Apple is soon expected to debut its new lineup of Macs, including the MacBook Pro and the redesigned Mac mini with the M4 chipset. For the MacBooks, if the leaks are to be believed, the design is largely going to remain unchanged; thus, this is expected to be more of a spec bump than anything else. It also means that Apple is betting big on the M4 chipset alone to convince buyers to invest in the machines. We already have a fair idea of what to expect from the M4, compared to the M3 generation, thanks to the iPad Pro, which is already shipping with the base chip. Here, let us understand what differences we can expect in performance and what the M4 Pro and M4 Max might bring to the table.
M4 vs M3: How Big of a Leap Is It Really?
Since the introduction of the M1 lineup, we have seen Apple introduce incremental upgrades to the chipsets; yes, they have significantly grown in both efficiency and power, but the generational leap expectations that the M1 series introduced have yet to be fulfilled. The M4 is more of the same. This is why Apple compared its performance to the M2 chipset when detailing how powerful it is on the official webpage outlining the iPad M4 details (M4 is 1.5x more powerful at CPU performance compared to the M2).
That said, when comparing the M3 base found in the MacBook Air and the base MacBook Pro to the M4 in the iPad M4, you will notice that both are 3nm chipsets. However, they differ in terms of cores and bandwidth. The M3 comes with a total of 8 cores, while the M4 comes with up to 10. The M4 has 6 efficient cores compared to 4 with the M3, and it has 10 GPU cores, while the M3 has either 8 or 10. There is also a difference in terms of the memory bandwidth they support, with the M4 being around 20% faster.
Moreover, the NPU, or Neural Processing Unit, is also faster with the M4, but would this be noticeable in real-world scenarios? Barely. Both chipsets support Apple Intelligence, and there is not a significant real-world difference that most would notice.
That being said, the base M4 is still inferior to the M3 Pro and the M3 Max in terms of cores, bringing us to the M4 Pro and the M4 Max, as this is where Apple is expected to bring the real upgrades.
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M4 Pro and M4 Max: What to Expect?
In the past, we have seen Apple launch the Pro, Max, and even Ultra variants of its base M series silicon. This year, since the M4 is already out, users expect to see ‘Pro’ chips with the MacBook Pro. Apple is more or less confirmed to debut the M4 Pro and the M4 Max. Both the M4 Pro and M4 Max are expected to feature better multi-core performance compared to the M4, as they are expected to have more cores. Last year, you could equip the MacBook Pro M3 Max with up to 40 GPU cores and 16 CPU cores, compared to the maximum 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU with the base MacBook Pro with the M3 chipset. Moreover, the M3 Max also supports more memory, up to 128GB, compared to 24GB of the M3.
It remains to be seen if Apple ends up equipping the M4 Pro and M4 Max similarly, or if it decides to double down on performance and surprise potential buyers.
That said, at the end of the day, unless you are a professional creative who works with multi-layered projects in apps like Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, you are not likely to see massive differences with the M4 MacBook Pro lineup.
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