454: The Notch is Young

Chip Performance

The M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are redefining performance benchmarks in the tech industry. John Siracusa highlights Apple's memory subsystem, which allows CPUs to scale impressively in memory-bound workloads, though the full potential of the DRAM bandwidth remains untapped due to limitations in the on-chip fabric 1. Despite these constraints, the M1 Max excels in specific benchmarks, outperforming competitors significantly, especially in floating-point operations 1.

The M1 Max is in its own category of silicon with no comparison in the market.

--- John Siracusa

However, the M1 Max's memory bandwidth advantage is not fully utilized unless workloads stress the CPU, GPU, and media engines simultaneously, making it less beneficial for CPU-only tasks 2.

   

Gaming & Graphics

Apple's latest chips show mixed results in gaming and graphics performance. While the M1 Max GPU outperforms high-end desktop parts in specific applications like Affinity Photo, its gaming performance is hindered by the lack of native ARM games and suboptimal ports 3. John Siracusa notes that while the hardware is capable, Apple's focus hasn't been on optimizing for gaming, resulting in underwhelming performance in this area 3.

The M1 Max is the fastest GPU we have ever measured in Affinity Photo benchmark.

--- John Siracusa

Additionally, driving high-resolution displays like the Pro Display XDR at 120 Hz remains a challenge due to current interface limitations, despite advanced compression techniques 4.