Over the weekend, Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter gave us a HUGE amount of clarity
in terms of what’s gonna happen with the iMac later this year.
He said that this year, the transition to Apple Silicon will shift into high gear
with several new Mac models based on the following processors, a new M2 chip,
last year’s M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, and new super-powered versions of the M1 Max.
And to give you some more context on what those super-powered chips will be, Apple is said to
be taking multiple M1 Max dies and combining them together using a die-to-die interconnect,
in sets of either two or four dies to essentially create M1 Max Duo and M1 Max Quadro super chips.
And that first M1 Max Duo chip was exactly what we were expecting to go into the iMac Pro for
various reasons which I’m gonna show and explain in this video, including internal software leaks!
But unfortunately, Mark Gurman has just made it completely clear that he doesn’t believe the iMac
Pro is gonna be getting this new super-powered M1 Max Duo chip, which is extremely disappointing.
So before I explain exactly what he said over this weekend and why it’s so important to understand,
I want to first get into all of the reasons why we thought it made sense for the iMac Pro
to get this new high-powered chip, with both leaks and common sense, so let’s get right into that.
Last year in November, after we already got our hands on the new M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros,
Ross Young confirmed that the new iMac Pro will be coming with a 27”
Mini-LED display with 120hz ProMotion technology!
And this right here is a big deal because it hinted to us that Apple was about to go ALL
OUT on this new iMac Pro, since implementing that technology would be pretty expensive.
And then shortly after that, a software developer named Hector Martin,
who is currently working on bringing Asahi Linux to Apple Silicon Macs
found something groundbreaking in terms of these new M1 Max dies.
Apparently, the IRQ controller in the M1 Max is very clearly engineered
with a currently unused second half for a second die. He even
said it’s technically a second set of registers that are currently all idle.
And going even further, the IRQ Controller only has support for up to 2 dies, not 4.
And because of all of this, it basically showed that Apple had already put everything in place
in terms of the software side of macOS to connect two M1 Max dies, but not yet four of them.
So this led me to believe that Apple planned to release an M1 Max Duo Mac before the release
of the next macOS software version, which would mean that we should see a new M1 Max Duo iMac Pro
in the Spring, before Apple announces the new macOS in June like they always do.
But what really got me believing in an M1 Max Duo iMac Pro
was a couple of very good points made by some people on twitter.
First of all, The AAPL tree made a great point about the limitations of the regular
M1 Max chip, specifically that it only supports up to 64GB of unified memory,
which is already half the amount compared to Apple’s current Intel 27” iMac from 2020.
So if Apple wanted to keep that 128GB RAM option around, the best way to do that
would be to introduce the M1 Max Duo chip with literally double the number of RAM chip slots.
And then going further, he pointed out that the M1 Max 32-core GPU is limited to around
10.4Tflops of performance, which is definitely lacking compared to other desktop GPUs,
like for example, only matching up to the raw performance of the RTX 2080 or the
RX Vega 56 which is literally built into the 2017 iMac Pro that I’m using right now.
So the idea that Apple would release a new iMac Pro with a 32-core M1 Max GPU that’s basically
only as powerful as a 5-year old base model iMac Pro sounds ridiculous, so I thought
they would absolutely NEED to give the new model an M1 Max DUO chip with a 64-core GPU.
And then perhaps the weirdest part of all is that the current 27” intel iMac has
two chip options that are actually FASTER than the M1 Max chip in terms of RAW CPU performance,
and keep in mind that these are 14nm desktop chips from 2020.
And if we take a look at Intel’s new Alder Lake chips, even the new i5-12600K is about 23%
faster in terms of single-core and 39% faster in terms of multi-core performance.
And then the flagship i9-12900K which uses over 4x more power is actually 119%
faster in terms of Cinebench R23 multi-core, so with that said,
I again assumed that Apple NEEDS to pack in a 20-core M1 Max Duo chip to compete.
But unfortunately, Mark Gurman just released a new report over the weekend
that hints at the most disappointing iMac Pro we could EVER imagine..
Apparently, he believes that the larger iMac Pro
will come with M1 Pro and M1 Max chip options, that’s it!
He even confirmed this further by saying this: “And with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips already on
the market, I don’t believe the iMac Pro launch is too distant either. While we’ll get new Macs
in March, I’m told Apple is already gearing up for another round of Mac releases around May or June.
And that’s exactly when Ross Young is personally expecting Apple to reveal
the new iMac Pro, in June!
So this claim by Mark Gurman could come as an absolute shock because many of us were
expecting a much more powerful chip coming in the Apple Silicon iMac Pro, especially
if Apple gives it the Pro title.
And we even had some reports from DylanDKT that Apple was working on a new 12-core
chip for the iMac Pro instead, but Mark still believes that we’ll only get up to the M1 Max.
So with all of that disappointing news out of the way, let’s actually try to
make sense of the idea of the iMac Pro not getting anything more than an M1 Max chip.
The first point to make is that even though the RAW performance numbers for the M1 Max look
disappointing compared to the competition, the real-world performance is actually quite good.
For example, the Affinity Photo benchmark which was optimized for Apple Silicon, shows the 32-core
M1 Max as being the fastest GPU in the world for that app, even beating out high-end desktop GPUs.
And in terms of video editing performance, the M1 Max outperformed our $15,000
Mac Pro in various tests, even the ones we didn’t think it could pull ahead in, like 8K Canon RAW!
And for things like programming, we were surprised to see that M1 Max was quite
a bit faster than the Mac Pro, so even though the raw performance numbers aren’t impressive,
the real-world performance is actually more than enough for most people.
So that right there could be a good reason for Apple not to bother with putting an M1
Max Duo into the iMac Pro, since the regular M1 Max is already enough for almost everyone.
And to make this point very clear,
Max’s friend owns a full-time wedding videography business with multiple employees,
and they all use M1 Macs, no… not the new M1 Max MacBooks, but literally 24” M1 iMacs.
And he himself ended up replacing his trashcan 2013 Mac Pro with an M1 MacBook Air
instead of a desktop 2019 Mac Pro, and he’s never been happier.
In fact, he was initially planning on using the M1 MacBook Air
until the new 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro was released, but he’s been so happy with it
that he decided to keep the M1 Air since it’s fast enough for all of his needs.
So the point that I’m making is that real people
and real businesses are using Apple’s original M1 chip with great success,
and that’s not even the M1 Max chip which is many times faster, especially for high-end workflows.
So in reality, most people out there probably do not need anything more
than the M1 Max chip, and they definitely don’t need the crazy 20-core M1 Max Duo chip.
And I think a lot of us have fallen under benchmark sickness,
with many of us wanting our machines to be the fastest in benchmarks just for bragging rights,
even if it ends up being absolute overkill for the tasks that we actually need it for.
So while I would really really like Apple to pack an M1 Max Duo chip into the iMac Pro,
I have to admit that for my workflow of using Photoshop and Final Cut Pro for editing,
the regular 10-core M1 Max chip in the 16” MacBook Pro is probably already overkill for my needs.
And going even further, if Apple gave the iMac Pro an M1 Max Duo, it would likely be SO FAST that it
would cannibalize the sales of their upcoming Mac Pro desktop machine since that 20-core Duo chip
would literally be fast enough for 95% of the common use-cases out there.
So what Apple could do is limit the iMac Pro to the M1 Max chip,
perhaps upping the clock speeds a bit to make it a bit more powerful,
and then offer people who actually NEED much more power the high-end Mac Pro desktop.
And the major benefit to this is that it would allow them to lower the base price of the iMac Pro
to make it more affordable to the average consumer, likely around
$2,000 at the base price, instead of the previous iMac Pro which started at a massive $5,000.
And then on top of that, I already concluded in a different video
that the M1 Max Duo chip wouldn’t be able to fit within the iMac Pro’s chin,
but if the best option is the regular M1 Max, then they can easily fit it within the chin
and keep the design as thin as they’d like to make it without having to go all out on cooling.
And just like Mark Gurman said earlier, doing this would also allow them to get this new iMac
Pro out earlier without having to wait for this new Duo chip or anything like that.
So in the grand scheme of things, the reality is that Apple could easily get away with releasing an
M1 Pro and M1 Max iMac Pro, and people would be buying it left and right, including ourselves, but
hopefully Mark Gurman is wrong about all of this, and hopefully we actually do get a better chip.
And with that said, let me know what you think down in the comment section below,
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like this one. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one!