>Under load, my M1 laptop can pull similar wattage to my old Intel MacBook Pro while staying virtually silent. Meanwhile the old Intel MacBook Pro sounds like a jet engine.
On a 15/16" Intel MBP, the CPU alone can draw up to 100w. No Apple Silicon except an M Ultra can draw that much power.
There is no chance your M1 laptop can draw even close to it. M1 maxes out at around 10w. M1 Max maxes out at around 40w.
Being generous and saying TDP is actually the consumption; most Intel Mac's actually shipping with "configurable power down" specced chips ranging from 23W (like the i5 5257U) to 47W (like the i7 4870HQ); (NOTE: newer chips like the i9 9980HK actually have a lower TDP at 45w)
of course TDP isn't actually a measure of power consumption, but M2 Max has a TDP of 79W which is considerably more than the "high end" Intel CPU's; at least in terms of what Intel markets.
Keep in mind that Intel might ship a 23w chip but laptop makers can choose to boost it to whatever it wants. For example, a 23w Intel chip is often boosted to 35w+ because laptop makers want to win benchmarks. In addition, Intel's TDP is quite useless because they added PL1 and PL2 boosts.
Apple always shipped their chips with "configurable power down" when it was available, which isn't available on higher specced chips like the i7/i9 - though they didn't disable boost clocks as far as I know.
The major pains for Apple was when the thermal situation was so bad that CPUs were performing below base clock. -- at that point i7's were outperforming i9's because they were underclocking themselves due to thermal exhaustion; which feels too weird to be true.
That's not Apple. That's Intel. Intel's 14nm chips were so hot and bad that they had to be underclocked. Every laptop maker had to underclock Intel laptop chips - even today. The chips can only maintain peak performance for seconds.
On a 15/16" Intel MBP, the CPU alone can draw up to 100w. No Apple Silicon except an M Ultra can draw that much power.
There is no chance your M1 laptop can draw even close to it. M1 maxes out at around 10w. M1 Max maxes out at around 40w.