Apple's new M4 Max chip is the "performance king" in single-threaded benchmarks, reports Tom's Hardware, with a clear lead over high-end (~$600) competition such as AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X and Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K in multi-threaded tasks.
The M4 Max is Apple's flagship SoC targeted at data scientists, 3D artists, and professionals. The top-end configuration packs 16 CPU cores (twelve performance and four efficient) and 40 GPU cores alongside up to 128GB of unified memory – accessible by both the CPU and GPU. Apple has also kitted its new MacBook Pro lineup with support for Thunderbolt 5, delivering speeds of up to 120 Gb/s.
I'm a little sad the M4 Max is not on offer in the new Mac Mini; it tops out with the M4 Pro, at 20 GPU cores. And a MacBook Pro with one starts at $3,200, though that's with a base config of 32GB with 1TB of storage. You can get very nice gaming laptops with 4090s in them for less that that! A new Mac Studio will surely land soon for Apple users wanting the best for a relatively reasonable price. The Mac Pro, at $7k and up, is not really for everyday users anymore and will reportedly get an M4 Ultra.
Apple's M4 Max is the single-core performance king in Geekbench 6 — M4 Max beats the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X [Tom's Hardware]
Previously:
• If you have a Mac, use this retro Terminal to play games like it's 1982
• Skyrim on Mac: When?
