Apple M1 Max vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX

Apple M1 Max

The Apple M1 Max is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 10 cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and two power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). There is no Turbo Boost for single cores or short burst periods. The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1.

The big cores (codename Firestorm) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 24 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB in the M1). The four efficiency cores (codename Icestorm) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 48 MB SLC (System Level Cache). The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.

The unified memory (32 or 64 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 512 bit memory controller (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU. This is the main difference to the M1 Pro and the CPU performance is quite similar.

The biggest difference to the M1 Pro is the bigger integrated GPU with 24 or 32 cores (up from 16).

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine, a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including two ProRes engines).

The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 57 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks. 

AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX is a high-end workstation processor with 64 cores (8 per chiplet) based on the Zen 2 architecture. The CPU offers a base clock speed of 2.7 GHz and can boost up to 4.2 GHz. It uses the new sWRX8 socket and therefore can't be used to upgrade older Threadripper systems. The integrated memory controller uses 8 channels and supports DDR4-3200.

Thanks to the 64 cores and good a single-core performance of the Zen 2 architecture, the 3995WX offers a very good performance. However, if the application can not make use of the 128 threads, cheaper processors offer a better price/performance ratio.

The Threadripper Pro 3995WX is rated at 280 Watt and therefore 70 Watt more than the 2990WX. The CPU is With a release price of $5000 (for OEMs), the CPU is very expensive and targeted at high-end workstation desktop PCs.