Table of contents
- M2 Pro/Max vs M1 Pro/Max
- CPU, GPU, memory, neural engine specs
- CPU benchmark scores
- Media engines
- GPU/media engine benchmarks
- External display support
- M2 Pro/Max vs M1 Pro/Max wrap-up
Apple has given the MacBook Pro and Mac mini a big refresh to start 2023. The machines are more capable and have more flexibility when it comes to configurations with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips.
Whether you’re in the market for a new laptop or desktop Mac or are just curious about how everything compares, let’s dive in!
M2 Pro/Max vs M1 Pro/Max
CPU, GPU, memory, neural engine specs
Apple says the M2 Pro gives up to 20% faster CPU and 30% faster GPU performance than the M1 Pro. And the M2 Pro neural engine has seen a 40% speed increase over the M1 Pro.
You’ve also got up to a 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU with the M2 Pro.
For M2 Max, Apple says the same 20, 30, and 40% performance improvements were achieved when compared to the M1 Max for CPU, GPU, and neural engine.
And M2 Max supports up to 96GB of unified memory, a 12-core CPU, and up to 38-core GPU.
Transistor count
The overall transistor count has gone from 33.7 billion on the M1 Pro to 40 billion on the M2 Pro and from 57 billion on the M1 Max to over 67 billion on the M2 Max.
CPU benchmark scores
Testing from both Brian Tong and Macworld on the new and previous Apple Silicon shows CPU performance has increased as much as Apple’s claim of 20% in Geekbench 5 results.
For example, the multi-core score for the M2 Max comes in at 15,240 compared to the M1 Max’s 12,750. However, the single-core score between those is closer to a 14% improvement.
Media engines
Like their predecessors, both the M2 Pro and M2 Max feature dedicated media engines to offer hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW support. And they feature the same amount of engines as the M1 Pro/Max.
Apple says the difference is the new media engines offer improved performance like “twice the ProRes support to dramatically accelerate media playback and transcoding.”
The M2 Max chip continues to include two video encode engines and two ProRes encode and decode engines like the M1 Max.
GPU/media engine benchmarks
Geekbench results have shown Apple’s claims to be true. In Brian’s MacBook Pro testing, the M2 Max was able to rip through a ProRes export almost exactly 2x faster than the M1 Max, and it even beat the M1 Ultra.
