M1 Max Enough for the Upcoming 27" iMac (or iMac Pro)?

[Homy]

They could do something else but their track record says it will probably be the same M1 Pro and Max. They put the same M1 in MBA, MBP 13", Mini and iMac 24". It will be the same M1 Pro and Max in the MBP 14"-16", Mini Pro and iMac Pro. Another possibility is they will use M2 Pro and Max built upon enhanced 5nm. M1 Pro/Max are built upon the old M1 and were ready earlier this year but delayed until now. The enhanced 5nm could be the reason we have to wait perhaps until next summer for Mini Pro and iMac Pro. When M2 Pro/Max is introduced in Mini/iMac then we can have 2-4 dies in Mac Pro at the end of next year.

 

[JPack]

They could do something else but their track record says it will probably be the same M1 Pro and Max. They put the same M1 in MBA, MBP 13", Mini and iMac 24". It will be the same M1 Pro and Max in the MBP 14"-16", Mini Pro and iMac Pro. Another possibility is they will use M2 Pro and Max built upon enhanced 5nm. M1 Pro/Max are built upon the old M1 and were ready earlier this year but delayed until now. The enhanced 5nm could be the reason we have to wait perhaps until next summer for Mini Pro and iMac Pro. When M2 Pro/Max is introduced in Mini/iMac then we can have 2-4 dies in Mac Pro at the end of next year.

All indications point to M1 Pro/Max already using enhanced 5nm (N5P). The chips have date codes of 2130 which means late July to early August 2021. This is the same date as A15 chips shown in iPhone 13 teardowns. Nikkei also reported N5P for MBP back in April.

It's unlikely we'll see M2 Pro/Max until 2023. We're only expecting the MCM version of M1 to debut next year for the Mac Pro.

 

[LonestarOne]

It's not just about what you want or need, Apple has something to prove. When they replace the current 27" Intel iMac, they have to target 12th gen Alder Lake performance, not the 10th gen i9 that the current iMac can be configured with.

Only if they’re hoping to sell those machines to switchers rather than upgraders. For most people, the comparison will be to whatever Mac they’re planning to replace, not to a PC.

 

[aeronatis]

If we use Geekbench multicore scores as a rough estimate, the 1X M1 Max chip already rivals the most powerful (18-core) iMac Pro (12,700 Max; 13,400 iMac Pro); and a 2X M1 Max should have about 25% more CPU processing power than the most powerful (28-core) Mac Pro (25,400 2X Max; 19,800 Mac Pro).

I wouldn't say Geekbench is a good representative of real world continuous performance as the test last not long enough, as M1 Max scores way below most desktop CPU's on Cinebench R23 and that is not even mentioning Alder Lake, still being comfortably above H series CPUs though ??

It's not just about what you want or need, Apple has something to prove. When they replace the current 27" Intel iMac, they have to target 12th gen Alder Lake performance, not the 10th gen i9 that the current iMac can be configured with. They also need to target the desktop Nvidia GPUs, not the first gen AMD Navi GPUs in the 2020 iMac.

I wouldn't say they has something to prove on all-in-one segment. An iMac with M1 Max inside would easily become the quietest and one of the most powerful all-in-one computers while packing a 120 Hz 5K display.

They can easily rival tower PC setups with the newly designed compact Mac Pro (or a higher Mac Mini or both with different configurations), claiming they achieve similar or higher performance in a much smaller chassis (like mini-ITX size) and power envelope. All they need to do is to provide lower priced Mac Pro configurations. ??

 

[theorist9]

I wouldn't say Geekbench is a good representative of real world continuous performance as the test last not long enough, as M1 Max scores way below most desktop CPU's on Cinebench R23 and that is not even mentioning Alder Lake, still being comfortably above H series CPUs though ??

There was extensive discussion of Cinebench R23 on this thread, indicating it's not a good test to use for Apple Silicon. See,e.g.: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ax.2322243/page-6?post=30594246#post-30594246

Spec 2017 would be much better, but I don't know if you could easily collect Spec 2017 multicore scores for all the systems I mentioned.

I would think the GB deficiency you're mentioning (that it's bursty) would actually favor Intel x86 over AS, since the former tends to slow down with extended multicore tests due to thermal issues.

 

[aeronatis]

There was extensive discussion of Cinebench R23 on this thread, indicating it's not a good test to use for Apple Silicon. See,e.g.: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ax.2322243/page-6?post=30594246#post-30594246

Spec 2017 would be much better, but I don't know if you could easily collect Spec 2017 multicore scores for all the systems I mentioned.

I would think the GB deficiency you're mentioning (that it's bursty) would actually favor Intel x86 over AS, since the former tends to slow down with extended multicore tests due to thermal issues.

This is good to know. Still, I would rather take a real world comparison than a pre configured benchmark though. I will have a chance to compare M1 Max to 3 different desktops next month. I will share my observations.

Yes, Geekbench should indeed favor Intel in that regard. After all, especially for laptops, Intel's never reached boost clocks pretty much only works on short benchmarks. For some reason, I must have thought M1 Max being just as comparable to the likes of i9-11900K and Ryzen 9 5900X would be too good to be true. I will be only glad if it happens to be so ??

 

[neinjohn]

What I'd expect: drop the base iMacs 27'' and kill the name, introduce a new Mac mini with M1 Pro and M1 Max options, introduce a new cheaper Mini-LED 27/32'' XDR screen, introduce a new iMac Pro with the same panel as new display with 2XM1 Pro and 2XM1 Max starting price from $2899.

The new Mac mini can be competitive on software that is well optimised or use the accelerators and at least on CPU side a 20 CPU-core is as fast as any Alder Lake top SKU or probably any new Zen with 16-core as a new desktop from Apple.

 

[LonestarOne]

What I'd expect: drop the base iMacs 27'' and kill the name, introduce a new Mac mini with M1 Pro and M1 Max options, introduce a new cheaper Mini-LED 27/32'' XDR screen, introduce a new iMac Pro with the same panel as new display with 2XM1 Pro and 2XM1 Max starting price from $2899.

There’s no way Apple’s going to increase the cost of the 27-inch iMac base configuration by $1100. Speculation is one thing, but that’s crazy talk.

The base configuration might be more expensive than the current 27-inch, but that would mean somewhere around $2000, not $2900.

 

[Jorbanead]

There’s no way Apple’s going to increase the cost of the 27-inch iMac base configuration by $1100. Speculation is one thing, but that’s crazy talk.

The base configuration might be more expensive than the current 27-inch, but that would mean somewhere around $2000, not $2900.

The current 27” base model comes with 8Gb of ram. They could offer an M1 processor with 8Gb as the baseline, but I’d guess the M1 Pro chip would be the baseline iMac - which means minimum of 16Gb of ram. If they also add MiniLED I think they may raise prices by at least $200 for the base price.

I do suspect this will be called the iMac Pro though - and if they do call it iMac Pro, the M1 Max in my opinion won’t be enough to call it a pro desktop so to me I think they have to put 2x M1 Max chips to be able to compete with Intel, Nvidia, and AMD desktop chips.

 

[neinjohn]

There’s no way Apple’s going to increase the cost of the 27-inch iMac base configuration by $1100. Speculation is one thing, but that’s crazy talk.

The base configuration might be more expensive than the current 27-inch, but that would mean somewhere around $2000, not $2900.

I just think a M1 Pro 8 or 10-CPU SKU are a little underwhelming for an initial desktop offering if keeping the same line-up. Contrary to the iMac 21,5'' that has been using mobile CPU and GPU for years, the iMac 27'' was always something more powerful on CPU and GPU department, that is why I think they could just reshuffle the line-up. Kill the 27-inch iMac, extend the Mac mini to M1 Max and re-do the iMac Pro but now from a lower starting price basically and get back in on the top, but not ultra-professional, display segment.

Allow the desktop consumer space to be covered by the cheaper options to manufacture with the Mac mini and go with higher starting prices, but with performance to justify it, on the Pro machines.

Other options is to provide a base iMac 27-inch with a M1 Pro with 16GB RAM and Mini-LED for the price point @Jorbanead offered but then the GPU would be on the lower side unless they can offer they plan to offer the same CPU count with more GPU cores.

 

[Tagbert]

What I'd expect: drop the base iMacs 27'' and kill the name, introduce a new Mac mini with M1 Pro and M1 Max options, introduce a new cheaper Mini-LED 27/32'' XDR screen, introduce a new iMac Pro with the same panel as new display with 2XM1 Pro and 2XM1 Max starting price from $2899.

The new Mac mini can be competitive on software that is well optimised or use the accelerators and at least on CPU side a 20 CPU-core is as fast as any Alder Lake top SKU or probably any new Zen with 16-core as a new desktop from Apple.

That would just push the price of the iMac Pro way beyond what most customer would pay. just because the previous Mac Pro was configured like a Mac Pro doesn’t mean that this iMac Pro has to sit in that market slot. It is likely that Apple will use Pro for all of the larger iMacs. They will follow the segmentation that they use in the MacBook line, with a smaller, less powerful consumer line and a larger, more powerful and more expensive pro line.

Most likely SOCs for the iMac Pro will be the same M1 Pro and Max as they sell in the MBPs. Due to screen size and assuming mini-LED, that probably puts the iMacs higher in price than the equivalent MBP config. That leaves a price gap between the 24” and the 27”. It will be interesting to see what they do to fill that gap. Will they do a larger consumer iMac or will they sell a lower end iMac Pro with M1 or with a normal IPS display?

While it is not impossible that Apple will bring the 20-core and/or 40-core SOCs to the iMac line, I would not expect that when they launch the iMac. They will probably want to use those SOCs to launch the new Mac Pro and promote that combo. They may later bring the 20/40 SOC to the iMac line as a special edition. Hopefully that have allowed for that when they redesign the iMac Pro and have eliminated all of the thermal corners.

 

[iBug2]

There's no way that the next iMac will not feature a 2x faster GPU than the current 27" iMac. 5700XT is slightly slower than M1 Max. But that won't cut it. I'm pretty sure that it'll have a 64 Core GPU option even if the CPU power will remain the same.

 

[Jorbanead]

I just think a M1 Pro 8 or 10-CPU SKU are a little underwhelming for an initial desktop offering if keeping the same line-up. Contrary to the iMac 21,5'' that has been using mobile CPU and GPU for years, the iMac 27'' was always something more powerful on CPU and GPU department, that is why I think they could just reshuffle the line-up. Kill the 27-inch iMac, extend the Mac mini to M1 Max and re-do the iMac Pro but now from a lower starting price basically and get back in on the top, but not ultra-professional, display segment.

Allow the desktop consumer space to be covered by the cheaper options to manufacture with the Mac mini and go with higher starting prices, but with performance to justify it, on the Pro machines.

Other options is to provide a base iMac 27-inch with a M1 Pro with 16GB RAM and Mini-LED for the price point @Jorbanead offered but then the GPU would be on the lower side unless they can offer they plan to offer the same CPU count with more GPU cores.

I think whatever they do, they’ll still have an M1 Pro/Max chip in the iMac as an option to keep prices lower. I just think they will also have a 2x M1 Max chip as well because they have to outperform both the iMac Pro and current 27” iMac (as well as match current Intel and AMD desktop offerings). I really don’t see any other solution as Apple would get a ton of bad press.

 

[LonestarOne]

Allow the desktop consumer space to be covered by the cheaper options to manufacture with the Mac mini and go with higher starting prices, but with performance to justify it, on the Pro machines.

That makes no sense from a marketing standpoint. All-in-ones like the iMac are much more appealing to low-end and mid-range users. Users at the high end are much more likely to purchase towers like the Mac Pro. The advantages of an all-in-one — simplicity, ease of integration, reduced clutter — are less important to them.

I’m speaking in generalities, of course. There are exceptions; some high-end users would choose an all-in-one over a tower, given the option. But that’s not where the sweet spot is.

 

[LonestarOne]

I’m willing to stick my neck out this far: I think there will be a based configuration, priced not much higher than the current 27” base configuration. The processor will be a step up from the processor in the 24” iMac. That would be the M1 Pro, unless Apple surprises us with an M2. And the high-end configuration will use the best processor Apple has available at the time.

 

[aeronatis]

I’m willing to stick my neck out this far: I think there will be a based configuration, priced not much higher than the current 27” base configuration. The processor will be a step up from the processor in the 24” iMac. That would be the M1 Pro, unless Apple surprises us with an M2. And the high-end configuration will use the best processor Apple has available at the time.

I agree! The 27" iMac (or the iMac Pro) will start with M1 Pro with 16 GB memory as the base configuration, just like the higher end Mac Mini will. M1 Max would be an upgrade option.

Whether they will use an M1 Max Duo as "the iMac Pro" and the base model "Mac Pro" or not is a mystery though. That could actually allow Mac Pro to be shrunk into a size not so bigger than that of the Mac Mini ?

 

[Boil]

...Mac Pro to be shrunk into a size not so bigger than that of the Mac Mini ?

There is a solid market for the current Mac Pro chassis to continue, for those who need / want PCIe slots...

But for those who do not need expansion slots, I have been thinking about a new Cube; 7.7" x 7.7" x 9.8", just a hair over 9.5 liters; seven (current 2018 Space Gray Intel) Mac minis tall...! So, the Mac mini has a 150W PSU in a 1.4" tall chassis; one would need only three of those to power a M1 Max Quad MCM, which means room for (optional) redundant PSUs...?

PSU(s) running up one side of the chassis, vertical mobo up the other; double-sided mobo (like 2019 Mac Pro), 1TB ECC DDR5 DIMMs & 16TB NVMe SSD storage in M.2 slots, all on the back side of the mobo, vertical ports on back of chassis...

Heat sink (with vapor chamber?) filling interior volume between mobo & PSU(s); 2019 Mac Pro-style 3D venting front & rear, 180mm intake fan up front, 2021 MacBook Pro-style feet...

 

[ader42]

They didn’t discontinue the intel Mini when M1 versions came out, they might release 27” M1 Pro & M1 Max iMacs and keep the highest end intel iMac until the Pro releases are shown at possibly WWDC 2022?

Personally I think the 27” iMacs will be configured exactly like the MBP - starting with the binned versions and upgrade to suit. For a specific budget it’ll likely be a choice of portability (MBP) or bigger screen (iMac).

Middle-power users are the market for iMacs - design studios and the like - a single M1 Max with 64GB is enough for them imho.

I feel that we will only get Mn Max Duo and Quadra in Mac Pro.

 

[theorist9]

This is good to know. Still, I would rather take a real world comparison than a pre configured benchmark though. I will have a chance to compare M1 Max to 3 different desktops next month. I will share my observations.

Yes, Geekbench should indeed favor Intel in that regard. After all, especially for laptops, Intel's never reached boost clocks pretty much only works on short benchmarks. For some reason, I must have thought M1 Max being just as comparable to the likes of i9-11900K and Ryzen 9 5900X would be too good to be true. I will be only glad if it happens to be so ??

So I found SPEC 2017 mulitcore results for Alder Lake on Anandtech. SPEC is a synthetic benchmark, so it of course won't replace benchmarks for your actual workflows. But it is regarded as the most sophisticated overall CPU benchmark available, and is often used by chip designers. I think that's why Anandtech uses it, because they try to maintain a high level of technical sophistication in their reviews.

Averaging the aggregate floating point and integer scores from SPEC 2017, and seting the score for the M1 Max to 1, we have:

Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR5 = 1.20
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16 perf cores) = 1.09
Apple M1 Max (8 perf + 2 eff cores) = 1
Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR4 = 0.90

So that's pretty impressive. The fastest stock Intel and AMD desktop consumer chips have multicore CPU scores only ~10-20% higher than that of the M1 Max, which is a mobile chip, and has fewer cores.

Looking forward to hearing your findings. You don't use Mathematica, do you?

The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity

www.anandtech.com

.

 

[thunng8]

So I found SPEC 2017 mulitcore results for Alder Lake on Anandtech. SPEC is a synthetic benchmark, so it of course won't replace benchmarks for your actual workflows. But it is regarded as the most sophisticated overall CPU benchmark available, and is often used by chip designers. I think that's why Anandtech uses it, because they try to maintain a high level of technical sophistication in their reviews.

Averaging the aggregate floating point and integer scores from SPEC 2017, and seting the score for the M1 Max to 1, we have:

Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR5 = 1.20
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16 perf cores) = 1.09
Apple M1 Max (8 perf + 2 eff cores) = 1
Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR4 = 0.90

So that's pretty impressive. The fastest stock Intel and AMD desktop consumer chips have multicore CPU scores only ~10-20% higher than that of the M1 Max, which is a mobile chip, and has fewer cores.

Looking forward to hearing your findings. You don't use Mathematica, do you?

The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity

www.anandtech.com

View attachment 1910678 .

The end result is a geometric mean of many sub tests. You can look at each test and see which matches your workflow. They are all compiled from real application code fragment. For example, the GCC test

So I found SPEC 2017 mulitcore results for Alder Lake on Anandtech. SPEC is a synthetic benchmark, so it of course won't replace benchmarks for your actual workflows. But it is regarded as the most sophisticated overall CPU benchmark available, and is often used by chip designers. I think that's why Anandtech uses it, because they try to maintain a high level of technical sophistication in their reviews.

Averaging the aggregate floating point and integer scores from SPEC 2017, and seting the score for the M1 Max to 1, we have:

Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR5 = 1.20
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16 perf cores) = 1.09
Apple M1 Max (8 perf + 2 eff cores) = 1
Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K (8 perf + 8 eff cores), DDR4 = 0.90

So that's pretty impressive. The fastest stock Intel and AMD desktop consumer chips have multicore CPU scores only ~10-20% higher than that of the M1 Max, which is a mobile chip, and has fewer cores.

Looking forward to hearing your findings. You don't use Mathematica, do you?

The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity

www.anandtech.com

View attachment 1910678 .

That's the whole point of spec. More details here: http://spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/overview.html#benchmarks

In any case, in "real" application performance, the M1Pro/max has shown it can outperform other chips with higher geekbench/cinebench scores or higher TFLOPS on the graphics card mainly because of the other stuff in the SOC like neural engine, media encoders and for many graphics tasks it can be many times faster than discrete graphics cards because of the unified memory - look at all the GPU heavy video rendering tasks where the M1Max outperforms the desktop 3080 system.

 

[theorist9]

That's the whole point of spec. More details here: http://spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/overview.html#benchmarks

In any case, in "real" application performance, the M1Pro/max has shown it can outperform other chips with higher geekbench/cinebench scores or higher TFLOPS on the graphics card mainly because of the other stuff in the SOC like neural engine, media encoders and for many graphics tasks it can be many times faster than discrete graphics cards because of the unified memory - look at all the GPU heavy video rendering tasks where the M1Max outperforms the desktop 3080 system.

Yeah, I know what the point of SPEC is. It's an attempt to to provide a synthetic aggregate of a good range of real-world computing tasks. But I realize that I used the wrong term to describe it: Since it uses real-world tasks, I should have said it's an "aggregated application benchmark" rather than a "synthetic benchmark". But, regardless, it still doesn't replace actual workflows. See, for instance, this assessment of SPEC 2006 and 2017 by CERN for the LHC:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/773049/contributions/3473809/attachments/1931931/3200035/20191104-CHEP2019-BMK-AV-v005.pdf

I'm also familiar with the various benchmarks that have been posted for the M1 for rendering tasks. Of course, a lot of this is still early. We won't get a clearer picture until we know that software is well-optimized for AS. Currently, many native builds (for applications generally) don't yet run well on AS. See, for instance, https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ax.2322243/page-6?post=30599569#post-30599569

 

[Adarna]

 

[neinjohn]

There’s no way Apple’s going to increase the cost of the 27-inch iMac base configuration by $1100. Speculation is one thing, but that’s crazy talk.

The base configuration might be more expensive than the current 27-inch, but that would mean somewhere around $2000, not $2900.

Madness.

At least for now...

 

[Gnattu]

Well, it turns out there could be no 27" iMac anymore, RIP.

 

[ADGrant]

Well, it turns out there could be no 27" iMac anymore, RIP.

Well the new 27” monitor includes a good web cam and great speakers (and an A13) so when attached to an Apple Silicon Mac it is an effective replacement. You could attach it to an M1 Mini to give you an M1 27” iMac equivalent if that is what you want. Of course the monitor costs more than a 24” M1 iMac but you do gain a lot of flexibility.