JustSomeGuy1

nicholfd said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

As noted in other threads, while the performance gains are massive (and larger than widely appreciated - AI got it wrong at least once already), there's a lot we really don't know yet.

- Clock speed: how much higher is it? (My guess: minimal)

- Why is the 32-core gpu said by apple to be only 60% faster than the 16-core gpu? (See slide where they are respectively 400% and 250% speed of the 5600M)

- What are the cores? (Most people seem to think they're the same as the M1s, but from GPU perf alone, those cores are likely the same gen as the A15. No clue about the CPU cores, but you'd think they'd be same-gen.)

- How big is the SLC? (My guess: 24/48MB for Pro/Max)

- How fast is the LPDDR5? (Probably LPDDR5-6400)

- >7GB/s reads of the SSD are great, but what about writes?

Also some non-performance questions, like can we run 4x 4k displays on the Pro? (Probably not.)

Apple generally does not release this information, and to most buyers it doesn't matter.

Regarding the displays - it was answered during the presentation & on the MacBook Pro spec page:

Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or 
Up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)

Marvin said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

- Why is the 32-core gpu said by apple to be only 60% faster than the 16-core gpu? (See slide where they are respectively 400% and 250% speed of the 5600M)

- What are the cores? (Most people seem to think they're the same as the M1s, but from GPU perf alone, those cores are likely the same gen as the A15. No clue about the CPU cores, but you'd think they'd be same-gen.)

Not all benchmarks fully use the capability of the hardware. On Apple's page there is a section on GPU tests and the Photoshop test shows M1 Max at 2.1x the 5600M and M1 Pro at 2.0x, which means Max is just 5% faster in that test:

[good stuff for a benchmarking 101 class]

The cores seem like they are the same as M1 as the theoretical performance number match up with M1. M1 = 2.6TFLOPs, M1 Pro = 5.2TFLOP, M1 Max = 10.4TFLOP. It doubles each time as they doubled the core count so I'd assume they are the same M1 cores.

mjtomlin said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

mjtomlin said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

These numbers are suspect. As I pointed out in the article about the GPU performance, GPU perf went up way more than 2x with 2x GPU cores, according to Apple's numbers (which, historically, they have not inflated). That strongly suggests that the cores are NOT M1 cores, but at least equivalent of the A15 cores.

It would be absolutely astonishing for the single-core score not to go up at all. In fact I'd say it was totally impossible. If nothing else, the new memory controller, bigger SLC, and LPDDR5 memory will all increase the single-core score. Probably by not all that much, but claiming no change at all is a huge stretch. (And that assumes no clock bump over the M1.)

The 150% bump for multicore might actually make sense with the 8-core version of the CPU (6P + 2E cores). It too seems way too low for the 10-core version of the M1 Pro.

We'll know soon enough though.

Actually Apple claimed 2x performance with 16 GPU cores, and 4x performance with 32 cores. The M1 has 8 cores. GPU performance scales linearly. CPU performance does not. Apple said the new 10-core CPU is 70% more performant then the M1. This GB score is just outside that, but that’s completely possible as these benchmark scores are usually all over the place.

And that single core number is absolutely possible if Apple is using the same cores as the M1, which they most likely are, or they would’ve called it M2 to signify different core generation as they do with the A-series. It was rumored that these SoCs were ready to go mid-year, but there were delays with the displays, so the release was pushed back.

What you wrote makes sense... but it's wrong.

If you look at the GPU performance chart Apple showed during the presentation, it compared the M1 Pro and Max GPU *not* to the M1, but rather to the 5600M in the most recent intel 16". That 5600M is markedly faster than the M1 GPU. Apple numbers were improvements of 250% and 400% respectively. You can conservatively estimate the 5600M as 50% faster than the M1 8-core - that's *very* conservative, as geekbench has it as about 200% in metal, for example. That would make the M1 Pro GPU 3.75x the speed of the M1, and the Max would be 6x faster. The most obvious way to explain this would be better memory bandwidth and SLC, but even so I doubt all that performance is coming just from a better memory subsystem. Go look at the multicore improvement in the A15 vs. A14... it's suggestive, at least. Of A15 cores, or maybe the uncore, but... something.

Of course, that also raises the question: GPU perf *should* increase linearly (as memory bandwidth is doubling too), but according to Apple it only goes up 60%. That is a big mystery, and I really want to know more about that.

Lastly, as to CPU perf: even if it were the same core as in the M1 (which I doubt), performance would *have* to go up unless they actually lowered the clock to *slower* than the M1, as I explained in the quote above.

Actually I was not wrong. During the keynote they said Pro GPU was “2x faster GPU performance than M1”, Max was “4x faster GPU performance than M1”. It had nothing to do with any chart, it’s what they said. Watch the keynote. This would indicate they are using the same GPU cores as the M1. Also, the M1 GPU has a TDP of 10W, the Max has a TDP of 40W… 4x the power draw. The newer GPUs in the A15 are more performant and more efficient - these are not those. So, it would stand to reason that they’re also using the CPU cores as well. And the 30W TDP is inline with those cores. Furthermore, they specifically said these SoC’s are based on the M1.

[graphics removed]

mjtomlin said:

JustSomeGuy1 said:

These numbers are suspect. As I pointed out in the article about the GPU performance, GPU perf went up way more than 2x with 2x GPU cores, according to Apple's numbers (which, historically, they have not inflated). That strongly suggests that the cores are NOT M1 cores, but at least equivalent of the A15 cores.

It would be absolutely astonishing for the single-core score not to go up at all. In fact I'd say it was totally impossible. If nothing else, the new memory controller, bigger SLC, and LPDDR5 memory will all increase the single-core score. Probably by not all that much, but claiming no change at all is a huge stretch. (And that assumes no clock bump over the M1.)

The 150% bump for multicore might actually make sense with the 8-core version of the CPU (6P + 2E cores). It too seems way too low for the 10-core version of the M1 Pro.

We'll know soon enough though.

Actually Apple claimed 2x performance with 16 GPU cores, and 4x performance with 32 cores. The M1 has 8 cores. GPU performance scales linearly. CPU performance does not. Apple said the new 10-core CPU is 70% more performant then the M1. This GB score is just outside that, but that’s completely possible as these benchmark scores are usually all over the place.

And that single core number is absolutely possible if Apple is using the same cores as the M1, which they most likely are, or they would’ve called it M2 to signify different core generation as they do with the A-series. It was rumored that these SoCs were ready to go mid-year, but there were delays with the displays, so the release was pushed back.