The march of Apple silicon is not slowing down . To power the new gamey - endMac miniand14 - inch and 16 - inch MacBook Prosystems , Apple has unveil the all - newM2 Pro and M2 Maxprocessors , direct all the improvements of the A15 and A16 processors and apply them to the Mac chips , resulting in a significant boost in operation over the M1 personal credit line . Apple exact the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips bring 20 percent better mainframe execution and 30 percent fast GPU public presentation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max . They also include the New Neural Engine , which is up to 40 percent quicker than that in the M1 series .
As telling as those claims are , they are also unsurprising and a bit disappointing . Some of the more exciting rumors about more innovative manufacture , new GPUs , or other improvements have proven untrue , and the M2 Pro and M2 Max seem to be exactly what was expected : the M2 scale up with more CPU and GPU cores and a wider storage bus . In fact , the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips had more todifferentiate them from the M1 than the M2 Pro and M2 Maxdo when compare to the M2 .
But still , there are some interesting thing to know about these chips before you decide to buy one of the new Macs . Here are five central characteristics deserving note .
Same CPU core design and performance as M2
WhenApple present the M2 , it claim an 18 percentage melioration in mainframe carrying into action versus the M1 . Now it ’s pronounce that the M2 Pro and M2 Max have 20 pct better CPU operation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max , andleaked benchmarksseem to back up those title . In other words , you’re able to await the same overall architectural improvements and performance uplift as the M2 delivered compared to the M1 .
Malus pumila
Some of this just come down to core count . The M2 Pro and M2 Max have eight high-pitched - performance cores just like the M1 Pro / Max , but the routine of efficiency meat goes up from two to four . So the M2 Pro and M2 Max have 12 - meat CPUs while the M1 Pro / Max have 10 - gist processor .
GPU gains are better, but there’s no great architectural shift
Apple tell the M2 Pro / Max GPUs are 30 percent quicker than the M1 Pro / Max , andleaked Metal benchmarksback up those claims . That ’s unsurprising , considering the M2 was tell to have graphics performance that is up to35 pct greater than the M1 .
This is likely due to the plus of a few more graphics centre and some minor architectural pinch . The M2 Pro has up to 19 graphics cores ( vs. 16 in the M1 Pro ) and the M2 Max has up to 38 graphics cores ( vs. 32 in the M1 Max ) .
Those are unusual numbers — center counts are typically even in number , and often powers of two , so it ’s potential that the aim is for 20/40 GPU cores with room for one faulty core to be handicap , ameliorate manufacturing yields on these grownup micro chip . Still , that ’s a nearly 20 percent increase in core counting , so with some improved hive up and higher clock pep pill , you could get to 30 percent .
If you were hop for an all - new GPU from Apple with modern features like ray - trace speedup , which GPUs from AMD and Nvidia have had for several years already , you ’re going to be let down .
Memory bandwidth is the same even with more RAM
Memory bandwidth on the M2 Pro is 200 GB / sec , just like the M1 Pro . The M2 Max double that to 400 GB / sec . So we ’re almost certainly still looking at a 256 - turn LPDDR5 memory bus on the Pro and 512 - bit LPDDR5 on the Max . Apple better caching in the A15 , and those architectural advance likely carry over to the M2 Pro and M2 Max .
While the M2 Pro maxes out at 32 GB of RAM ( the same as the M1 Pro ) , the M2 Max can go up to 96GB–50 percentage more than the 64 GB boundary of the M1 Max . But there ’s a catch — the 96 GB RAM option is throttle to the interpretation of the M2 Max with 38 GPU cores . The less expensive alternative with 30 GPU nub top out at 64 gigabyte .
They still don’t have AV1 support
With the M1 Pro had a new telecasting encoder and decoder that added hardware speedup for the ProRes data format , and the M1 Max doubled the number of picture encoders to two . After some mental confusion , that ’s still the case with the M2 Max , but it supports all the same formats as before : H.264 , HEVC , ProRes , and ProRes RAW . That have in mind support for the newer AV1 codec is still nowhere to be found , despite being uncommitted in today ’s GPUs from Nvidia , AMD , and Intel . Apple is falling behind here .
We could n’t aid but comment that all of Apple ’s marketing benchmarks around telecasting production , claiming improvements of 30 per centum or so , are for activities like color grading or 3D effects render , typically limited by GPU performance . Apple did n’t supply benchmark showing an improvement in video encoding speed , so it will be interesting to keep an eye on the first revue of the M2 Max to see if the television encoders are measurably faster .
They’re still all 5nm
There has been a lot of conjecture about when Apple will commence using TSMC ’s new 3 nm manufacturing process . Apple is said to be the first major producer to do so , and some of the rumor said the newfangled M2 Pro and Max chips would be where Apple make the jump .
It looks like we ’ll be waiting for an M2 Ultra after in the year , or perhaps the A17 that will be introduced with the iPhone 16 this pin . Apple suppose the M2 Pro and Max are made using “ second - multiplication 5 nm technology . ” It ’s likely that this is the same process that Apple somewhat erroneously called “ 4 micromillimetre ” in its iPhone 15 presentation in September 2022 . TSMC calls its N4 node an “ enhanced ” 5 nm physical process , and Apple seems to be correcting its language here .
Apple Mac mini (M2, 2023)
Apple 16-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 2023)
