M1 Max vs RTX 3080 Laptop GPU: Apple SoC excels in synthetic benchmarks but flounders alongside the M1 Pro in gaming tests

There seems to be little doubt that the new Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max are impressive processors that should have future MacBook Pro owners rubbing their hands with glee – especially if those future owners are graphic designers, content creators, or professionals who need a lot of compute performance. Those looking for a bit of casual gaming on the 2021 MacBook Pro laptops should also be well served with the integrated GPU options, but hardcore gamers should keep looking in the usual places for their particular computational fix.

Some very thorough early testing carried out by AnandTech has backed up a lot of the already leaked benchmarks concerning the M1 Pro and M1 Max. While synthetic benchmarks show the Apple Silicon, especially the M1 Max, in an extremely favorable light the same cannot be said for game tests. But Apple hasn’t designed the MacBook Pro 14 or MacBook Pro 16 for gaming, otherwise there would be much more RGB lighting on show, so there is that fact to keep in mind. Content creators and Mac professionals will see these results as magnificent while gamers and people who just don’t like Apple will see the results as proof that Apple Silicon is overrated.

The site sort of proved the claim that the Apple M1 Max can keep up with a powerful RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. In GFXBench 5.0 Aztec Ruins High1440p Offscreen, the M1 Pro performs quite well and is even ahead of an RTX 3060 Laptop GPU inside an Intel reference device (CPU: Core i9-11980HK). The M1 Max really shakes things up by overtaking AMD’s best in the form of the Radeon 6800M (CPU: Ryzen 9 5900HX; Asus ROG Strix G513QY) and coming very close to the RTX 3080 in the MSI GE76 Raider with i9-11980HK. The MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Max churns out 309.3 FPS compared to 315.0 FPS for the RTX 3080-based Raider.