Unsurprisingly, Apple is introducing its new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips for its best-performing Macs and MacBooks. Like the M2 chip, the evolution is smooth.
It comes as no surprise that Apple introduces its M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. After launching the Apple M2 chip in 2022, we naturally expected to see the brand move its entire range to the new generation. In anticipation of the Apple M2 Ultra chip, the two new chips become the most modern components of the apple.
More cores, more power
As with the change from the M1 to M2 chip, what’s new is in the detail and there shouldn’t be too big a gap between machine generations.
Therefore, the Apple M2 Pro chip now has up to 12 CPU cores and 19 GPU cores, compared to 10 and 16 respectively for the M1 Pro chip. Otherwise, we keep unified memory that can go up to 32 GB . Note that for the processor, the extra 2 cores are underperforming, but power efficient.
With this plugin in cores, Apple promises a performance improvement of around 40% in Photoshop for image processing, or 25% for code compilation in Xcode, but Apple gives very little precision in its own tests. In other words, we will have to wait for the press to get their hands on the machines equipped with these chips to see the improvements.
Apple M2 Max: a great GPU
The difference between the M2 Pro and the M2 Max is always in the graphics part, the CPU remains locked to 12 cores. The graphics part reaches a maximum of 38 cores and can be associated with 96 GB of unified memory. The graphics performance of the M2 Max chip should outperform the M1 Max by 30%, according to Apple.
For the numbers freaks, Apple’s chip now has 67 billion transistors, 10 more than the M1 Max chip, and uses TSMC’s 5nm process.
The SoC also offers improvements to its other components: a new generation of Secure Enclave, a new Neural Engine, and a more efficient image processing processor.
Unfortunately, on the media side, Apple seems to once again ignore AV1 encoding while the format is establishing itself in the rest of technology as the new video standard. If you want to work from AV1, you’ll need to go for a dedicated solution or look at the PC side.
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