According to Apple, the M1 Max is the most powerful chip in the new 2021 MacBook Pro, and this is backed up by our benchmarks: with 57 billion transistors, a 32-core CPU, 64GB of RAM, and 400GB/s of memory bandwidth, the M1 Max is capable of phenomenal graphics processing power, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro 2021 with the M1 Max processor is perfect for professional creators. It also appears to outperform the AMD-powered Mac Pro in terms of performance.

As reported by TechRadar, UK-based Affinity has released the first benchmarks of its photo editor Affinity Photo running on the M1 Max. The results reveal that Apple's boasted power of the M1 Max was not empty.

Affinity Photo's lead developer, Andy Somerfield, announced his company's benchmark results on Twitter. He revealed that the M1 Max's 32-core GPU outperformed AMD's W6900X graphics card, which costs $6,000. According to the Affinity Photo benchmark, the AMD Radeon W6900X scored 32,580. was 32,891. This may not seem like much of a difference, but it is a high number anyway.

"#M1Max is the fastest GPU we've measured in the @affinitybyserif Photo benchmark.

"It's because it has tremendous compute performance, enormous on-chip bandwidth, and instantaneous transfer of data on and off the GPU (UMA).

In this connection, Pro Mac Product Line Manager Shruti Haldea recently appeared on the podcast "Same Brain" to directly compare the M1 Max chip to the Mac Pro.

"One thing about this architecture is that it delivers extraordinary performance, and in some cases the M1 Max chip surpasses what the Mac Pro can do," Haldea said (via Apple Insider). [As one example, thanks to the ProRes accelerator built into the Media Engine, the M1 Max has two engines for hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding. This is more streams than a 28-core Mac Pro with an Afterburner Card, so it literally outperforms a workstation."

Given these results, one has to wonder if Apple will soon replace its existing Mac Pros with models with M1 Max GPUs. It seems like a logical step, especially if Apple wants all future hardware to run on its own silicon. Regardless of what ultimately happens, it is clear that the M1 Max processor is serious business.