Apple Announces M4 Max Chip: Up to 16-Core CPU, Up to 40-Core GPU, Up to 128GB of RAM, and More

[ThailandToo]

I got the m2 max 16" with 96gb and 4tb second hand for 2800cdn. Hoping to see benchmarks on m4 max as trade in value for my model on apple store is 1500$cdn. Eek. I like the large screen and performance all the same and so far so good. Importantly is the battery efficiency with the new chips.

Unless you’re doing something incredibly intensive, I would think waiting until a new design with faster chips makes sense. I mean you have an incredible Mac there. Tim would thank you (not personally) with his shareholders and board being super happy though.

 

[JW Pepper]

Love to see what they have in store for the Mac Studio and MacPro, the sales of these are going to stall now.

 

[JW Pepper]

Why can't you get the Max in a Mac Mini? If the cooling in the MacBook Pro is sufficient you'd think the cooling in the Mini would be too (even the new tiny one). Probably to help them differentiate the Studio (and charge extra for it).

Because they want you to buy the Studio.

 

[CWallace]

So after 2 generations of Pro and Max having the same CPU part, and 1 generation where the Pro was seriously nerfed compared to the Max, now the Pro is closer to the Max again, but not the same. I wonder what drove this decision.

As others have noted, probably due to the M3's N3B 3nm process, which had lowish yields and was not the most efficient design which likely favored identical efficiency and power core counts for the Pro SoC.

Now that the M4 is on the improved N3E 3nm process, yields will be higher and overall efficiency will be better so they can increase the performance core count.

 

[krakenrelease]

Umm - like I said before the iPhone 16 Pro’s already have WiFi 7, so your statement is false. Again - makes no sense.

Could be power requirements. Maybe with the wifi 7, it couldn't reach it's stated power goals. Who knows. But if you aren't hitting up to 10Gb/s on your device already, it wouldn't matter that much.

 

[AmpedToGo]

Like 4 people in the world are set up with WiFi 7.

And those four are Wi-Fi driver or AP firmware engineers pulling their hair out to get basic WiFi 7 going, with decent 2.4 GHz compat, nevermind making MLO work.

 

[triumph71]

Defacto doesn't mean "lesser" WiFi will stop working.

I use Wifi 5 in my house. But then again only things that can't be wired are WiFi

I'm not sure why you would 'defend' this descision.

It's all about your technical needs. If you are OK with WIFI 5 good on you... There are plenty of us who need to transfer and process large files, where WIFI 6 and even WIFI6e is a limitation that requires utilizing USB-C ethernet dongles to achieve the speeds we need. Being able to atually do that Wirelessley (via WIFI 7 speeds) is of course a huge plus.

The most popular apple computer for professionals is the MacBookPro, it used to be the Mac Pro for many of us, but we've since moved to MBP because of the lack of attention the MP got over the years and the insane prices Apple demands for the MPs compread to the MBPs. With that said, you don't think we should expect the most popular "professional laptop" should get WIFI 7 when Apple already provides this on both regular and pro iPhone 16 phones? Which class of device do you think would benefit from the fastest current WIFI technology, a phone or a laptop people use for getting work done??? If they can squeeze in the cost of a WIFI7 modem in a $800 phone, they can't squeeze it into a $2000 laptop? It makes no sense to me.

 

[gallico916]

Love it! Why marketing page comparing specs to 4 year old M1 tho?

Because compared to the M3, the difference is not big enough to be worth the upgrade

 

[triumph71]

Could be power requirements. Maybe with the wifi 7, it couldn't reach it's stated power goals. Who knows. But if you aren't hitting up to 10Gb/s on your device already, it wouldn't matter that much.

Power requirements makes no sense either iPhone 16 with WIFI 7 has much tighter power and battery requirements than a laptop.

 

[cylack]

I will be very disappointed if the 2025 Mac Studio does not include WiFi 7. This is shocking it wasn’t included on the high end MacBook Pros.

 

[duffyanneal]

The M4 Pro also requires the "unbinned" model to have more than 36GB.

The 36GB option requires 12GB DIMMs while the 48/64/128GB requires 16GB DIMMs, but the SoCs must have a controller that can handle both.

The unbinned M4 Max has higher memory bandwidth than the binned M4 Max so I think the unbinned CPU has quad channel memory while the binned CPU has 3 channel memory. If that SWAG is correct the 48 GB M4 Max has 4 channels x 12 GB while the binned M4 Max has 3 channels x 12 GB of memory.

 

[AmpedToGo]

Does anyone know this site? They've posted prelim M4 Pro Geekbench results using engineering sample silicon:

Apple M4 Pro (14-Core) vs M4 (10-Core): performance comparison

We compared Apple M4 Pro (14-Core) (4.52 GHz) against M4 (10-Core) (4.5 GHz) in games and benchmarks. Find out which CPU has better performance.

nanoreview.net

 

[chucker23n1]

My uneducated guess is that in iPhone there is Qualcomm chip with wifi 7 but other devices use other chip that do not have v.7.

iPhone 16 Wi-Fi is Broadcom, not Qualcomm.

 

[creediddy]

Here is a rule of thumb for everyone as Apple does not announce this information:

M3 Pro Performance = M4 Performance (estimation)
M3 Max Performance = M4 Pro Performance (estimation)

You can continue this performance trend year by year the results are nearly true. Essentially M5 chip will be an slightly improved M4 Pro chip.

 

[Jodeo]

How fast are these chips?
I just came back from four months from now just to post this. As you can see I'm late to the game here, so Apple still has work to do on these. But hey, time travel. (Might want to buy up some Yankee merch, btw; and how 'bout that stunning Jets turnaround to advance to - and win - the Super Bowl!!! Even Pres. RFK jr. didn't expect that!)

 

[Algr]

Apple keeps letting the high end languish for years without even a price drop.

"Why aren't you updating them?"
"No one is buying them."

 

[cpnotebook80]

Also waiting for benchmark and actual use comparison between M2 Max and M4 Max.

Yes, I am happy to be able to not worry about RAM and have my windows in parallels run smoothly for my work. However, battery efficiency is something that is top on the list with the new m4. I do notice that the battery falls quickly when doing zoom or MS teams calls for few hours at a time. Maybe its just those apps.

 

[mburkhard]

Why can't you get the Max in a Mac Mini? If the cooling in the MacBook Pro is sufficient you'd think the cooling in the Mini would be too (even the new tiny one). Probably to help them differentiate the Studio (and charge extra for it).

Simple, because Apple wants to provide you with a reason for getting the next Mac Studio.

 

[Rafagon]

I'm extremely disappointed that Apple did not increase the RAM on the top end M4 Max. We need more RAM for our generative AI (LLM) workloads, and this isn't getting it done. 48 GB sticks are available commercially; they could have slotted 4 x 48 GB modules for 192 GB on the top end. Why didn't they? Why?

+15% CPU and +20% GPU isn't gonna get it done. Sorry Apple, I'm skipping this generation. Your inability to ship more RAM just cost you at least $8k from me.

Wow, you have dealt a devastating blow to Apple.

They may even go out of business without your $8K!

 

[Rafagon]

Love it! Why marketing page comparing specs to 4 year old M1 tho?

Exactly what I was thinking. You beat me to the punch!

 

[FastLaneJB]

Interesting comment. When companies like Apple start producing more WiFi 7 devices that will make people like me upgrade to WiFi 7. I am sure others would agree and would upgrade to WiFi 7 too. I think anything Apple releases now should be WiFi 7. Makes no sense that iPhone 16 Pro’s are WiFi 7 capable, but all the new devices announced this week are not.

Exactly that and that people might well keep these laptops for a long time. I was thinking of upgrading from a M1 Max to M4 Max but doesn’t mean the M1 Max then stops getting used. I’d pass onto another member of my family to use it.

Not having WiFi 7 might not be a big deal right now but it will become more so during the life time of the laptop. The fact they added it to the iPhone but not the Mac doesn’t make much sense to me.

I’ll hold off now and look at M5 Max then again, not going to buy it with WiFi 6E I’m afraid.

 

[AmpedToGo]

Regarding Wi-Fi 7: Take some time to read community forums for the companies who make Wi-Fi 7 access points. It's pretty sad.

You will find a lot of posts from early Wi-Fi 7 AP adopters who wish they could return theirs. The first crop of Wi-Fi 7 APs have painful issues involving backward compatibility with 2.4 GHz IoT devices. With Wi-Fi 7, beacons have changed, WPA3 is required, and WPF gets enabled. All of that creates compat issues with certain older Wi-Fi devices.

The AP makers have been working to solve those when they can with AP firmware fixes, but now it looks like some are pivoting to rev their first Wi-Fi 7 AP HW designs to move on from the first-gen SoC parts they used to build their APs.

I'll bet $1 that Wi-Fi 7 2.4 GHz IoT back-compat won't get fully resolved until next year. I'll bet another $1 it'll take Wi-Fi 7 AP firmware and client driver developers until late 2025 or 1H 2026 to get MLO rock solid. I could be wrong, which would make me really happy.

 

[Zest28]

Let‘s see what the resale value is of my 16“ M1 Max MacBook Pro as I‘m hitting the limits of this machine. But to be honest, I am waiting for NVIDIA to launch the RTX 5090 early 2025 so I will probably go that direction.

 

[mthomas184]

Regarding Wi-Fi 7: Take some time to read community forums for the companies who make Wi-Fi 7 access points. It's pretty sad.

You will find a lot of posts from early Wi-Fi 7 AP adopters who wish they could return theirs. The first crop of Wi-Fi 7 APs have painful issues involving backward compatibility with 2.4 GHz IoT devices. With Wi-Fi 7, beacons have changed, WPA3 is required, and WPF gets enabled. All of that creates compat issues with certain older Wi-Fi devices.

The AP makers have been working to solve those when they can with AP firmware fixes, but now it looks like some are pivoting to rev their first Wi-Fi 7 AP HW designs to move on from the first-gen SoC parts they used to build their APs.

I'll bet $1 that Wi-Fi 7 2.4 GHz IoT back-compat won't get fully resolved until next year. I'll bet another $1 it'll take Wi-Fi 7 AP firmware and client driver developers until late 2025 or 1H 2026 to get MLO rock solid. I could be wrong, which would make me really happy.

Even with all the issues, it should still be included NOW because people think it should be just because they need something to complain about.

 

[Anaxarxes]

I'm extremely disappointed that Apple did not increase the RAM on the top end M4 Max. We need more RAM for our generative AI (LLM) workloads, and this isn't getting it done. 48 GB sticks are available commercially; they could have slotted 4 x 48 GB modules for 192 GB on the top end. Why didn't they? Why?

+15% CPU and +20% GPU isn't gonna get it done. Sorry Apple, I'm skipping this generation. Your inability to ship more RAM just cost you at least $8k from me.

Most workstation grade laptops offer 128GB max, which the M4 Max is also offering.Understand your point, but you should also understand that your use may represent tiny part of userbase and they cannot cover 100%

Also, ram on AS is part of the SoC