The new M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs for Macs were introduced at Apple’s October 18th event, giving us a first look. The M1 Pro, according to Apple, provides the finest performance and power economy, while the new M1 Max goes even further. The new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are up to 70% quicker than the preceding M1 chip in terms of CPU performance. In addition, the GPU in the M1 Pro is up to 2x faster than the M1, and the M1 Max is up to 4x faster than the M1, allowing professional users to breeze through even the most demanding graphics workloads.
The new M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs have enhanced memory bandwidth and capacity, as well as industry-leading performance per watt and remarkable power efficiency. The M1 Pro supports up to 32GB of unified memory and has a memory bandwidth of up to 200GB/s. M1 Max supports up to 64GB of unified memory and has a memory bandwidth of up to 400GB/s, which is 2x that of M1 Pro and roughly 6x that of M1.
The M1 Pro and M1 Max also have improved media engines with dedicated ProRes accelerators for professional video processing.
Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max use the 5nm manufacturing technology; the M1 Pro has 33.7 billion transistors, almost twice as many as the M1 chip, while the M1 Max has 57 billion transistors, which is 70 percent more than the M1 Pro and 3.5 times more than the M1 chip.
Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips have a 10-core CPU with eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores that are 70 percent faster than the M1 chip. When compared to the latest 8-core PC laptop chip, the M1 Pro delivers up to 1.7x more CPU performance at the same power level and achieves peak performance using up to 70% less power.
The M1 Pro has a 16-core GPU, which is 2x faster than the M1 and 7x quicker than the integrated graphics on the most recent 8-core PC laptop chip. When compared to a strong discrete GPU for PC notebooks, the M1 Pro delivers up to 70% better performance while utilizing 70% less power. The M1 Pro can be configured with up to 32GB of fast unified memory and a memory bandwidth of up to 200GB/s.
The M1 Max, on the other hand, has the same 10-core CPU as the M1 but adds a huge up to 32-core GPU for up to 4x quicker graphics performance than the M1. GPU provides performance comparable to a high-end GPU in a compact pro PC laptop while using up to 40% less power, and performance comparable to a high-end GPU in the largest PC laptops while using up to 100 watts less power. This means less heat is generated, fans run silently and less frequently, and the new MacBook Pro’s battery life is excellent.
M1 Max also has a higher-bandwidth on-chip fabric and twice the memory interface over M1 Pro, allowing for up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth, or approximately 6x that of M1. As a result, the M1 Max may be equipped with up to 64GB of rapid unified memory. M1 Max is the most powerful chip ever built for a professional notebook, with unrivaled performance.
The Apple-designed media engine in the M1 Pro and M1 Max speeds up video processing while extending battery life. M1 Pro also incorporates specialized ProRes video codec acceleration, enabling the simultaneous playing of several streams of high-quality 4K and 8K ProRes video while consuming very little power.
M1 Max goes even farther, with two ProRes accelerators and up to 2x quicker video encoding than M1 Pro. When compared to the previous-generation 16-inch MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Pro with M1 Max can transcode ProRes video in Compressor up to 10x faster.
The other new M1 Pro and M1 Mac CPUs can be found in the new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
