The decline in performance of the M4 Pro that no one isTalking about.
Apple has changed its low power mode, resulting in a significant decrease in performance.
I've been testing the new M4 chip all week, specifically the M4 Pro, on both the Mac mini and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Without a doubt, these are impressive chips, but I was surprised by something in my testing that I haven't seen others mention. I'm referring to a significant change that Apple made in this generation regarding power modes. For the first time, Apple has expanded the different power modes to "Pro" level chips, which were previously exclusive to the Max models. The three power modes, found in system settings, are: Low Power, Automatic, and High Performance.
What's interesting is that, in my tests, the Low Power mode noticeably reduces performance much more this time around. In the Cinebench R24, the scores obtained on the Mac mini M4 Pro were as follows:
- Low Power: 154 (single-core), 765 (multi-core), 6039 (GPU)
- Automatic: 166 (single-core), 1622 (multi-core), 9222 (GPU)
- High Performance: 178 (single-core), 1707 (multi-core), 9294 (GPU)
The differences observed in single-core performance are what I would expect and are comparable to previous generations, showing a 13% increase in performance with High Performance mode compared to Low Power mode. However, the disparity is more noticeable in multi-core performance. In the M4 Pro, the Mac mini is 55% faster in High Performance mode compared to Low Power, a figure that resembles that of the base M3 or M1 Pro chips.
This drastic drop in performance was also reflected in the MacBook Pro M4 Pro. In comparison, in the test conducted on the previous generation MacBook Pro M3 Max, High Performance mode was only 33% faster in multi-core performance than Low Power mode, although the M4 Pro achieved an 8% increase compared to the M3 Max in that mode. However, the M3 Max is 27% faster in Low Power mode.
It's worth noting that this change in performance will not significantly impact most users, as the Automatic mode is the default, and Apple has maintained consistent performance scalability between Automatic and High Performance modes. So far, I haven't tested the M4 Max, so it's possible that this reduction in performance in Low Power mode is exclusive to the M4 Pro or the "Pro" chips. One possible explanation could be the optimization of the efficiency curve. To keep a reasonable power budget in Low Power mode, Apple may have had to throttle the cores, which would explain the greater reduction in multi-core performance compared to single-core.
I'm still curious to see how the M4 Max will perform when I get the chance to test it, although it seems that Apple hasn't distributed many units for review. Another question that remains is whether Low Power mode extends battery life on the MacBook Pro compared to previous generations. Apple claims that these new M4 chips offer greater battery life than their predecessors, although it hasn't clarified how this claim is substantiated. The battery capacities have remained the same as in the previous generation.
If indeed Low Power mode, which is more restrictive, was activated during battery life tests, this could result in an increase in duration that wasn't there before. This might seem like Apple is manipulating the numbers to enhance its statements about battery life. However, from a user experience perspective, this might not be relevant. As long as users are aware that when in battery mode and using Low Power, they are getting less than half of the M4 Pro's performance.
