Intel accelerated its anti-Apple campaign this fall as we got closer to the MacBook Pro event in mid-October. We explained all year long that the custom M-series SoC is Intel’s biggest nightmare right now. The M1 MacBooks have fantastic performance and battery life, significantly outperforming Intel-based machines. Intel hasn’t caught up to Apple, and it faces the prospect of other big tech giants developing their own SoCs. Google Tensor is just one such example. Then Apple unveiled the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors this week, twisting the knife.

Apple’s M1 Pro and M1 Max presentation discussed performance at length, comparing the new chips against Intel’s best processors. Apple showed that its chips deliver more power per watt than Intel machines could ever dream of. The first benchmarks that followed show that the 2021 MacBook Pro performance is indeed spectacular. More interestingly, some reports indicate that the highest-end M1 Max MacBook Pro version is more powerful than the PS5. But that’s not necessarily amazing news for gamers.

Looking at the available data, Notebook Check estimated the teraflops (TF) performance for all the new M1 Pro and M1 Max variations, as follows:

2020 M1 8-core GPU = 2.6 TF
14-inch exclusive M1 Pro 14-core GPU = 4.5 TF
Base M1 Pro 16-core GPU = 5.2 TF
Mid-range M1 Max 24-core GPU = 7.8 TF
High-end M1 Max 32-core GPU = 10.4 TF
Comparatively, the PS5’s custom GPU offers 10.28 TF of performance. The figures above are estimates. But real-life performance benchmarks will probably show that the most powerful M1 Max MacBook Pro can deliver PS5-grade performance.

Separately, the new MacBook Pros features SSDs with “jaw-dropping” read speeds of 7.4GB/s. The PS5 packs a custom 5.5GB/s SSD. The speed of the SSD is essential for the PS5’s gaming speed.

This is a bit like saying your country got the biggest flattest road that can support high speed cars. But got no cars in your country