Since the release of the Apple M1 Max laptops, performance figures comparing it with NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have shown the new chip is not as ideal as the company claims it to be. Now, Twitter user David Huang compared the video codec performance of the Apple M1 Max CPU with Intel's Arc A380 GPUs to show that Apple does not continue to dominate the competition.
Intel Arc GPU outperforms Apple M1 Max SOC in video decoder performance tests
Readers should note that Apple shines in CPU performance. It offers a higher quality, but only by a slim margin. However, it does take a hit in graphical performance. An example is NVIDIA's newer RTX 30 series taking close to a third less time to render than the Apple M1 Max can. The two significant parts of the Twitter thread between David Huang and user @Adol_Christin is below.
M1 Max视频解码单元的性能看起来是不如DG2 (1299元)的。。。极端情况下（超高码率）解码性能只有一半左右，低码率差距则比较小。
另外M1 Max跟DG2一样有两个媒体单元，所以并行解码两个以上的视频流可以达到翻倍的帧数，利于剪视频回放。
其它格式诸如HEVC 422/444或者ProRes之类的就不测了（ pic.twitter.com/uD7X738rc1
— David Huang (@hjc4869) July 30, 2022
玩笑放一边，Intel DG2现在驱动和ISV适配仍然有非常大的问题，有up主抱怨达芬奇之类软件导出视频甚至会出现花屏闪屏等等。相比之下Apple的软件支持要好得多。
而且虽然Intel的回放性能可能略强一些，但是还是强的比较有限，对Apple的优势不像跟AMD VCN那么大的差距。
— David Huang (@hjc4869) July 30, 2022
The translation provided by Twitter shows the performance test results from Huang's benchmark between the Intel Arc A380 GPU and the Apple M1 Max SOC.
The performance of the M1 Max video decoding unit seems to be inferior to the DG2 (1299 yuan)... In extreme cases (ultra-high bit rate), the decoding performance is only about half, and the gap between low bit rates is relatively small.
In addition, the M1 Max has two media units like the DG2 (Intel Arc A380), so the parallel decoding of more than two video streams can double the number of frames, which is convenient for video clipping and playback.
Other formats such as HEVC 422/444 or ProRes are excluded (
Apple still has a big advantage, the biggest one is...they're really selling the M1 Pro/Max
Joke aside, Intel DG2 still has very big problems with driver and ISV adaptation. Some up masters complain that DaVinci and other software export videos and even have a splash screen and so on. Apple's software support is much better by comparison.
And although Intel's playback performance may be slightly stronger, it is still relatively limited, and the advantage to Apple is not as big as that of AMD VCN.
In the Jellyfish 4K HVEC (30fps, 400Mbps) and bilibili 4K HVEC HDR (120fps, 14Mbps) video stream tests, the bit rate of the Apple M1 Max is at 61 where the Intel Arc A380 GPU bit rate is sitting at 118. The latter video stream offers a similar view, with Apple offering a 417-bit rate to Intel's 542-bit rate.
However, Huang points out that M1 Max does offer better software support. Still, the argument could also stand that Apple is in its environment, where Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA are used in several configurations outside of Apple's environment.
News Source: David Huang on Twitter
