With or without "balanced mode", things don't look good. This info was released today which now confirms my thoughts and more: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/26/intel-core-i9-12th-gen-vs-m1-max-benchmarks/

But really, the point of the article is that nobody asked Intel to build a faster CPU than the M1 Max SOC. Something on par would have been perfectly fine. But they did, regardless, because they keep playing the old "big numbers" game. If they would have done something on par, we'd be looking at much better reviews for Intel.