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

[AAPLGeek]

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 ??



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. ??

This post should be pinned in every discussion about M1 chips.

 

[the8thark]

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

I feel the Mac Pro will have something slightly different to the M series. But lets focus on the iMac.

The Studio is great replacement for the high end 27 iMac. However the for the low and mid 27 iMac, M1 Pro and M1 Max is perfect. Just take the guts out of the Pro and Max MBP and put them in a 27 iMac and call it a day. A lot of people would have that product. That level , ie the prosumer level I think would have a lot of sales. The fact it is seemingly discontinued is not a good thing.

 

[aeronatis]

I feel the Mac Pro will have something slightly different to the M series. But lets focus on the iMac.

The Studio is great replacement for the high end 27 iMac. However the for the low and mid 27 iMac, M1 Pro and M1 Max is perfect. Just take the guts out of the Pro and Max MBP and put them in a 27 iMac and call it a day. A lot of people would have that product. That level , ie the prosumer level I think would have a lot of sales. The fact it is seemingly discontinued is not a good thing.

Which is why a Mac Mini with M1 Pro would perfectly complete the line-up.

 

[aeronatis]

This post should be pinned in every discussion about M1 chips.

No, actually I overlooked something on that post. x86 CPUs consistently gets better score on Cinebench due to not being optimized enough for Apple Silicon despite the app having "M1 Support" as pointed out on this post:

Emulated 12900K for mobile has better performance with low power consumption like M1 Max?

Few words regarding Cinebench. It uses the Embree Rendering library - i library developed by Intel. There are only AVX code paths available. If you want to compile Embree for ARM64 you have 2 options: 1) Use the default C implementation without any SIMD instructions 2) Use the AVX-to-NEON...

forums.macrumors.com

Therefore, while I'm still on the same page regarding Geekbench, Cinebench is definetely not the best answer either. Any real world test that includes using an app with native arm64 support, M1 Max seems to perform right there compared to the desktop CPUs I have tested.

 

[aeronatis]

If I can get the review samples, I will share an expansive comparison between M1 Max vs Ryzen 5900X vs the upcoming Ryzen 5800X3D.