It seems a little odd that Apple chose to debut its new M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs covertly. Apple often announces its hardware with much fanfare, so it’s puzzling that this announcement was so low-key. However, a recent Geekbench listing indicates that the M2 Pro is going to be a serious powerhouse. It has been spotted alongside a Mac Mini on the benchmarking website (via MacRumors).
In the single-core and multi-core Geekbench tests, the Apple M2 Pro receives 1,952 and 15,013 points, respectively. This represents a 10% improvement in single-core performance and a 20% improvement in multi-core over the previous-generation M1 Pro (1,769/12,499). Even the more powerful M1 Max (1,780/12,656) falls short in compared to the M2 Pro, but a true apples-to-apples comparison would be unfair considering that the latter has two more E cores. Additionally, Geekbench is a CPU-heavy test, whereas the M1 Max will almost surely show off its prowess in a more GPU-dependent environment.
The phenomenal performance improvement of the M2 Pro can be partly attributed to Apple’s expertise in chip design and the enhanced TSMC N5P node on which it is produced. The M2 Max will be the best Apple SoC available until the 3 nm M3 and its derivatives are available because the M2 Ultra is not expected to launch anytime soon. Nevertheless, the M2 Pro and M2 Max ought to have sufficient processing capacity to handle the majority of video-related workloads. The AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX and Intel Core i9-13980HX are available for everything else.
