Apple’s chip rollout continues with the introduction of the next generation of M2 processors introduced in the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. The new M2 Pro and M2 Max come six months after Apple introduced the M2 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
“Only Apple is building SoCs like M2 Pro and M2 Max. They offer incredible professional performance along with industry-leading energy efficiency,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, said in a press release. “With an even more powerful CPU and GPU, support for a larger unified memory system, and an advanced media engine, the M2 Pro and M2 Max represent amazing advances in Apple silicon.”
M2 Pro and M2 Max offer more CPU cores, GPU cores, and memory bandwidth than their predecessors. Let’s take a look at the details of the new chips.
M2 Pro: 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU
Apple
The M2 Pro uses a second-generation 5nm process and offers more CPU and GPU cores, memory bandwidth, and various other upgrades over the M2 and M1 Pro chips. The M2 Pro has 40 billion transitions, which is 20 percent more than the M1 Pro, double the number of the M2. Apple claims that the M2 Pro has a larger L2 cache than the M1 Pro’s 24MB, though it doesn’t provide details.
| professional m1 | m2 | m2 professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| cpu cores | 8 or 10 (6/8 performance, 2 efficiency) | 8 (4 performance, 4 efficiency) | 10 or 12 (6/8 performance, 4 efficiency) |
| GPU cores | 14 or 16 | 8 or 10 | 16 or 19 |
| unified memory | 16GB, 32GB | 8GB, 16GB, 24GB | 16GB, 32GB |
| memory bandwidth | 200GBps | 100GBps | 200GBps |
| motor neural | 16 cores | 16 cores | 16 cores |
Like the M1 Pro, the M2 Pro offers a benefit to video editors with its built-in media engine that speeds up H.264, HEVC, and ProRes video encoding and decoding. It also offers better power efficiency during playback of multiple 4K and 8K ProRes video streams. And a custom image signal processor works with the Neural Engine to improve image quality from MacBook Pro’s built-in 1080p FaceTime camera.
Compared to the M1 Pro, Apple benchmarks show the M2 Pro to be 40 percent faster at Adobe Photoshop image processing and 25 percent faster at compiling Xcode. Apple also offers comparisons to the 16-inch MacBook Pro Core i9, the latest Intel-based laptop; Apple says the M2 Pro is 2.5 times faster in Photoshop and 80 percent faster in Xcode.
M2 Max: 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU
Apple
The M2 Max takes the M2 Pro and goes several steps further, with 67 billion transistors (10 million more than the M1 Max), additional CPU and GPU cores, and more memory bandwidth.
| M1 max. | M2 max. | |
|---|---|---|
| cpu cores | 10 (8 performance, 2 efficiency) | 12 (8 performance, 4 efficiency) |
| GPU cores | 24 or 32 | 30 or 38 |
| unified memory | 32GB, 64GB | 32GB, 64GB, 96GB |
| memory bandwidth | 400GBps | 400GBps |
| motor neural | 16 cores | 16 cores |
Apple says the M2 Max is “the world’s most powerful and efficient chip for a professional laptop.” Of note, it has the same media engine as the M2 Pro, but only a video encoding engine and ProRes engines, where the M1 Max offered two of each. To upgrade to 96GB of memory, you’ll need a MacBook with a 38-core GPU, which costs $3,099 (14-inch) or $3,499 (16-inch), with an additional $800 for memory upgrade beyond 32GB.
