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M1 Max First Benchmarks! This is INSANE!

17:01 video

The new MacBooks have been released, and after unboxing my 16-inch (and with a 14-inch still in its box), I wanted to know if the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max is fast. This is the highest of the three default 16-inch configurations: M1 Max with a 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 32 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD. I compared it against my previous M1 Macs, the previous 16-inch, and the 24 and 27-inch iMacs. For peak performance, I set Battery > Power Adapter > Energy Mode to High Power, and I used an infrared heat gun to watch chassis temperatures. These aren’t thin-and-light laptops: they’re built as pro laptops with bigger chassis for thermal management.

SSD speed (Blackmagic Disk Speed Test)

5.8 GB/s write and 5.2 GB/s read, almost double what we’ve seen on previous Macs: the 2021 24-inch iMac got about 2,900 MB/s, the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro about 3,100 write and 2,700 read, and the previous 16-inch with an i9 about 2,900.

Geekbench 5

  • Single-core: 1783. The M1 MacBook Pro got 1736, the MacBook Air 1732, and the 2021 iMac 1747.
  • Multi-core: 12,629, versus 7,653 for the M1 MacBook Pro and 8,323 for the 2020 i7 iMac, a huge jump in just over a year.
  • Metal (GPU): 65,338. My previous record holder was the 2020 iMac with the Radeon Pro 5500 XT at 44,127; the i5 iMac with the 5300 got 37,317; and the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro got 21,876, so about three times faster.

Temperatures barely moved during these (about 29.6°C at idle, 30.1°C afterward).

Cinebench R23

  • Single-core: 1529, about the same as the highest score in the list (a Core i7-1165G7), a bit above the 24-inch M1 iMac (1506) and the 2019 16-inch i9 (1140). The temperature barely budged: 33.8°C.
  • Multi-core: 12,336, at least 10% higher than the 2020 i7 iMac (11,046) and well above the 24-inch M1 iMac. The top reached about 40°C (105°F) and the bottom about 35°C, so it’s a little warm on your lap at the max but not toasty. The fans finally spun at 1,700 and 1,800 RPM but were pretty much silent: I could hear my studio light fans more.

Final Cut Pro

My iPhone 12 Pro unboxing video from 2020 (multicam 4K, 30 fps variable frame rate from iPhones). The timeline played immediately with no stutter. Exporting at 4K H.264 Faster to the internal SSD took almost 4 minutes flat, silent and running cool (about 36°C). The closest comparison was the M1 24-inch iMac at 6:24; the previous 16-inch i9 took 7:26. Two to three minutes may not sound like much, but it adds up over repeated use.

LumaFusion

The timeline works well, though there’s a small lag between pressing the key and playback starting or stopping (maybe LumaFusion on Apple silicon Macs; I’d have to retest my other computers). A 4K, 150 Mbps H.264 export took 3:16, versus 4:42 on the M1 MacBook Pro, and used more GPU and less CPU than Final Cut. I couldn’t test the i9 MacBook Pro, since LumaFusion needs Apple silicon.

Unigine Heaven

This runs under Rosetta (not optimized for Apple silicon), at extreme settings with 4x anti-aliasing. The GPU was hit hard, the CPU not so much, and fans barely audible (about 1,600 to 1,700 RPM). 67.2 fps, score 1692, the fastest I’ve personally gotten, versus 63.4 fps and 1597 on the 2020 iMac with the 5500 XT. The laptop heated to about 41.3°C (106°F).

Takeaway

This is the fastest computer I’ve personally used that isn’t a Xeon server in a data center, and it comes from a laptop that stays relatively cool and silent. The fans didn’t turn on audibly in any of today’s tests. I’m excited to spend more time with it.

In this video

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