Apple Introduces M4 Pro and M4 Max Processors

[AleksandarK]

Apple today announced M4 Pro and M4 Max, two new chips that—along with M4—bring far more power-efficient performance and advanced capabilities to the Mac. All three chips are built using industry-leading, second-generation 3-nanometer technology, which improves performance and power efficiency. The CPUs across the M4 family feature the world's fastest CPU core, delivering the industry's best single-threaded performance, and dramatically faster multithreaded performance. The GPUs build on the breakthrough graphics architecture introduced in the previous generation, with faster cores and a 2x faster ray- racing engine. M4 Pro and M4 Max enable Thunderbolt 5 for the Mac for the first time, and unified memory bandwidth is greatly increased—up to 75 percent. Combined with a Neural Engine that's up to 2x faster than the previous generation and enhanced machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPUs, the M4 family of chips brings incredible performance for pro and AI workloads. And they deliver blazing performance for Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that transforms how users work, communicate, and express themselves, while protecting their privacy.




"Apple silicon has taken the Mac to unprecedented heights, and the rapid pace of innovation continues with M4 Pro and M4 Max," said Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. "With the world's fastest CPU core, immensely more powerful GPUs, and the fastest Neural Engine ever, the power-efficient performance and capabilities of the M4 family extend its lead as the most advanced lineup of chips in the industry."

M4: Phenomenal Performance and New Capabilities
For entrepreneurs, students, creators, and more, the phenomenal performance of M4 comes to Mac for the first time. M4 features an up to 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and up to six efficiency cores. It's up to 1.8x faster than M1, so multitasking across apps like Safari and Excel is lightning fast. A 10-core GPU provides incredible graphics performance, up to 2x faster than M1, making everything from editing photos to AAA gameplay exceptionally fast and smooth. And the faster 16-core Neural Engine is great for Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools and other AI workloads.

M4 supports up to 32 GB of unified memory and has higher memory bandwidth of 120 GB/s. The display engine of the M4 family is enhanced to support two external displays in addition to a built-in display. And M4 now supports up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports, providing fast data transfer speeds and even more flexibility across peripherals.

M4 Pro: Far More Powerful and Capable than Any AI PC Chip
M4 Pro takes the advanced technologies debuted in M4 and scales them up for researchers, developers, engineers, creative pros, and other users with more demanding workflows. M4 Pro features an up to 14-core CPU consisting of up to 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It's up to 1.9x faster than the CPU of M1 Pro, and up to 2.1x faster than the latest AI PC chip. The GPU features up to 20 cores for graphics performance that is 2x that of M4, and up to 2.4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. This huge boost in performance makes building and testing apps across multiple simulators in Xcode quicker than ever. And with the improved hardware-accelerated ray tracing engine in the M4 family GPU, games like Control look more compelling, and pro 3D renderers can produce stunning imagery in even less time.

M4 Pro supports up to 64 GB of fast unified memory and 273 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a massive 75 percent increase over M3 Pro and 2x the bandwidth of any AI PC chip. This, combined with the faster Neural Engine of the M4 family, means on-device Apple Intelligence models run at blazing speed. M4 Pro also supports Thunderbolt 5 on Mac, delivering up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds, which more than doubles the throughput of Thunderbolt 4. For professionals working on larger file sizes across AI, video, code bases, and more, M4 Pro offers stunning performance and Apple silicon's legendary power efficiency.
M4 Max: The Most Powerful Chip for a Pro Laptop
M4 Max is the ultimate choice for data scientists, 3D artists, and composers who push pro workflows to the limit. It has an up to 16-core CPU, with up to 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It's up to 2.2x faster than the CPU in M1 Max and up to 2.5x faster than the latest AI PC chip. The GPU has up to 40 cores for performance that is up to 1.9x faster than M1 Max and up to an astounding 4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. So heavy workloads like de-noising raw video footage in DaVinci Resolve Studio can now run in real time.

M4 Max supports up to 128 GB of fast unified memory and up to 546 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 4x the bandwidth of the latest AI PC chip. This allows developers to easily interact with large language models that have nearly 200 billion parameters. The enhanced Media Engine of M4 Max includes two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators, making it the ultimate choice for video professionals. And like M4 Pro, M4 Max also supports Thunderbolt 5 with up to 120 Gb/s data transfer capability. M4 Max rips through the most challenging pro workloads and, thanks to the energy efficiency of Apple silicon, delivers exceptional battery life in a laptop.

Apple Silicon Powers Apple Intelligence
M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max are built for Apple Intelligence. Ushering in a new era for the Mac, Apple Intelligence brings personal intelligence to the personal computer. Combining powerful generative models with industry-first privacy protections, Apple Intelligence harnesses the power of Apple silicon and the Neural Engine to unlock new ways for users to work, communicate, and express themselves on Mac. It is available in U.S. English with macOS Sequoia 15.1. With systemwide Writing Tools, users can refine their words by rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing text nearly everywhere they write. With the newly redesigned Siri, users can move fluidly between spoken and typed requests to accelerate tasks throughout their day, and Siri can answer thousands of questions about Mac and other Apple products. New Apple Intelligence features will be available in December, with additional capabilities rolling out in the coming months. Image Playground gives users a new way to create fun original images, and Genmoji allows them to create custom emoji in seconds. Siri will become even more capable, with the ability to take actions across the system and draw on a user's personal context to deliver intelligence that is tailored to them. In December, ChatGPT will be integrated into Siri and Writing Tools, allowing users to access its expertise without needing to jump between tools.

With systemwide Writing Tools, users can refine their words by rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing text nearly everywhere they write.
Apple Intelligence does all this while protecting users' privacy at every step. At its core is on-device processing, and for more complex tasks, Private Cloud Compute gives users access to Apple's even larger, server-based models and offers groundbreaking protections for personal information. In addition, users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account, and privacy protections are built in—their IP addresses are obscured and OpenAI won't store requests. For those who choose to connect their account, OpenAI's data-use policies apply.

Better for the Environment
The power-efficient performance of M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max helps the all-new MacBook Pro lineup meet Apple's high standards for energy efficiency and deliver up to 24 hours of battery life. This results in less time needing to be plugged in and less energy consumed over its lifetime. And for desktop systems like iMac and Mac mini, the energy efficiency of Apple silicon also reduces the total amount of energy used. Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations and, as part of its ambitious Apple 2030 goal, plans to be carbon neutral across its entire carbon footprint by the end of this decade.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[phints]

Neat, so good of Apple to compare M4 to an i7 from 6 years ago.

Looking forward to benchmarks to see how these perform paired with an RTX 4080. /s

 

[Daven]

The even worst part is that Intel has not improved CPU performance much in the last few years.

Coincidently, Strix Halo is rumored to also have 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores like the M4 Max.

 

[kondamin]

The even worst part is that Intel has not improved CPU performance much in the last few years.

Coincidently, Strix Halo is rumored to also have 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores like the M4 Max.

few years?

2022 Intel gen 12 & AMD zen 3 were significant upgrades in performance.
2023 raptorlake and zen 4 also saw nice gains
2024 is a bit of a dud for gamers

if you had said this back in 2016 sure but now after an extremely stagnant decade?

 

[Daven]

few years?

2022 Intel gen 12 & AMD zen 3 were significant upgrades in performance.
2023 raptorlake and zen 4 also saw nice gains
2024 is a bit of a dud for gamers

if you had said this back in 2016 sure but now after an extremely stagnant decade?

The last three generations of Intel processors had all the same performance. 285K = 14900K = 13900K. The only reason these three beat the 12900K is because Intel doubled the E-cores. IPC stayed the same until the 285K.

Back on topic, Apple is comparing these processors to its own products like they usually do. That means comparing to the last Intel Mac released.

 

[_roman_]

2024 is a bit of a dud for gamers

2024: The AVX512 instruction set and the power saving are very important steps on the AMD side.

August 2021 -> May 2023
I had a 8-core Ryzen 5800X which has in games and gnu gentoo linux similar performance as my 6-core Ryzen 7600X.
Gentoo linux compiles nearly every package from source code. For myself only the seconds needed to compile a package is important. Over 1400 packages to compare from. I also had for a short while a Ryzen 3 3100 in use for 2-3 months in 2023.
Two cores less and same performance is awesome.

I used before 2021 a Intel i7-3610QM processor with 20GiB RAM.

--

I would expect that all those apple users drive the demand high and prices low for those thunderbolt devices.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

2024: The AVX512 instruction set and the power saving are very important steps on the AMD side.

Literally does not benefit gamers, which was the point of the comment you replied to.

August 2021 -> May 2023
I had a 8-core Ryzen 5800X which has in games and gnu gentoo linux similar performance as my 6-core Ryzen 7600X.
Gentoo linux compiles nearly every package from source code. For myself only the seconds needed to compile a package is important. Over 1400 packages to compare from. I also had for a short while a Ryzen 3 3100 in use for 2-3 months in 2023.
Two cores less and same performance is awesome.

I used before 2021 a Intel i7-3610QM processor with 20GiB RAM.

--

I would expect that all those apple users drive the demand high and prices low for those thunderbolt devices.

None of this benefits gamers either, way to prove Kondamin right.

 

[gmn17]

M4 to the Max

 

[kondamin]

The last three generations of Intel processors had all the same performance. 285K = 14900K = 13900K. The only reason these three beat the 12900K is because Intel doubled the E-cores. IPC stayed the same until the 285K.

Back on topic, Apple is comparing these processors to its own products like they usually do. That means comparing to the last Intel Mac released.

We ended up with more computing power for less money, intel shouldn't have called raptor lake refresh gen 14.
but it's just a name and if you wanted to, you could pop a new chip in your 2022 board.

I'm still of the opinion the last couple of years were really good CPU wise, GPU and Storage have been sh*t but that's a monopoly and a cartel causing that.

 

[Tek-Check]

Why not compare it to M3 line-up?
What is the status of AI with Apple? I have heard that they are somewhat behind the race. Is that correct?

 

[mrnagant]

Why do so much comparison to M1?

 

[cvaldes]

Why do so much comparison to M1?

It's a more realistic upgrade path than coming from the M2 or M3. Plus the numbers look better.

A four year upgrade cycle is far more common than a 1 or 2 year upgrade.

I'm running a Mac mini M2 Pro (16GB) and I'm sitting this cycle out. I'll wait for the M5 or M6 Macs.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

The even worst part is that Intel has not improved CPU performance much in the last few years.

Coincidently, Strix Halo is rumored to also have 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores like the M4 Max.

Intel has been moving laterally. The addition of e-cores and an NPU along with better IGPs is where everything is going. They are moving in that direction as fast as they can because they feel that's the best way to get ahead.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Why not compare it to M3 line-up?
What is the status of AI with Apple? I have heard that they are somewhat behind the race. Is that correct?

Why do so much comparison to M1?

For the same reason the M3 was compared to the M1.

The differences gen to gen are pretty mild, at best. The M3 was only a slight upgrade over the M2 and the M4 is similar.