Apple’s New M4 Chips Give Intel and AMD a Run for Their Money

Apple just revealed its new high-end processors, the M4 Pro and M4 Max, with “the world’s fastest CPU core” and many other improvements. They will ship first in the new MacBook Pro laptops.

The M-series of chips use two types of CPU cores—performance cores for heavy-duty workloads and efficiency cores for everyday tasks. Activating these CPU cores as needed delivers a big boost in battery and performance. Apple has added two extra efficiency cores to the base model this time, bringing the total to 6. With 4 performance cores for handling editing and games, the base M4 chip has 10 CPU cores. The GPU is still a 10-core design but with two times faster ray tracing.

The M4 chip originally debuted with the iPad Pro 2024 earlier this year. Built on an advanced 3nm process, this M4 outperformed M3 MacBooks at the time. The M4 Pro and M4 Max are even faster. Apple promises “industry’s best single-threaded performance” out of their CPU cores (as many as 16). The M-series chips use a “unified” memory system, meaning the components on the chip all use the same memory. The regular M4 has 32GB of unified memory available (up from 24GB) that operates at a faster 120GB/s rate.

The Pro model packs a lot more processing power thanks to its extra performance cores. It includes 10 performance cores (clocked at a slightly higher speed this time) and 4 efficiency cores. Apple says the M4 Pro is 2.5 times faster than the fastest chip from its competitors. The 20-core GPU inside the M4 Pro is supposedly 2.4 times faster than any other similar GPU on the market. It supports up to 64GB of unified memory on the system with a blistering 273GB/s bandwidth. Developers and creatives will appreciate the testing and rendering features that the M4 Pro enhances.

The M4 Max is “the most powerful chip for a Pro laptop,” according to Apple. With its 12 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, and 40 GPU cores, this chip is wildly overpowered. Its CPU is supposedly 2.5 times faster than its competition. The GPU and the 128GB of unified memory at 546GB/s are 4 times faster. Apple is marketing the M4 Max to video editors based on the chip’s enhanced media engine mentioned in the official press material.

All three M4 chips are tested to deliver up to 24 hours of use with the new MacBook Pro laptops. Compared to the previous-gen M3 chips, the battery life is a small incremental upgrade. They all bring Thunderbolt 5 support to the Mac and improved performance for AI workloads.

Source: Apple