When Apple finally released its M1 Max processor in October, the Internet predictably saw dark days for PC laptops. Some even felt bad for PC laptop m

Intel and Nvidia just dunked on Apple’s M1 Max. Should you believe the hype?

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2022-01-14 15:00:11

When Apple finally released its M1 Max processor in October, the Internet predictably saw dark days for PC laptops. Some even felt bad for PC laptop makers being uncompetitive with the MacBook Pro for perhaps “years.” Those predictions may have to be retuned a bit now that Intel and Nvidia have both come out swinging at Apple, however.

Nvidia was the first to step on Apple’s sneakers when it announced its new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPUs. Nvidia casually compared not just its newest GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU against Apple’s fastest M1 Max, but also the far more pedestrian GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU using Autodesk Arnold, Blender, Chaos V-Ray, OctaneRender and Redshift.

As you can see from the comparison with the MacBook Pro 16’s M1 Max, both the new GeForce flagship and the far blander RTX 3060 Laptop GPU simply crush the M1 Max. And by crush, we mean crush, because when a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU takes 10 minutes to perform a render and a GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU takes 22 minutes using Autodesk Arnold, versus 78 minutes for the M1 Max, it’s a beat-down. That’s an 87 percent decrease in rendering time for the RTX 3080 Ti vs. the M1 Max, and a 78 percent advantage for the RTX 3060. That’s a shellacking no matter how you count it for working creators, but it should be pointed out that many of these apps have long been optimized for Nvidia’s GPUs, giving GeForce a home field advantage.

For example, it’s not clear if the testing Nvidia did for Blender Cycles used the version that’s currently being ported to Apple’s M1 and Metal API. We’d guess not since the presentation would have been based on numbers likely prepared well before CES 2022 to meet approval for public dissemination. With Blender support still in pre-beta stage, it’s highly doubtful the Blender score is running an alpha version.

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