While there are caveats, it wasn’t just talk: early reviews seem to back up some of Apple’s claims. While the M1 Max might be Apple’s largest chip it has ever made, it’s still integrating the graphics into a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture, compared to the dedicated and separate RTX 3080 cards. Image: AppleĪpple proudly compared its new M1 Max chip to two high-end Windows laptops last week, claiming the M1 Max is able to use 100W less power and offer the same relative performance at close to or above Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 mobile chip. Apple has compared its M1 Max to two RTX 3080 laptops. This is all part of Apple’s ambitious plan to transition its Mac lineup fully to Apple Silicon by the end of 2022 and just a glimpse at what the company must have coming to its most powerful Mac, the towering Mac Pro. Apple seems confident it can deliver the same performance as a top discrete graphics card while consuming a lot less power. They look like early warning shots at the AMD- and Nvidia-powered competition. While Windows laptops had looked increasingly tempting to the Mac crowd over the past five years, Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips shift the balance, particularly in the GPU realm. The result has creative professionals excited, and it’s easy to see why.

Nvidia has been trying to woo many of Apple’s professional and creative customers with its Studio laptops, but Apple has not only managed to fix the mistakes it made with its MacBook port selection and keyboard, but it’s also scaled up its M1 chips to meet the performance expectations of 14- and 16-inch laptops, too. The new MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max offer a first glimpse at how well Apple’s M1 chips can scale to provide raw performance that rivals the discrete graphics cards we typically find inside Windows-powered laptops. Less than a year later, it’s already starting to compete with the best GPUs from AMD and Nvidia as well. Apple hit Intel hard with its first M1 chips, offering a rare step-change improvement in performance with its 2020 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

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