Apple M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max SoCs
- Thread starter iMacmatician
- Start date
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So the M1 and M2 are still slower than the old Macs in games on Steam? I don't keep track so I wasn't aware of this.
Regards,
SB
No, they replaced slow Intel processors with integrated graphics for the most part.
It's just that everything is written for x86 and not Aarch64 but it is still faster despite having to be translated because the high-performance cores are very good.
RE:Village, Baldur's Gate 3 and No Man's Sky should be fully optimised for Aarch64 and Metal from the ground up.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So basically for people that game on their Mac, it's still a pretty sizeable performance improvement in games?
Regards,
SB
It obviously depend what you upgraded from.
The Mac Pro is still quite capable and can be outfitted with multiple dual VEGA II 32GB HBM cards and a 28-core CPU.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
If you were used to integrated Intel graphics, then the move to M1 or M2 is significant. If you're running games that are 80x86 code, you may not see any (or much) difference on the CPU side because of need to cross-compile 80x86 to ARM but many games that have native Mac ports released in the last year through Steam or the Mac App Store are increasingly packaged with ARM-optimized binaries.
M2 Pro & Max announced.
M2 Pro:
10-12 CPU cores (8P 4E, M1 Pro is 8-10 cores, 8P 2E)
Up to 19 core GPU (M1 Pro is 14-16)
Up to 32GB unified RAM, 200GB/s (same as before)
M2 Max:
Same CPU as M2 Pro
Up to 38 core GPU (previously 24-32)
Up to 96GB, 400GB/s (previously up to 64GB, same BW)
M2 Pro:
10-12 CPU cores (8P 4E, M1 Pro is 8-10 cores, 8P 2E)
Up to 19 core GPU (M1 Pro is 14-16)
Up to 32GB unified RAM, 200GB/s (same as before)
M2 Max:
Same CPU as M2 Pro
Up to 38 core GPU (previously 24-32)
Up to 96GB, 400GB/s (previously up to 64GB, same BW)
DavidGraham
Veteran
So the M2 Pro gains an additional 2 Efficiency CPU cores and 3 GPU cores, while the M2 Max gains 6 GPU cores only. Seems Apple has hit a scaling wall due to the process node.
They are still on 5nm but the GPU is clocked higher in the M2. They have lower GPU cores due to redundancy (for higher yields) as their GPU needs a lot of cache.
Both M2 Pro and M2 Max now get 4 High-Efficiency cores. That's why they call it a 12-core CPU design, consisting of a cluster of High-Efficiency cores and two clusters of High-Performance cores.
Have in mind that besides the CPU and GPU a lot of the other things also get an upgrade, like better media engine (8K ProRes decode and encode), better display engine (now with support for 4K240Hz and 8K60Hz over HDMI2.1), better neural engine etc.
| SoC | GPU | TFlops |
| M1 Pro | 14-core | 4.55 |
| M1 Pro | 16-core | 5.2 |
| M2 Pro | 16-core | 5.76 |
| M2 Pro | 19-core | 6.84 |
| M1 Max | 24-core | 7.8 |
| M1 Max | 32-core | 10.4 |
| M2 Max | 30-core | 10.8 |
| M2 Max | 38-core | 13.68 |
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Die shots seem to indicate that M1 Max does indeed have 38 cores.
The Mac mini getting M2/M2 Pro and a $100 price cut on the base model is great news. Easily one of the best bang-for-buck deals in all of computing nowadays.
To the contrary, there's much speculation that these products were supposed to be released late last year.
COVID lockdowns in China probably played a huge part in Apple choosing to delay the launches.
DavidGraham
Veteran
That's only 2 more than M1 Pro and M1 Max. Also, clocks are up only by 300MHz more.
Standard gen on gen upgrades. Though, the M2 Max sports one video engine compared to two in M1 Max.
That's incorrect, direct die shots reveal no redundancy.
Apple's M2 MacBook Pros, Mac Mini boast more cores, higher clocks and bigger GPUs
Still waiting for that Ultra...
www.theregister.com
Well then yields must be great!That's only 2 more than M1 Pro and M1 Max. Also, clocks are up only by 300MHz more.
Standard gen on gen upgrades. Though, the M2 Max sports one video engine compared to two in M1 Max.
That's incorrect, direct die shots reveal no redundancy.
Apple's M2 MacBook Pros, Mac Mini boast more cores, higher clocks and bigger GPUs
Still waiting for that Ultra...www.theregister.com
Complemented with increases in battery life for both the 14" and 16" MacBook Pro.
We'll see what benchmarks say, but I have little doubt that the 16" MBP will further extend Apple's lead as the battery life king.
According to this https://www.macworld.com/article/1475533/m2-pro-max-processors-cpu-gpu-memory-video-encode-av1.html they don't support AV1.
Bummer. I kind of expect av1 to start showing up as an option more and more for online video over the next five years.
Interesting that the M2 Max 38-core GPU (nearly 87,000 points) gets quite close in Geekbench 5 Compute to the M1 Ultra 48-core (around 88,000 points) and 64-core GPU (around 98,000).
The M1 Max has a larger cache as per the presentation and clocked higher at 1.4GHz. It could also show some inefficiencies with scaling over multiple SoCs and the UltraFusion connection.
The M1 Max has a larger cache as per the presentation and clocked higher at 1.4GHz. It could also show some inefficiencies with scaling over multiple SoCs and the UltraFusion connection.
| SoC | GPU cores | TFlops | Geekbench 5 Compute |
| M2 Max | 38-cores | 13.6 | 86,805 |
| M1 Ultra | 48-cores | 15.8 | 88,000 |
| M1 Ultra | 64-cores | 21 | 98,000 |