Apple’s top-of-the-line M1 Max chip, which powers the company’s new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, outperforms a $6,000 AMD desktop GPU at certain tasks in Affinity Photo’s benchmarking suite.
According to Andy Somerfield, lead Affinity Photo developer, the M1 Max is the fastest GPU he has evaluated using the benchmarking software. Apple’s integrated graphics solution notched a “Raster (Single GPU)” score of 32891, edging a score of 32580 put in by AMD’s W6900X, a 300-watt card that was tested as equipped in a 12-core Mac Pro.
In a multi-day Twitter thread, Somerfield chronicled Affinity developer Serif’s integration of GPU compute support for apps like Affinity Photo, imaging editing software that started life as a desktop title and has since branched out to iOS and iPadOS. Specifically, Serif saw promise in early Apple Silicon designs on iPad, which for the first time allowed the app to tap system GPU assets for certain processes.
Somerfield says Apple’s latest chip, M1 Max, ticks the three boxes that make a GPU “ideal” for Affinity Photo: high compute performance, fast on-chip bandwidth, fast transfer on and off the GPU. M1 Max’s compute performance and data transfer rates are especially well suited for the task, making MacBook Pro a good choice for users of the app.
Read more at AppleInsider.com