Lab – Apple MacBook Pro 16: the M1 Pro versus the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 processors – Les Numériques

The M1 Pro and Max SoCs, Apple’s new technological flagships, promise to shake up the world of processors by offering high performance and a solid integrated graphics component, while consuming very little power. A dream triptych for mobile users, but should we already bury competing high-end processors?

In order to answer the question, we compared the performance of three computers with very muscular configurations:

• A Lenovo Legion 7S equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card and 32 GB of RAM.
• An MSI Z16 Creator with an Intel Core i9-11980HK, an RTX 3060 also and 32 GB of RAM
• A 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro M1 Pro (10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores) with 32 GB of RAM

We passed them on our brand new test bench, that is to say in real conditions with 3D rendering and video processing software in particular, but also using synthetic benchmarks in order to see what these computers have in the belly. Note, however, that the Intel processor used is the manufacturer’s most powerful current model while the AMD Ryzen 9 used here is not the most powerful version (normally outclassed by the Ryzen 9 5980HX).

On Cinebench R23, the results are more or less the same on the three machines with all the same an advantage in multicore for the Ryzen 9, while on Geekbench the M1 Pro takes off with a significantly better multicore score.

On our panel of applications in real use (video encoding, 3D rendering in Blender, video and photo processing with Adobe software or even file compression), the results are disparate. On Handbrake and Premiere, the M1 Pro lags behind, but it does well on Blender and is much faster than AMD and Intel on Photoshop. At this point, this is the results that only take advantage of the CPU and not the potential acceleration of the GPU.

Precisely, by activating hardware acceleration (the GPU is therefore involved in processing) on ​​Blender, Premiere and Photoshop, working times are greatly reduced. The M1 Pro is a real rocket on Photoshop, but the Ryzen 9 and the Core i9 coupled with their GeForce RTX 3060 are much faster on Premiere – where the M1 Pro does very well despite the lack of a dedicated GPU – thus than on Blender.

In the latter case, the M1 Pro simply doesn’t take advantage of its GPU cores. Blender software is currently not optimized for this purpose, while Nvidia graphics cards demonstrate their full potential. The M1 should therefore catch up with the level as soon as Blender will be updated in this direction, probably in the next few months. It should in fact be taken into account that certain applications are better optimized for this or that processor. The M1 Pro would undoubtedly benefit from tenfold performance on editing software like DaVinci Resolve, for example.

Some things to consider

We can say that these three computers offer high performance with advantages and disadvantages depending on the applications used, even if PCs equipped with Nvidia graphics cards make better use, in certain cases, of hardware accelerations. The Ryzen 9 and Intel Core i9 are therefore still largely in the race and we can’t wait to see what Intel and AMD will come up with to counter the Apple offensive.

Regarding the price / performance ratio, we are around 2500 € for the MSI Z16 Creator (with an Intel Core i7-11800H “only”), around 2200 € for the Lenovo Legion 7S (which sometimes drops below 2000 € ), and just over € 3,400 for our 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro. The bill drops to € 2,980 with less RAM, or even € 2,750 if we opt for the 14-inch model equipped with the same SoC.

An element to be taken into account for professionals and amateurs who would like to renew their equipment, even if we are only talking about raw performance and not other important elements such as the screen, the chassis or the autonomy. Also, we will offer you a test of the M1 Max as soon as possible, in order to study its 32 GPU cores which will naturally be faster than the 16 cores of the M1 Pro.

From the charger question

Finally, we carried out all these tests connected to the mains as usual. However, Apple has widely communicated that its MacBook Pros 14 and 16 will not lose any performance when unplugged, while it is well known that PCs running AMD and Intel processors suffer losses in such a scenario. So we’ll meet very soon to check all this in a new dedicated lab!