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First Geekbench Scores for New Mac Mini With M2 Pro Surface, Beats M1 Max

Intel and AMD have reached 2200 in Geekbench single-core so Apple needs to keep up on the performance side of things. People don't need to put their cape on and defend Apple. The M2 Pro and M2 Pro Max are not amazing updates. Apple knew it too and that's why they didn't compare them to any recent AMD and Intel chips. Apple only compared to i9 Intel MacBooks before the Apple Silicon transition (lol). Johny Srouji wasn't even on stage to present these new chips. He's a engineer. He can't put on a fake smile and BS you so he tapped out this round.
 
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dilweegie said:
Am I crazy or does an M2 pro mini blow away my 10 core iMac Pro? If I could use the iMac Pro as a monitor for the mini, why wouldn’t I upgrade?
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I upgraded from an iMac Pro to an M1 iMac a year and a half ago and didn’t look back. I’m excited for my new M2 Mac mini…
 
nicolas_s said:
Exactly. Many still say that we shouldn't care about energy consumption on a desktop device, but here in Europe it's starting to become more and more of a deciding factor.
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I'm starting to consider energy use in most of my always-on tech toys. I plan to redo my network sometime soon, and big power-hungry switches and APs are not in the cards anymore. I'll be looking at idle energy usage especially closely.
 
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Michael.S said:
Appearentely the new M2 Mac Mini has a better cooling system as it weight more than the M1 Mac Mini (accorind to MaxTech - > see
) So the thermal increase should be no issue here.
But I'd like to see how the temperature behaves on the MB Pros- with the new M2 Pro/Max, as they have less space than a Mac Mini and therefore the cooling needs to work even more efficient. Wonder if we finally will hear the fans?
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Oh geez Max tech is reviewing these from the Apple Store page. Nice touch putting an M1 mini next to the M2 logos in the thumbnail implying he has them. He does clickbait well though so he gets views and subs.

I'm sure the fans will ramp up on the M2 Pro under an artificial load but under daily tasks I doubt you'll hear them.
 
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Michael.S said:
Really nice numbers.

BUT:

Realistically speaking. How much of a number increase would you recognize as an improvement in the real world scenario?
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Typically the distinction threshold for humans is ~15% (of course this is a ballpark value and varies widely among different people) but is a decent rule of thumb. That means people don’t notice any parameter change unless it’s changed by ~15%. And the M2 is conveniently ~15% faster than the M1. I wonder if this is by design: the smallest speed increase they could make that is “noticeable”.
 
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uller6 said:
Typically the distinction threshold for humans is ~15% (of course this is a ballpark value and varies widely among different people) but is a decent rule of thumb. That means people don’t notice any parameter change unless it’s changed by ~15%. And the M2 is conveniently ~15% faster than the M1. I wonder if this is by design: the smallest speed increase they could make that is “noticeable”.
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Do you have a source/study for the 15% ?
I'm asking not just for Apple stuff, but professionally, such a stat could be very useful :D
 
Which One To Buy Today?

The Mac Studio For US$2,879.00
OR
The Mac mini for US$2909.00
(education pricing on both before taxes)
 

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Retskrad said:
Intel and AMD have reached 2200 in Geekbench single-core so Apple needs to keep up on the performance side of things.
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They reached that on desktop, but not on mobile (if you disregard the new high-power “mobile” CPUs that use more power than desktop chips from couple years ago). In the 45W space, Apple performs same or better than competition and uses significantly less power at the same time.

In terms of raw performance of cores Apple is behind. One needs to make it clear though that x86 CPUs achieve this performance at a huge cost of increased energy consumption. Neither Intel or AMD can improve performance to this level through innovation, so they are brute-forcing it. Apple is refusing to be dragged into this mess and they only deserve respect for this.

Retskrad said:
The M2 Pro and M2 Pro Max are not amazing updates.
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Not amazing, but not bad either. These chips are same speed or faster than top of the line 45W mobile x86 chips while consuming much less power and offering battery life comparable to that of much slower energy-efficiency focused x86 CPUs. For all-propose mobile, these are the best chips on the market, with the only drawback being the cost.
 
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Retskrad said:
Intel and AMD have reached 2200 in Geekbench single-core so Apple needs to keep up on the performance side of things. People don't need to put their cape on and defend Apple. The M2 Pro and M2 Pro Max are not amazing updates. Apple knew it too and that's why they didn't compare them to any recent AMD and Intel chips. Apple only compared to i9 Intel MacBooks before the Apple Silicon transition (lol). Johny Srouji wasn't even on stage to present these new chips. He's a engineer. He can't put on a fake smile and BS you so he tapped out this round.
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Yeah - I still think the M2 is an awesome chip based on the power draw. A notebook with 22 hours of video playback time on a battery is nuts!

To your point - I think the bigger year-over-year change is going to happen with the 3mn process change.
 
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chucker23n1 said:
Now, Raptor Lake-HX does handily beat the M2 Pro.
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Those HX series are mostly used in huge 17" desktop-replacement "laptops" that are barely portable at all. In more compact ones, you'd likely find the H series CPU.

Alder Lake destroys Apple Silicon, they said. The i7-12700H in my Asus TUF just slightly beats the M1 Max (12607 vs 12554 multi-core and 1789 vs 1783 single-core, actually within the margin of error) only in the device's "turbo" mode, albeit the laptop is bigger, much hotter, way much louder, and consumes way more power than my 14" MBP.
 
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Hi! I dont know your requirements but I do seriuos video editing in 4k, with few editing apps and 32GB is enough, sometimes if I render long videos with tons of effects there is some swap but if not, never!
Cheers
greenorblue said:
Looks good! Just wish the Mini with the M2 Pro had a little more ram. I'd love 48/64 gigs, since the Studio is overkill from a GPU standpoint (for me).
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I think Hardware Unboxed testing of M1 pro and M2 chip give a good indicator of where the M2 pro will stand. Used M1 looking like a value purchase, all things considered.

 
So tempted to get the base Mac mini M2 with 16GB. Probably will wait and see what the SSD is like. Hopefully it is two 128GB modules.
 
Geek bench, the meaningless benchmark.

For 99.9% of people to notice a difference it will take a high demand task like rendering video from FinalCut and having it shave off 5+ min of time. Short of that they will never know.
 
chucker23n1 said:
The thermals are likely somewhere between Raptor Lake-P and Raptor Lake-U. The top Raptor Lake-P part scores roughly the same as the M1 Pro. The top Raptor Lake-H part performs very similarly to the M2 Pro, but burns more energy.

Now, Raptor Lake-HX does handily beat the M2 Pro. But then we're talking 55-157W, which is way more.

So, in terms of performance per watt, Apple is still well ahead.
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Which would only really matter to some PC laptop user on trying to do some high use CPU or GPU task while on battery. That is a such a tiny niche.

Most people doing that kind of work would be using a desktop, Mac or PC and if on laptop plugged in. Sure it is great that the MacBooks do not need to be plugged in....but even if I was doing those tasks with a MacBook....I would plug in, just because I think it is draining the heck out of my battery, even though my fans do not kick in.
 
theluggage said:
…and since the bulk of Apple’s Mac business is ultra-portable laptops and ultra small-form-factor desktops, that’s the key measure of their success. Also, this is just Geekbench - application benchmarks that take advantage of the media engine, neural engine etc. may show a greater advantage over Intel.
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I doubt the bulk of high CPU/GPU demand Mac users are on Macbook's or Mac Mini's.

Our Marketing department is currently on maxed out Intel iMac's, 64gig, high-end i7 for their time (2019), or Mac Pro's. Their replacements coming this year, since all of their software is finally ported, will be Mac Studio's or whatever the Mac Pro replacement will be. They have a few Intel 16inch MacBooks for road work but they are rarely used and probably more so for showing off completed work.

Yes I do think the majority of Mac's sold are MacBook Air's and Mac Mini's....because price does matter to even Mac fan's.
 
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