How do the chips compare?

Apple recently unveiled a series of updates to the Mac line, running on Apple’s M4 family of Apple Silicon PC chipsets. 

The M4 family consists of the M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max with each more powerful than the last, but how much better is the M4 Max compared to the M4 Pro? 

Keep reading to discover the main differences between these two Apple Silicon chips. 

The M4 Max has a faster CPU 

When it comes to CPU performance, the M4 Max comes out on top with its 16-core CPU. That includes 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores which, according to Apple, makes the chipset 2.5x faster than the latest AI PC chip (in this instance, the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo with Intel Core Ultra 7). 

The M4 Pro, on the other hand, features a 14-core CPU, consisting of 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores. This makes the M4 Pro up to 2.1x faster than the latest AI PC chip – just slightly less than the M4 Max. 

The M4 Max has twice the GPU cores 

The M4 Max also has more GPU cores than the M4 Pro – double the amount, in fact. 

The M4 Max packs a huge 40 cores into its GPU, making it 4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. This makes the M4 Max well suited to those carrying out graphically intensive workloads, like 3D artists, data scientists and composers. 

The M4 Pro, meanwhile, includes a 20-core GPU, which Apple claims is 2.4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. This isn’t to say the M4 Pro is weak in this area by any means, with the company targeting developers, creative professionals, researchers and engineers with this chipset. 

Both the M4 Pro and M4 Max also take advantage of features like hardware-accelerated mesh shading, dynamic caching, an improved scheduler and 2x faster ray tracing acceleration. 

The M4 Max has double the memory 

When it comes to memory, the M4 Max doesn’t pull any punches. 

The premium chipset supports up to 128GB of fast unified memory, along with up to 546GB/s of memory bandwidth. This is 4x the bandwidth of the latest AI PC chip, allowing developers to interact with LLMs with nearly 200 billion parameters. 

The M4 Pro, meanwhile, supports up to 64GB of fast unified memory and 273GB/s of memory bandwidth. That works out at 2x the bandwidth of the top AI PC chip, allowing the M4 Pro to offer incredibly fast AI performance. 

Finally, the M4 includes an enhanced Media Engine. The new Media Engine features two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators which should greatly benefit those working with video. 

Early verdict 

The M4 Pro is set up to be an incredibly powerful Mac chipset, but the M4 Max pushes these specs even further in almost every area. 

However, you might want to wait until we share our reviews of the new Macs to see how both chips compare during real-world use and in our benchmarking tests.