If all you heard were the names, you’d assume that the M1 Max would outperform the M1 Pro across the board. It’s doing its job-and for people not performing pro workflows, it’s going to do it well. Throw in limited ports and a hard cap on RAM at 16GB, and obviously, the new chips begin to pull away. As you might expect, GPU-intensive tasks will be two or three times faster on a new MacBook Pro. Similarly, the M1 only has seven GPU cores (in low-end configurations of the MacBook Air and iMac) or eight, while the GPU cores on the M1 Pro and Max range from 14 (again, in the low-end configuration of the 14-inch model) to 32. As you might expect, the M1 can’t hang with the new chips when it comes to intense, threaded workflows.

The M1 only has four high-performance cores, while the M1 Pro has six (in the $1,999 14-inch model) or eight, and the M1 Max has eight. The M1 finds its roots in the A12X and A12Z in the iPad Pro. Where things diverge is when it comes to multiple CPU core workloads or GPU-based processing. When it comes to single-core performance, all these chips offer up more or less identical scores. And yet when you compare the M1 to the M1 Pro and M1 Max, you can see the family resemblance. Serving the needs of Apple’s professional user base would be a tougher trick to pull off. The M1 proved that an iPad-class chip could offer more than enough performance and battery life to power Apple’s more consumer-oriented Macs-the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and iMac. Though it added Mac-specific functionality such as support for Thunderbolt, it was mostly an evolution of the A12X and A12Z chips that powered the iPad Pro.

This was the Mac adopting Apple’s own chip architecture for the first time, trading mediocre Intel performance for the advantages that the iPhone and iPad have had for years.īut in many ways, the M1 was an evolution of the game Apple has been playing for some time. Last year’s debut of the M1 chip was hailed as an amazing, revolutionary move. But first, the M1īefore we compare the M1 Pro and M1 Max, we should cover the M1, the chip that started it all and is the heart of the new chips. The two new chips are closely related, and depending on the kind of work you do with your MacBook Pro, the extra power of the M1 Max might not be worth the extra price. At first glance, you might assume that the more expensive M1 Max chip is simply a bigger, faster, more powerful chip than the less expensive M1 Pro-but looks can be deceiving. One of the most interesting wrinkles about Apple’s new MacBook Pros is that the company offers them with two different chips.

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