Apple M2 Max Benchmarked, Up to 13% Faster Than Last Generation

Apple’s upcoming M2 Max chip has been benchmarked in Geekbench and initial results are really promising. For the unaware, Apple launched its M2 lineup in June this year. The M2 refreshes may arrive sometime next year with some hints towards a possible first-quarter launch. 

M2 Max

Today’s benchmarks have seemingly confirmed that Apple is indeed working on an M2 Max chip. This CPU features 12 cores or 2 cores higher than the M1 Max which launched last year. As per this test, the M2 Max chip was running at a base frequency of 3.54GHz and featured 4MB of L2 cache. The Mac used for this test features a massive 96GB of RAM. 

As for the actual tests, the M2 Max scores 1889 points in the single and 14586 points in the multi-core test. To put this into perspective, the last-gen M1 Max had a score of 1787 points and 12826 points respectively. This makes the M2 Max a nice 5% and a 13% improvement against the M1 Max.

While we do not know the TDP of this CPU, we can make a small comparison against Intel’s upcoming offerings. The 28W i7–1370P scored 1665 points in the single-core and 10184 points in the multi-core test. One should note that these CPUs are not exactly comparable because one is based on the x86 ISA and the other on the ARM ISA. AMD on the other hand could bring some serious competition with Ryzen 7000 mobile, being more efficient than Intel.

Mainstream Usage

If we talk about the actual performance, then the M2 Max kind of lags behind Raptor Lake and Zen4. Without bringing power efficiency into the argument, Intel’s and AMD’s chips are more often than not cruising past the 2000-point territory. Apple will make some small adjustments because remember, this is just an early test. Besides, the M2 Ultra and the M2 Extreme will be aimed at both Intel’s and AMD’s best.