M1 Pro vs M1 Max Power consumption on low load?

[nightoftune]

Hey, sorry for the noob question but

i would take the M1 Pro for the CPU power but the Max has some nice features. Does the Max has a higher idle/low power consumption because of internal design and GPU cores or shoud it be the same?

I dont want to get a 14 with even less battery life.

 

[jonnysods]

Great question. I ordered the 14” with 32 cores but now I’m tortured by how much battery life I’m sacrificing. I have the M1 MBA and I’ve been spoiled by the battery life.

 

[i-aamir]

Both processors claim to have the same battery life consumption so I am hoping that we dont get poorer battery for going for the expensive option. I have just ordered the 16" M1 Max!

 

[mac_editor]

Since A13 (they might have been doing so before but don’t remember), I believe Apple is making use of clock-gating to power down unused portions of processors. On my M1 Mac mini, idle power consumption of the GPU portion is just is 4 mW. This is peanuts. Ideally with so many GPU cores, Apple should keep a majority of them idle under normal circumstances for the Pro or Max.

Power metrics for the SoC can be retrieved via CLI using powermetrics tool that’s part of macOS.

 

[n00byn4t3r]

Great question. I ordered the 14” with 32 cores but now I’m tortured by how much battery life I’m sacrificing. I have the M1 MBA and I’ve been spoiled by the battery life.

Same here, I'm probably going to wait for reviews and hope that they will shed some light on this. The M1 MBA has spoiled me with its fanless design (blissful silence) and never have to think about it battery life.

 

[jonnysods]

I know. I already pulled the trigger on the loaded 14” (not 64gb) - I need more power and screens than the MBA can give me. But man the MBA has been rock solid and a good sidekick to me. I’ll be sad to hear fans kick on again…

 

[jabbr]

I wonder if Monterey’s low power mode significantly offset the worse battery life on the new MBPs. What do you think?

 

[Xenomorph]

Well, on the old "Dual-GPU" MacBook Pro I had, just opening something "non Apple" like Chrome would trigger high-power mode. I tried to use stuff like gfxCardStatus and UEFI commands to disable the discrete GPU, just to keep power usage to a minimum.

The M1 Pro (CPU and GPU) is already way, way faster than what I have, so I went with it over the M1 Max. Work is paying, so cost isn't an issue (and it's only like $200 more to go from M1 Pro to M1 Max).

It's probably silly, but basically I'd rather focus on getting the more power-efficient one than worry about the power-hungry version "behaving".

 

[brosenz]

Due to the larger Heatsink of the Max, for low loads, will it run at lower temperatures than the Pro who has a smaller Heatsink?