Apple M1 Pro 14-Core GPU vs Apple M4 Max 32-Core GPU vs Apple M4 8-core GPU

Apple M1 Pro 14-Core GPU

The Apple M1 Pro 14-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering 14 of the 16 cores in the M1 Pro Chip. The 1792 ALUs offer a theoretical performance of up to 4.6 Teraflops (16 core variant with 2048 ALUs offers 5.3 Teraflops). 

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 256 bit bus (up to 200 GBit/s).

The GPU clocks between 389 and 1296 MHz and offers no short term boost (389, 486, 648, 778, 972, 1296 MHz steps according to Powermetrics). The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10).

The Apple M1 Pro is manufactured in the modern 5nm process at TSMC and offers an excellent energy efficiency. According to the internal sensors, the GPU uses 15 Watt under full load.

Apple M4 Max 32-Core GPU

The Apple M4 Max GPU (32 cores) is an integrated graphics adapter that's built into the 14-core Apple M4 Max SoC. It features 32 "cores" and has access to at least 36 GB of fast 410 GB/s LPDDR5x on-package RAM depending on the configuration. As is typical for graphics adapters released in 2024, it has hardware support for ray tracing as well as mesh shading and other modern technologies. It also supports external displays with resolutions as high as "8K" and can HW-decode a few popular video codecs such as h.264, h.265 and AV1.

Performance

Its gaming performance is set to be approximately as good as that of the GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop. Please keep in mind that very few games have been compiled specifically for Apple silicon Macs meaning most titles have to be run via emulation layers. Some of them are displayed with visual artefacts as a result, or don't start at all.

Power consumption

Given the power on offer, we expect the iGPU to consume over 40 W when under heavy loads.

Just like the rest of the Apple M4 Max chip, the integrated graphics adapter is manufactured on a "second generation 3 nm" TSMC process which is still cutting-edge as of late 2024.

Apple M4 8-core GPU

The 8-core Apple M4 GPU is a graphics adapter built into the smallest Apple M4 series SoC that debuted in October 2024 alongside the new iMac. It isn't clear if this is a 10-core M4 GPU with two cores disabled, or if Apple actually makes an entirely new M4 SoC now that has fewer CPU and GPU cores by design.

A few popular video codecs can be HW-decoded and HW-encoded here but the list is nowhere near as long as what current AMD iGPUs deliver, let alone Intel iGPUs. However, there is a healthy selection of modern technologies such as ray tracing on offer.

Just like the rest of the Apple M4 chip, the graphics adapter is manufactured on a "second generation 3 nm" TSMC process that's still cutting-edge, as of late 2024. It has access to the 16 or 24 gigabytes of fast on-package LPDDR5x-7500 RAM and, apart from the iMac's internal display, allows one to connect one more monitor with an "up to 6K" resolution whereas the 10-core M4 GPU can drive 2 such monitors.

Its performance is slated to be around 15% lower than that of the 10-core M4 GPU. Still, it's going to be at least as fast as the Radeon 760M in many tasks, including gaming.