The Apple M4 Pro chip is official now that Apple has announced the new Apple Mac mini and MacBook Pro models.
The new chip is a step up from the existing Apple M4 chip, which is already powering the latest Apple iMac M4 and Apple iPad Pro. The new Apple M4 Pro, meanwhile, offers a boost in core counts for both the CPU and GPU built into the chip for those who need more performance without committing overkill on their latest creative project.
Since the Apple M4 Pro fits into the midrange in terms of what Apple fans are looking for from Apple Silicon, this is going to be a popular option for many, and fortunately, we have all the latest from Apple about the new chip in terms of specs and potential performance you can expect over the last-gen Apple M3 Pro and we're here to answer all your questions about this latest SoC for Mac products.
Apple M4 Pro chip: Cut to the chase
- What is it? The follow-up to Apple's M3 Pro chip
- When is it available? Available with select Mac products, shipping November 8, 2024
- What does it cost? It won't sell on its own, but will come installed on Apple Mac products like the Apple Mac mini (2024).
Apple M4 Pro chip: Release date
The Apple M4 Pro chip won't sell on its own, but will come as an optional upgrade for the newly announced Apple Mac mini 2024 and the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch and Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch refreshes, which will launch in November.
While you can pre-order the new Macs with Apple M4 Pro now, you'll have to wait until November 8 to actually get your hands on any new hardware with the Apple M4 Pro chip - as the new Mac mini models will start shipping out by then or you can pick it up in store.
Apple M4 Pro chip: Price
The Apple M4 Pro chip will not sell on its own, but instead, it will power the new Mac mini as a premium upgrade, and will also be an option for the highly anticipated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
Apple M4 Pro chip: Specs & performance
The new Apple M4 Pro will have some noticeable improvements over last year's Apple M3 Pro, while it will stay the same in other areas.
First off, it's a 'second-generation' 3nm system-on-a-chip, so it has a similar architecture to the Apple M3 Pro, but there are some important differences.
It features faster clock speeds than the Apple M3 Pro, at least according to Apple - it's claimed to offer 'the fastest CPU core in the world' based on single-threaded performance, and also brings a significant boost in multi-threaded performance with up to 14 cores - divided into ten performance cores and four efficiency cores. Apple claims that it's almost twice as fast as the M1 Pro chip, its first-gen foray into in-house silicon.
There's also the neural engine, which is capable of 38 TOPS compared to the Apple M3 Pro's 18 TOPS, which is exactly what you'll need if you want to take advantage of the new Apple Intelligence tools, apps, and functionality introduced in this latest generation of Macs.
Additionally, you also have support for Thunderbolt 5 and increased memory bandwidth, which makes the unified memory more efficient despite remaining the same starting amount (16GB) as last year's M3 Pro. The M4 Pro will support a maximum of 64GB of RAM.
In terms of graphics performance, the on-chip GPU features up to 20 cores and will reportedly double the potential performance of the base M4 chip's integrated GPU. Apple has also said that it will have up to twice the ray-tracing performance as the Apple M3 Pro and faster performance and efficiency cores, though Apple hasn't revealed much yet about the latter.
Ultimately, we'll have to see how the new chip performs once we get our hands on the new Mac devices that it powers to know for sure, so watch this space for reviews and performance breakdowns once we have them.
