CES 2025 is an opportunity for AMD to unveil its new range of Ryzen AI Max processors, with bold comparisons to Apple’s chips. But as is often the case in the industry, you have to look beyond the marketing figures to understand the reality of the market.
An incomplete comparison with Apple chips
AMD highlights impressive benchmarks of its Ryzen AI Max+ against MacBooks equipped with M4 chips, claiming up to 86% advantage on certain rendering tests like V-Ray. However, one crucial detail was omitted: the lack of comparison with Apple’s M4 Max.
Indeed, AMD has chosen to compare its 16-core processor only to Apple’s 12 and 14-core versions (M4 and M4 Pro), carefully avoiding comparison with the 16-core M4 Max which notably has 40 GPU cores – exactly the same number as the Ryzen AI Max+.
Performances that deserve to be nuanced
The results presented by AMD already show certain limits. On Cinebench 2024, the benchmark test for multi-core performance, the Ryzen AI Max+ only outperforms the 12-core M4 Pro by 2% and even falls behind the 14-core M4 Pro by 3%.
These relatively tight figures against theoretically less powerful chips suggest that the 16-core M4 Max could probably outperform the Ryzen AI Max+ in many aspects. This is undoubtedly the reason why AMD preferred to exclude it from its comparisons.
A classic marketing strategy
This approach is not new to the industry. Manufacturers often choose their points of comparison carefully to highlight their products. AMD certainly offers an impressive chip including:
- 16 Zen 5 CPU cores
- 40 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores
- Up to 128 GB of unified memory
- An NPU dedicated to AI offering 50 TOPS
But transparency would have wanted a comparison with its real direct competitor: Apple’s M4 Max. The first laptops equipped with these new AMD processors will arrive on the market during the first quarter of 2025, which will finally allow independent tests and more objective comparisons.
