Anyone gazing lovingly at benchmarks will buy their Intel big boxes and will be very happy that they have bigger numbers and will always have bigger numbers (because for anything Apple releases, Apple can just run a few hundred more watts through their solution and beat it by a few percent). At the same time, there will still be millions of folks happily using their portable Macs and getting stuff done quickly and efficiently.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
First Geekbench Scores for New Mac Mini With M2 Pro Surface, Beats M1 Max
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well most modern Intel laptops come with a whisper mode where they run at around 80% clock rate but the fans don't easily turn on.. even when you are plugged in. I actually have a M1 Pro macbook and a 12700H Asus Oled notebook. It cost around 40% and performs just as well.
Wait, so the M2 Pro is faster in the benchmark you posted, but Apple is behind because you're comparing the Pro to an i9? So if we compare the M2 Max to an i7, will Intel then have to up its game?
I'm confused as to how we're deciding which chips to compare across different companies.
They got… lazy? They saw a fairly consistent performance increase year over year. I mean they had the OPTION to be lazy, for sure, but they kept improving LONG after they lapped Qualcomm a few times over. To the point where, when they shipped the first Apple Silicon, it bested the performance of most AMD and Intel processors in existence.
The Pro has 200Gb/s, the Max has 400Gb/s. Not sure what is nonsense about that, it's on Apple's website. Now it's not going to make the Max 2x faster, but it will feed data faster which could lead to a better score...
I'm actually comparing Apple's notebook chips with Intel's notebook chips. And Max branding doesn't get you extra CPU cores, only more GPU power so geekbench scores as same.
Also Apple's M1 is i5, M1 Pro 8 Core is i7 and M1 Pro 10 core is i9.
Except it doesn't appear to make any difference in CPU scores. It seems the extra memory bandwidth is for the double number of GPU cores.
Unregistered.. we had this conversation last time as well and we decided not to pursue it further on account of that fact that your arguments are not rational because you have a clear bias towards Apple as a company.
this is a funny thing to post on an apple fan site...
it's amazing how fast we are moving on cpu/gpu now, very exciting since apple switched to its own processor.
i am personally waiting for M3 based on 3nm which should offer a much large boost. Either a mac mini m3 pro with a new apple monitor (that will come out later in 2023), or finger crossed a iMac 27" m3 pro or max, whatever they offer.
must resist the urge and hold strong for 1 more year!
i am personally waiting for M3 based on 3nm which should offer a much large boost. Either a mac mini m3 pro with a new apple monitor (that will come out later in 2023), or finger crossed a iMac 27" m3 pro or max, whatever they offer.
must resist the urge and hold strong for 1 more year!
I don't think this is a fan site nor does it say that anywhere. This is a site where Apple users discuss new and upcoming Apple hardware and software products.. even services. If you have a bias towards a brand, you become a very good customer for their balance sheet but a very bad one for their future growth.
20% year-over-year is "meets expectations." Do you have a reason why we should have expected anything different? Or just pointing out what is already known? No judgement, but the first question is the more interesting one to me....
Just to clear up - you're right that the earlier poster was probably comparing 8 vs. 10 core Geekbench scores.
...but it's also true that the M1 Max has double the memory bandwidth: the M1 Max has 400 GB/s whereas the M1 Pro "only" had 200 GB/s (same as the M2 Pro - see the tech spec pages for M2 Pro Mini and M1 Max Studio).
Doesn't seem to make a significant difference in Geekbench but might in other applications.
PSA, folks: wait for "real" application benchmarks that resemble your workflow. Geekbench is a water-passing contest between CPUs and only gives a very rough clue to real world performance - which depends on how well your particular application exploits multithreading, GPU computing, media engine, neural engine, RAM/RAM bandwidth etc.
If “improving year over year such that they impressively perform against the entire rest of the computer industry with their initial M1 chips” is “got lazy”, then sure!
The “clear bias towards the company” is essentially “stating reality” in this case.
Apple’s silicon has not ever been more performant than anything that Intel’s shipped at any time. And they’ll likely never ship anything that, in raw performance, beats every Intel/AMD processor out there. But, in reality, it just doesn’t matter. Apple’s focusing on folks that are using macOS and wanting to buy macOS products (half of the folks buying Macs every year are new to the platform). Since they only sell around 30 million Macs a year, that’s a fairly significant number of new customers still left!Better than expected but still behind Intel 13th gen. Apple needs to bring their A Game for M3 chips.
Edit: Adding some benchmarks. The i9 chips are not out yet and the i7 are already on par with M2 Pro 12 core.
Competition is not a bad thing. I, for one, am glad someone got Intel to start competing and making better, faster chips.
Battery Life? Well, it lasts forever when plugged in!
I am curious, because this is not the first comment like this, is this a political thing like you guys are being panelized for using more energy or you are just trying to be more green conscience?
Actually when you compare M2 Pro 10 core (3.5ghz) and M1 Pro 10 core (3.2ghz), you would realise the only performance gain you see is because they added 2 more cores and gave a M2 Pro 12 core option. This is what Intel has been doing 6th gen to 11th gen, until they faced an existential threat from Apple, and gave us high TDP chips instead. But boy are they fast now!If “improving year over year such that they impressively perform against the entire rest of the computer industry with their initial M1 chips” is “got lazy”, then sure!
My M2 MacBook Air is probably the fastest Mac I've ever owned. For some reason, it feels snappier than my 16" M1 Pro. So, since my 'desktop Mac' is literally for just WFH office work, Teams, iCloud, etc., I built my new Mac mini with similar specs of my M2 Air (M28C/24GB/1TB), so I am thinking this should be plenty fast while remaining cool and quiet.
Thanks for the reply. I don’t find the answer obvious though. As far as I know, binned chips are regular chips with manufacturing defects. Do these defects only happen on the performance cores? I find it kind of strange. Maybe these areas of the chip are more densely packed and more prone to manufacturing errors, I don’t know…
Thanks!
And there are also folks who don't entrench themselves in either camps and just get both.
The Apple Silicon machines shine as a mobile to-go machine while not losing any performance while not plugged in. I'm getting the 1tb 14" base config to replace my 2018 MBP. I too have a 12700k PC whenever I need raw power. Good thing with the PCs is that they are not too expensive to build now so it's easy to get a PC to complement the MBP.
They are not really defected chips.. they are just chips where not all cores perform at peak frequency so they disable some cores and they work as good as they should. Because they have lower number of cores they also require lower resources to work optimally so that's why the price comes down so much. On windows side of things people sometimes do manage to unlock these cores.. its risky but some people find it worth the risk because of the apparent gains.
And they are not random as you may think.. they obviously do all quality checks after disabling those cores. And efficiency cores are used when you just do productivity tasks like safari or spotify and rarely would you use anything more than the two efficiency cores they give you.
What he said isn't wrong.
Apple got tired of Intel missing their deadlines. It started delaying their products, or meant they would release a brand new Macbook Pro that was under powered and wouldn't be replaced for a while.
I don't think Apple wanted to get into the processor business. Ironically, the only reason they started doing so in the first place was because Intel said it wasn't worth their time to develop for the iPhone. So one could say, the only reason it was possible for Apple to move from Intel to Apple Silicone in the first place is because they did not want or win the iPhone contract (read the story - kind of interesting).
Hindsight man, if they had only known.
The mac mini is a desktop machine, is it not?*gg* to keep it comparable - UV this 7900 (non x) to 30w max. like the m2 and hit the road again
by the way: the tdp of 65w is not the open end. It’s know the package power total is at least 88w.