How a newer Mac could help you save money

Introduction

A little discussed fact about Apple’s silicon is how they are much more energy efficient than the Intel processors they replaced. Our research and experimentation shows that upgrading your Mac to a silicon model could save you thousands in electricity costs per year.

In this article we are going to compare the energy usage between Intel and Apple silicon models to determine the difference in energy consumption and the potential savings to be had by upgrading.

Method

Power consumption varies with usage, for example a device at idle will use a fraction of the energy that it would use when being pushed to maximum performance. Apple publishes each device’s energy usage at idle and the maximum, but true usage will be somewhere in the middle. To ensure that an accurate measurement of energy usage was found each device was plugged into a watt meter and a set list of tasks were performed over a period of 24 hours to simulate a day's use.

Monitoring energy consumption whilst running DaVinci Resolve 19.

We have chosen the Intel Mac Pro with a Intel 2.5GHz Xeon (28-core) CPU and compared this with the entry level Mac Pro M2 Ultra 24-core CPU as these were the closest match in terms of performance.

All measurements were captured using a Furado power meter, with each routine repeated five times to average out any anomalies.

        Variation in real-time watt usage whilst booting the Mac Pro Intel

Results

In all three power usage measurements the Mac Pro M2 Ultra significantly outperformed the Mac Pro Intel, with the Mac Pro Intel using over three times as much energy under load and over four times as much energy when idle than the Mac Pro M2 Ultra.

*Annual Energy Use is assumed to consist of 5.5 hours under load, 4.5 hours idle and 14 hours sleep per day.
**Assuming 25p per kWh (Ofgen pricecap 1 Jan to 31 Mar 2025)

Conclusion

The Apple silicon Mac Pro M2 Ultra uses under three times less energy than the Intel Mac Pro, at the current average cost per kilowatt this amounts to a saving of £245 over 12 months. Assuming the lifecycle of a Mac Pro is between 8-12 years this could be a saving of £1,960 - £2,940 if energy costs stay the same, however with the energy cap increasing 6.4% in April of this year it could well be a larger saving in the future.

This comparison should also be held in the context of the Mac Pro M2 Ultra being more than twice as powerful as the Intel model according to Geekbench 6 scores, so not only are you enjoying energy savings but also a much more capable device.

Geekbench 6 CPU benchmarks.

The elephant in the room is of course the cost of upgrading to a newer Mac Pro and that’s where we come in - we are offering the refurbished Mac Pro M2 Ultra for deep discounts vs Apple, in some cases over 50% less than new. Check it out here...