AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 6950H vs Apple M2 Max

AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 6950H

The AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 6950H is a processor for big (workstation) laptops based on the Rembrandt generation. The R9 6900HX integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.9 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The 6950H is the professional version of the consumer R9 6900HX without overclocking features but with additional management features and the Microsoft Pluton Security processor.

The new Zen 3+ architecture is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

A big novelty is the integrated GPU Radeon 680M, that is now based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.4 GHz. It should be the fastest iGPU of all at the time of announcement.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system built around the 6950H as of August 2023, we have tested one system featuring the 6950HS, its slightly more power-efficient brother. Based on that, expect the 6950H to be slightly faster than the Ryzen 7 5800H, Ryzen 9 4900H, Ryzen 5 PRO 7640HS and also the Core i7-11800H. In other words, this is a higher-end chip that will handle almost any task with ease, as of late 2022.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the CPU power limits are.

Power consumption

This Ryzen has a default TDP of 45 W (also known as the PL1). A high-performance cooling solution is a must for a CPU like this one here.

Ryzen 9 PRO 6950H is built with TSMC's 6 nm process leading to great, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.

Apple M2 Max

The Apple M2 Max is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the early 2023 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 12 CPU cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores). The E-cores clock with up to 3.4 GHz, the P-Cores up to 3.7 GHz (mostly 3.3 GHz in multi-threaded workloads and 3.4 GHz in single threaded).

The big cores (codename Avalanche) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 36 MB shared L2 cache (up from 24 MB in the M1 Pro). The four efficiency cores (codename Blizzard) 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 49 MB SLC (System Level Cache). 

The unified memory (32, 64, or 96 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 512 Bit memory controller (400 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The CPU performance should be quite similar to the M2 Pro as only the higher memory bandwidth and bigger L3 cache could make a difference for some workloads.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Max offers a 30-core GPU or a GPU with all 38 cores.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine (faster than M1 Max), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M2 Max is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC (second generation) and integrates 40 billion transistors. The power consumption of the CPU part is up to 36 Watt according to powermetrics. When fully loading the CPU and GPU cores, the chip uses up to 89 Watt and the CPU part is limited to 25 Watt.