Apple throws shade on pokey AI PCs, claims its maxed out M4 chips are 4x faster
With the arrival of its M4 silicon on the Mac this week, Apple wants the world to know that the silicon powering AI PCs is no match for its chips.
In its launch announcement, Apple boasted its mid-range M4 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC) – which can be had with up to 14 CPU cores (ten performance, four efficiency), and 20 GPU cores – was "far more powerful and capable than any AI PC chip," boasting up to 2.1x the performance of Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V with its 48 TOPS NPU.
Step up to the new M4 Max SoC – which can be had with up to 16 CPU cores (12 performance, 4 efficiency) and up to 40 GPU cores – and Apple claims a 4x performance advantage in AI workloads over the Intel model. That's despite both the M4 Pro and Max being saddled with the same 38 TOPS NPU as the base M4 part we looked at in May.
What workload Apple is referring to isn't exactly clear, but we suspect Apple is primarily focusing on bandwidth-constrained workloads – like large language models (LLMs), where its chips' higher memory bandwidth and larger capacity give it an edge.
