Apple’s M1 Max outperforms AMD Radeon Pro W6900X in Affinity GPU benchmark

Apple’s new M1 Max chip with 32 GPU which powers its latest 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros outperforms a $6,000 AMD desktop GPU at certain tasks in Affinity Photo’s benchmarking suite according to a lead developer of the image editor. In a Twitter thread, Somerfield discussed how the Affinity team has been optimizing its apps for Apple Silicon and how far the performance of these chips has come with the 2021 MacBook Pro.

Apple’s M1 Max Beats a $6000 AMD Radeon Pro W6900X

According to lead Affinity Photo developer Andy Somerfield, Apple’s M1 Max is the fastest GPU he has evaluated using the benchmarking software. As compared to a score of 32580 put in by AMD’s W6900X as equipped in a 12-core Mac Pro, Apple’s new chip reached a “Raster (Single GPU)” score of 32891

Somerfield says the M1 Max does the three things an “ideal” GPU should do: high compute performance, fast on-chip bandwidth, and fast transfer on and off the GPU. The M1 Max’s performance makes the 2021 MacBook Pro an excellent choice for Affinity users.

“The #M1Max is the fastest GPU we have ever measured in the @affinitybyserif Photo benchmark,” said Somerfield in a Twitter thread. “It outperforms the W6900X – a $6000, 300W desktop part – because it has immense compute performance, immense on-chip bandwidth, and immediate transfer of data on and off the GPU (UMA).”

In addition to its incomparable GPU performance, the chip received chart-topping “Vector (Multi CPU)” and “Combined (Single GPU)” scores which are important for Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher.

Last week, Geekbench 5 scores showed that the M1 Max offers up to 181% faster graphics than the GPUs found in the previous first-generation M1 16-inch MacBook Pro. A recent in-depth breakdown of the M1 Pro and M1 Max conducted by AnandTech also revealed that that the new chips do not just offer better performance than Windows laptops but also deliver desktop-level efficiency.