Say what you want about Apple,
but their 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro
is pretty impressive.
This particular M1 Max variant has 10 CPU cores,
32 GPU cores and 32 gigabytes of unified memory.
Making it currently the most powerful MacBook ever.
But how does it stack up against the competition?
Are MacBooks now more powerful than Windows laptops?
Well, let's find out.
(energetic music)
Also quick, thanks to MotionVFX
for sponsoring this video,
but more on that later.
Representing team PC is the Vapor 17X from Aftershock.
Featuring an Intel 12900H CPU,
32 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM
and an RTX 3080Ti GPU with 16 gigabytes of memory.
It's also specially tuned by Aftershock themselves
to maximize performance.
Now, if you're not familiar with this particular laptop,
in other countries it's known as the Max-17
from Eluktronics.
Anyway, this is one of the most powerful laptops
you can get right now,
and I'm going to compare it with the M1 Max
in everything from gaming, 3D modeling, video editing,
creative workflows, using Adobe Apps,
and we're also going to discuss
some of the negatives of both platforms.
Also make sure you pause the video
and add a comment down below
and tell me which one you think is going to win and why.
Now, the 17X's 3080 Ti GPU
has a massive 175 watt power limit.
Which is the highest you can possibly get in a laptop.
Why is this important you might ask?
Well, there are a lot of laptops out there
where the GPU power limit is set much lower.
Sometimes at only 100 watts.
And this is going to significantly decrease
the performance of the GPU.
Now, although these laptops are typically geared
towards different target audiences
and they of course have many differences,
the purpose of this video,
is simply to find out how they compare in pure performance.
I'm not interested in comparing the operating systems
or build quality battery life or even screen size.
That's an entirely separate video.
I simply want to see how the M1 Max chip
stacks up against the combined power
of an Intel 12900H and RTX 3080 Ti with Max TDP.
So full disclosure here,
I bought the MacBook with my own money,
the Vapor 17X was sent to me by Aftershock,
it's a review unit,
so I have to send it back,
I don't get to keep it.
And also I use both Windows and Max on a daily basis
and I have done so for the last 10 years.
I enjoy using both
and I don't really have a bias towards either one.
So, I'm trying my best to stay as unbiased
as possible in this video.
Now, even though this video
is just about performance only,
I wanted to set the tone with pricing.
Because it is still very important.
The fully spect M1 Max is going to cost you
at minimum $3,500, or almost $4,000
if you get the two terabyte SSD to match the Vapor 17X.
For reference,
the Vapor comes in at around $3000.
Now that is a fairly significant price difference.
So just keep that in the back of your mind
throughout the rest of this video.
Okay.
Let's start with some synthetic benchmarks for the CPUs.
Starting with Cinebench multi-core scores,
the 12900H was able to outperform the M1 Max by 38%.
Which is a significant amount,
but synthetic benchmarks don't tell the full story
and I'll show you why later on.
The single-core scores,
again, the 12900H comes out ahead by 25%.
Now, you will likely notice this single-core difference
if your workflow depends more on the speed
of individual cores like many Photoshop workflows
and some programs that rely heavily on plug-ins
for example.
Also, let me explain
some of the differences in performance between the two CPUs.
Firstly, note that the 12900H has 14 cores
compared with 10 on the M1 Max.
And if we break this down further,
the M1 Max has eight high performance cores
versus just six on the Intel.
However, the performance cores on the Intel
have much higher clock speeds.
Can Turbo Boost, unlike the M1 Max,
and can also be combined with the efficiency cores
for hyperthreading tasks.
So, even though the 12900H needs more power,
pulling around 85 watts compared to 30
for the M1 Max during a Cinebench multi-core benchmark,
the 12900H is undeniably a more powerful CPU.
But it does come at the cost of efficiency.
But more on that later.
Next up we have coding and development.
Now, I know that you probably
won't be buying this particular Intel laptop
specifically for coding,
but let's just compare anyway.
As you can see the M1 Max is able to compile quicker
because at the end of the day,
it was created with this workflow in mind.
Unlike the 12900H.
Although, if you are not compiling
large code bases frequently
either machine will work fine.
So, what about creative workflows?
Well, let's start with After Effects.
And before you ask, yes,
Adobe finally pulled their finger out
and updated After Effects
to have native Apple silicon support.
Using PugetBench, which tests
a whole range of real life After Effects workflows,
the M1 Max came out slightly ahead.
Looking at these scores in more detail
the Intel CPU outperforms the M1 Max at multi-core.
And the M1 Max comes out ahead for tracking,
but what I found really interesting was those GPU scores.
They're almost identical.
So, as much as we love to hate on Adobe
they've done a pretty good optimization job here.
Moving to a real life project,
here's a 2D animation that I use
at the end of some YouTube videos.
The M1 Max was able to render this 18 seconds faster.
Now, After Effects can be extremely RAM intensive.
Both the Intel laptop and the MacBook
have DDR5 memory.
Although the M1 Max's is clocked higher at 6400 megahertz
compared to 48 megahertz on the Vapor.
But the M1 Max's memory can be accessed
at 400 gigabytes per second.
And don't forget that because this memory is also unified,
the entire system can access all 32 gigabytes.
Including the GPU cores
compared with just 16 gigabytes
of GDDR6 memory on the RTX 3080 Ti.
This helps explain why the GPU performance
of the M1 Max is so impressive.
But again, more on that later.
Next, we have Premiere Pro
where both systems performed almost identically,
and breaking this down further,
the M1 Max comes out ahead when exporting,
but the Intel laptop is better at everything else
especially live playback and anything GPU related.
Wrapping up the Adobe Apps
Lightroom and Photoshop performed about the same,
I doubt you'll notice a difference on either system,
so, to save time,
I didn't go into much detail.
All right, let's take a look at video editing.
I'm using the latest version of DaVinci Resolve Studio
on both machines.
Starting with a multicam project,
here we have four streams
of really demanding color corrected 4K footage
from a sorted GoPro, Sony and BlackMagic cameras.
The most important factor for video editing
is timeline performance.
So, let's look at that first.
Timeline playback was very similar,
but when scrubbing the M1 Max was a little bit smoother
as you can see on screen at the moment,
likely due to its hardware video decoders
kicking in for the H264, HEVC
and ProRes footage I was using.
When rendering out this 20 minute timeline in 4K and H264,
the M1 Max is also superior.
But by a larger margin this time,
again, due to those hardware encoders.
Moving on to some of the most hardcore footage
you can find,
and that is 4K, 120 FPS footage
from the Sony A7S Mark III.
It's so hardcore, in fact,
that you need to spend a few hundred bucks
on a specialized CFexpress Type A Card
just to shoot it.
Playback and scrubbing was similar between the two.
I couldn't really tell a difference,
but if we add stabilization to this 2.5 minute clip,
however, the M1 Max comes out ahead.
Now, switching over to 8K Red raw footage
from a Red camera,
real time playback and scrubbing is about the same
with a timeline resolution of 4K,
but when rendering this two minute project
in 8K DNxHR 444 10bit
which is a codec more oriented to Windows workflows,
the Vapor laptop destroys the M1 Max.
Because the M1 Max can't take advantage
of its hardware decoders due to the incompatible codec.
So if you can take advantage
of the M1 Max's specific footage optimizations,
so your H264, your ProRes, for example,
it is going to outperform the Intel and RTX laptop.
But, if you can't take advantage of those things
the Windows laptop is going to be the better performer.
While we're on the topic of editing,
if you use Final Cut Pro,
there's a website called MotionVFX
that has a ton of high quality transitions,
plug-ins, stock footage, templates, and more.
Don't use Final Cut?
That's okay.
There's some resolve and premier content too.
I edited this particular video using Final Cut Pro,
and you can actually see
some of the MotionVFX transitions in action.
All you have to do is browse the MotionVFX website
for a template, transition or pack you want,
for example the Mtransition Mega Pack
with 140 different transitions
to use on your footage.
And once you've purchased the pack,
you can simply download it
and add it to your video editing program
with a few clicks of a button.
And from there just drag and drop
whatever you want onto your timeline.
And I can't stress just how easy
and efficient this entire process is.
I've used it throughout this entire video.
There's no messing around infusion,
there's no key frames,
It's all just there.
Ready to go.
So, make sure you check out MotionVFX
using the link below,
and use code created to get 10% off.
Okay.
Time for the M1 Max,
to start taking some massive Ls.
So PC fanboys, this is the moment you've been waiting for.
Let's take a look at Blender first.
I'm using Blender 3.1 on both devices
which introduces Metal GPU support
for cycles rendering on Apple silicon Max.
When rendering with the CPU only
both systems perform about the same.
Just like what we saw with the Cinebench scores.
But this isn't realistic
as most renders are done using the GPU.
So, when switching to GPU rendering,
the M1 Max gets absolutely obliterated.
You can see the impact of this
when rendering the barbershop demo scene.
Sure, it may only be a few minutes in this example,
but for more complicated renders,
the difference could be hours.
The RTX 3080 Ti,
is just simply more optimized
for this workflow.
Because it uses optics
which takes advantage of the ray tracing cores
in the Nvidia GPU to improve 3D rendering performance
among other things.
We also see these same performance gaps in software
such as Cinema 4D Redshift.
Now, again, these 3D modeling programs
are not yet fully optimized for Apple silicon.
So in the future,
we may very well get a ton of updates
and additional support.
But for right now,
you're just not going to see
Apple silicon come anywhere close
to anything with an RTX sticker on it.
Now, to keep this comparison fair,
we also have to have a chat about gaming.
Now, I know this is a pretty controversial topic
so, make sure you guys get down into the comments
and go crazy.
Spoiler alert, Max suck at gaming.
There are a number of reasons why
like Apple using their own Metal API
instead of more popular ones like OpenGL and Vulkan,
but to keep this video relatively compact
if you want to learn more about that
I'll link a separate video.
Anyway, what if the M1 Max had the potential at least,
to be good at gaming?
Doing a synthetic benchmark on GFXBench
when Apple's preferred API
which is Metal,
is selected for the M1 Max
and DirectX 12 for the RTX laptop,
their performance is actually similar.
So, if you play Metal optimized games
like Baldur's Gate 3 or World of Warcraft, for example,
you won't see much difference between the two platforms.
Unfortunately, the reality is only a tiny percentage
of games, support Metal,
and any other games available on Mac OS, for example,
those using the OpenGL API,
are typically also being emulated via Rosetta 2.
So to give you a realistic idea
of what the typical gaming performance difference will be,
let's look at games like Tomb Raider,
which is actually a best case scenario
because it does in fact have some Metal support.
Although as you'll see that still doesn't help much.
The RTX 3080 Tie,
achieved a significantly higher FPS score.
Other games like CS:GO are pretty much the exact same,
it's just not a pleasant experience.
Only getting barely 100 FPS
on a game that can be usually easily run at over 300 FPS.
Now there are of course, other major differences
like screen refresh rate and response time, for example.
But again, this video is just about performance.
And it seems like at least on the hardware level
the M1 Max is capable of decent gaming performance
but the support and the optimization just isn't there yet.
Okay, let's stop crapping on the Mac for a second
and look at some negatives of the RTX laptops.
It's just like uncle Ben said in the first Spider-Man movie,
"With great power comes, great..."
Power draw and heat output?
That doesn't sound right.
Anyway, let's start with fan noise.
Regardless of manufacturer
the Intel and RTX laptops get really loud.
The 16-inch M1 Max MacBook fans aren't silent
but they are considerably less loud
and often won't even turn on until absolutely necessary.
(fan rattling)
You'll also get a lot more heat produced
on the Intel and RTX laptops,
especially from the GPU.
With a lot of this transferring directly to
and heating up the chassis of the laptop.
The Mac just seems to run cooler.
Finally, we come to the biggest con
of the RTX laptops in my opinion
and that is power draw.
To give you an example,
I compared the total power draw from the wall
both laptops used while running the Aztec Ruins benchmark.
The M1 Max barely sipped 90 watts,
while the RTX laptop needed almost 260
which is roughly three times more.
And don't forget that
both of these laptops
performed about the same on this benchmark.
And if I disconnect the RTX laptop from its charger
and run some of the same benchmarks on battery alone,
you can see performance drops significantly.
But it doesn't for the M1 Max
because it's extremely efficient
and the battery is able to provide enough wattage.
So for some people,
even though the M1 Max still falls short in raw Blender
or Cinema 4D performance, for example,
the ability to get full performance
out of the chip while on battery and being mobile,
is still preferable to the increased performance
of the RTX laptop.
So, yeah, really interesting to compare these two machines.
I think this last year
the 12th Gen Intel laptops have really improved
over the previous generation.
Like this Vapor 17X plus really solid laptop.
If you guys are located in Australia
I will link it down below if you want to check it out.
And I also think it's really interesting
just how powerful MacBooks have become
with the introduction of Apple silicon.
So, if you remember back to previous generations
of the MacBook, they were pretty crap in my opinion.
So this is early 2020, and prior to that
they really weren't that great.
They suffered from the same heat issues,
they were thermal throttling a lot due to the design,
they were also quite expensive
compared to a lot of their Windows counterparts.
But now they're competing
with these ultra powerful Windows laptops
while also producing less noise
less heat and needing less power.
And sure, I mean, the M1 Max is far from perfect.
There's a lack of software
and optimization support in workflows,
like 3D modeling and gaming,
and just lack of software in general.
But if those things aren't important to you
I think it's a tough decision between the two
if you're still currently on the fence
about which one you want to go with.
But apart from that
hopefully you enjoyed this comparison video
and I'll catch you in the next one.