ARM? Developers of console\PC games just don't want to bother with this. The tiny market of Macbook fans who can afford a $4-5k laptop and even tinier % of these people who wanna play AAA games on these $4-5k laptops just isn't worth the hassle..




It lacks features of DX12 and Vulkan used in games... It's not suitable for modern gaming industry.. And why should devs target Metal? It's not worth the hassle..At all.

Well let’s think about that then.

What features of DX12 and Vulcan are missing from this chip? What is lacking exactly?

Well I doubt you post back, but Metal has been run on just about all PC hardware and leveraged more performance on Apple than Windows. To me says Metal is pretty hardware agonistic and Apple have a good understanding of probably of hardware sets.

Id think in some ways Metal is probably easier to work with than Vulkan and probably similar. Maybe a little more abstract.

I’m sure there would be details to deal with for developers, but looking at the performance on offer from Apple and potential user base and fixed hardware set it probably a lesser amount of work compared to the PC.

 

[Minstadave]

Well let’s think about that then.

What features of DX12 and Vulcan are missing from this chip? What is lacking exactly?

Not my area of expertise but this is what I could find online:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-M1-GPU-More-Bits

"For all the visible hardware features, it’s equally important to consider what hardware features are absent. Intriguingly, the GPU lacks some fixed-function graphics hardware ubiquitous among competitors. For example, I have not encountered hardware for reading vertex attributes or uniform buffer objects. The OpenGL and Vulkan specifications assume dedicated hardware for each, so what’s the catch? Simply put – Apple doesn’t need to care about Vulkan or OpenGL performance. Their only properly supported API is their own Metal, which they may shape to fit the hardware rather than contorting the hardware to match the API. Indeed, Metal de-emphasizes vertex attributes and uniform buffers, favouring general constant buffers, a compute-focused design. The compiler is responsible for translating the fixed-function attribute and uniform state to shader code."

 

[HACO]

Anyone remeber the Apple Bandai Pippin?

If Apple were to revisit the console market, that's when they'd have to make Metal feature level with the others (or bring over Vulkan).

Until then, well the M1 Max is technical impressive but why spend so much silicon on a GPU which almost nobody will be able to use?

Seems very unbalanced.

If Apple have some specific video editing or similar program in mind, fixed-function hardware would be even more efficient.

Apple are very stingy, so they must have a reason, but what it is? If they want to run their own data centres on their hardware, again fixed-function hardware would make more sense.

Apple SoCs are full of fixed-function hardware, significantly more so than anyone else's. Usually 25-30% of the chip is fixed-function stuff that aren't the typical stuff you see on CPU/GPUs. But they're also very powerful general purpose compute tasks for CPU, GPU and tensor processing (i.e. neural engine). Not everything warrants fixed-function units on the chip itself, that's where their focus on compute-oriented GPU is warranted. Think more like Tesla or Quadro chips, that's what Apple is competing against right now. That's why they put so much emphasis on the GPU's access to 64GB of RAM, despite what some spammers on forums/reddit think, that's not for gaming, lol. We've seen no evidence that Apple cares about serious gaming on macs.

Not my area of expertise but this is what I could find online:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-M1-GPU-More-Bits

"For all the visible hardware features, it’s equally important to consider what hardware features are absent. Intriguingly, the GPU lacks some fixed-function graphics hardware ubiquitous among competitors. For example, I have not encountered hardware for reading vertex attributes or uniform buffer objects. The OpenGL and Vulkan specifications assume dedicated hardware for each, so what’s the catch? Simply put – Apple doesn’t need to care about Vulkan or OpenGL performance. Their only properly supported API is their own Metal, which they may shape to fit the hardware rather than contorting the hardware to match the API. Indeed, Metal de-emphasizes vertex attributes and uniform buffers, favouring general constant buffers, a compute-focused design. The compiler is responsible for translating the fixed-function attribute and uniform state to shader code."

Metal is more compute oriented, with the assumption that anything can be build on top of it, in fact there is an implementation of Vulkan on top of Metal: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

It doesn't implement the entire Volkan API, but it is now officially supported by Valve and Dota 2 uses this, but it's nowhere near stable or feature-rich enough for AAA game development.

The simple reality is, there just isn't a ROI for developers to spend time and money releasing macOS games. Maybe one day that changes, but that day is not today. And Apple themselves are not making any claims about macOS gaming. I think we should ignore the trolls at this point.

 

[Grim5]

Looks like the 16 inch Mac with the M1 max chip gains acces to a new "high power" mode which seems to supply extra power to the cpu and gpu for higher performance.

what's not clear is if any benchmarks were using this high power mode or if this means there is further performance to unlock

https://wccftech.com/16-inch-2021-m...-high-power-mode-for-major-performance-boost/


High power mode is not available on the 14 inch or the M1 pro. Only the M1 max in the 16 inch chassis has the option to enable high power mode

 

[jigger]

Looks like the 16 inch Mac with the M1 max chip gains acces to a new "high power" mode which seems to supply extra power to the cpu and gpu for higher performance.

what's not clear is if any benchmarks were using this high power mode or if this means there is further performance to unlock

https://wccftech.com/16-inch-2021-m...-high-power-mode-for-major-performance-boost/


High power mode is not available on the 14 inch or the M1 pro. Only the M1 max in the 16 inch chassis has the option to enable high power mode

This will be interesting as it could push the M1 close to the desktop Ryzen 5900X. I would imagine this is a powered from the wall feature. Ideally though I’d get 14” version.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

It sounds like a typical turbo boost function / PBO to be honest ... maybe the 16" simply has more cooling capacity to offer to the system which can be made use of. Similar to how giving better cooling to a Ryzen chip can return more performance through PBO etc.

 

[Sean473]

It sounds like a typical turbo boost function / PBO to be honest ... maybe the 16" simply has more cooling capacity to offer to the system which can be made use of. Similar to how giving better cooling to a Ryzen chip can return more performance through PBO etc.

Really interested to know what temps these Apple chips will hit in these form factors.. If they generate anywhere the heat of the intel chips, it will be a nice furnace!

 

[Grim5]

So when you spec a 14 inch mac, the weight is the same with pro and max.

but when do you do the same on the 16 inch and select you the M1 max, then the weight increases. Which pretty much confirms that when you select the M1 max on the 16 inch you're getting more inside - that could be cooling or just more components due to high power mode.

So how much power does high power have? Looks like 140w. Every other configuration can use the 96w fast charger but speccing the M1 max is in the 16 inch let's you use the 140w fast charger.

So while Apple advertises the M1 Max as a 90w product, it seems like if you enable higher power mode you could in theory push it to 140w

 

[Grim5]

We have more benchmarks and the M1 Max is looking very strong compared to that first geekbench GPU score

Puget Workstation benchmark:

M1 Max: 1168 points https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/view.php?id=60176

5900HX + RTX3080: 888 points https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/view.php?id=51362


the GPU is no slouch with the M1 Max achieving the same graphics GPU score as the RTX3080 laptop

 

[tommoT.Striker]

Looks like the M1 Max's live playback in Premiere is where it really shines. Which is understandable considering its massive memory bandwidth. It only falls short against massive core systems in exporting where those extra cores come into play.

I think a lot of video editors will love it. And when the Mac Pros come out they'll be the best video editing machines outright. I dunno how they'll glue the silicon together, but these will cost an absolute bomb.

 

[HACO]

Looks like the M1 Max's live playback in Premiere is where it really shines. Which is understandable considering its massive memory bandwidth. It only falls short against massive core systems in exporting where those extra cores come into play.

I think a lot of video editors will love it. And when the Mac Pros come out they'll be the best video editing machines outright. I dunno how they'll glue the silicon together, but these will cost an absolute bomb.

Premier supports ProRes as well, so that's where the dedicated accelerators in M1 Pro/Max shine, and those are apparently faster than a stand-alone £2000 Afterburner card!

We have more benchmarks and the M1 Max is looking very strong compared to that first geekbench GPU score

Puget Workstation benchmark:

M1 Max: 1168 points https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/view.php?id=60176

5900HX + RTX3080: 888 points https://www.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/view.php?id=51362


the GPU is no slouch with the M1 Max achieving the same graphics GPU score as the RTX3080 laptop

Nice benchmarks. This is really the sort of use-case that these devices are aimed for, so these benchmarks are quite interesting.

 

[Grim5]

Another new benchmark, this time its something called GFXBench https://www.3dcenter.org/news/hardware-und-nachrichten-links-des-20-oktober-2021

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/m1_max_gfxbench_comparison.png

 

[HACO]

Another new benchmark, this time its something called GFXBench https://www.3dcenter.org/news/hardware-und-nachrichten-links-des-20-oktober-2021

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/m1_max_gfxbench_comparison.png

Most GFXBench tasks are CPU-bottlenecked on high-end GPUs, so wouldn't read too much into this. The better one of the rest is Aztec High, Metal vs DirectX, which is consistent with everything else we've seen.