'M2 Max' Geekbench Scores Leak Online, Revealing Rumored Specs and Performance

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Some incredibly sad guys scout the geekbench site daily looking for unreleased hardware.

Some "incredibly sad guys scouting" somewhere are likely the source of the bulk of rumors we feast on each week. Have those "pitiful" guys give up sad pursuits and things would likely get remarkably boring around here real fast. If you enjoy rumors, embrace the sadness.

 

[GMShadow]

When Apple isolated themselves by deprecating OpenGL, and discontinued 32-bit and eGPU support, they started playing a dangerous game: their bet is that their new architecture is so much better that Apple Silicon would be adopted en masse, which would make everyone play in their hands.

That thought is misguided even if the PC alternative is indeed much worse. But if Apple's alternative starts lagging behind and performance doesn't get so impressive over time, the argument for an Apple Silicon machine is less impressive. Why bother spending extra on a machine that is only slightly better or even not better at all than an AMD or Intel chipset?

Sure, right now they have the edge. But if they don't keep up, that edge will eventually disappear.

You realize OpenGL is deprecated pretty much everywhere, right? It’s not 1998 anymore.

Or so you think. There's nothing stopping Intel from developing an ARM chip with e.g, accelerated x86 emulation.

And there’s nothing stopping Qualcomm from competing with Apple…except there clearly is, because they’ve never managed to do it since Apple took the lead.

Maybe if Intel hadn’t canned the StrongARM teams and let them leave for Apple, they’d be in a better position. Or if they’d agreed to fab the A4. But the margins weren’t fat enough for them, and now they get nothing.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Extremely thrilled my update my MacBook Pro 16” next year 🤗

 

[Onelifenofear]

If they come out with this type of rubbish again, it could be the start of Apples very quick decline 😏....Cook needs to go, he has nothing left to offer Apple!

Oh look a Silicon Chip genius... What rubbish again? The crazy fast M chips?

 

[Jankie]

There are some wealthy Apple fans on here who just want the best of the best, at all times. It's very comparable to car enthusiasts.

My two cents responding to all comments here so far:

1. Performance: The key thing people like MKBHD said about the M1 Max MBP was that it was a quantum leap in useful performance like video encode performance. For Marcus, it meant not having to take a Mac Pro on trips in a flight case. Now he could take the M1 Max MBP. And in-between times, his needs and indeed the needs of all of us haven't changed. It's not like YouTube now demands 8K videos, for example. 1080p is still the norm, and 4K for enthusiasts. There no need for another quantum leap in Apple Silicon performance. It's got space to gently evolve—hence 10% increases.
2. Ray tracing GPU: Not a priority. Again, it's only really for enthusiast gamers (and then only really a subset of those!) , and Apple's shown no desire to appeal to that market.
3. AV1 hardware code/decode: Very young technology and I don't believe Apple is a member of the Alliance for Open Media, which has created it. This is probably because it's not in Apple's particular interest to support it (and Apple's passion for open source is now dead anyway). I think we would expect to see it appear in Video Toolkit first, probably next year, as software support in the next macOS. And then in the silicon of the M3 in the Air/Pro. Then it might migrate to the M3 Pro/Max hardware video engines. With hardware MP4/HEVC and ProRes support, Apple's already touching the bases it wants to in terms of hardware encode/decode.
4. But AMD/Intel is better! Yes, they caught up—but you'll only enjoy that better performance for literally an hour on a laptop. Where Apple wins is performance per watt, and AMD/Intel are nowhere near close to that, and never will be.

…and never will be?

 

[tubular]

The GPU is probably getting the largest increase offering nearly the same TFlops as the M1 Ultra 48-core.

Now that's what I'm talking about. I'm running a reasonably future-proofed Intel mini from January 2019, and it's still serving me well. I bought it knowing it was running Intel integrated graphics, which has always been the weakest point on the Intel minis, so any serious rendering in Blender etc. goes over to the gaming PC. The only thing that will move me off it is a *substantially* substantial increase in graphics capability. Let's see what the line-up looks like around March of next year.

 

[tubular]

When Apple isolated themselves by deprecating OpenGL, and discontinued 32-bit and eGPU support, they started playing a dangerous game: their bet is that their new architecture is so much better that Apple Silicon would be adopted en masse, which would make everyone play in their hands.

That thought is misguided even if the PC alternative is indeed much worse. But if Apple's alternative starts lagging behind and performance doesn't get so impressive over time, the argument for an Apple Silicon machine is less impressive.

This is as much a driver problem as a hardware problem. Over on the PC side GPUs have had decades to optimize DirectX and OpenGL. Necessarily the Apple Silicon GPU is behind that curve, because it's too new not to be. An earlier post mentioned Blender as an example -- there is plenty of room for optimization which will happen but hasn't happened yet.

That will in turn be a drag on Apple GPU performance even if the hardware itself is comparable to what's cooking on the PC side.

 

[George Dawes]

I always assumed the m2 was about thermal efficiency not outright power

Not surprised tbh

 

[Athonline]

Not much of an improvement, which was expected. Didn't the 'plain' M2 pass the 19K on single-core performance? I was surprised that this did less than that, but it might be a very early sample.

For me, given that it is money out of my research budget, the question is if it is worth buying a MBP 14 now or waiting until March/April for the M2 Pro version.

 

[diamond.g]

Not much of an improvement, which was expected. Didn't the 'plain' M2 pass the 19K on single-core performance? I was surprised that this did less than that, but it might be a very early sample.

For me, given that it is money out of my research budget, the question is if it is worth buying a MBP 14 now or waiting until March/April for the M2 Pro version.

I got my 14" this past summer because I was concerned about price increases (as seen with the M1 to M2 Air). I'll probably feel FOMO when the new stuff drops.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

I expected more. I hope they increase the clock speeds and refresh rates more:

 

[l0stl0rd]

There's an additional entry with a higher multi score: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/18973011

And more like what I would expect going from 10 to 12 cores.

 

[diamond.g]

And more like what I would expect going from 10 to 12 cores.

It seems like the clock increase (3.2->3.5) didn't help as much either.

 

[loby]

It's not going to be a Mac Studio is it guys, come on THINK - the Mac Studio is still effectively brand new.

Good rational and glad some are thinking....not a Mac Studio, but probably MacBook Pro, but why not just go 128GB of Memory?. Probably to make those who want more memory go with a Mac Studio. It's Not a Mac Pro (would be a waste).

 

[l0stl0rd]

The GPU is probably getting the largest increase offering nearly the same TFlops as the M1 Ultra 48-core.

Chip	TFlops
M1 Ultra 48-core GPU	15.6
M2 Max 40-core GPU	14.4

The M1 Pro and M1 Max already includes the improved media engine. It was the M1 that lacked it.

They could improve it further by supporting AV1 decode and encode.

If that is the case and it “matches” the 48 core ultra then I might actually upgrade considering I am using a 14 core M1 Pro and I find it not enough.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

When Apple isolated themselves by deprecating OpenGL, and discontinued 32-bit and eGPU support, they started playing a dangerous game: their bet is that their new architecture is so much better that Apple Silicon would be adopted en masse, which would make everyone play in their hands.

That thought is misguided even if the PC alternative is indeed much worse. But if Apple's alternative starts lagging behind and performance doesn't get so impressive over time, the argument for an Apple Silicon machine is less impressive. Why bother spending extra on a machine that is only slightly better or even not better at all than an AMD or Intel chipset?

Sure, right now they have the edge. But if they don't keep up, that edge will eventually disappear.

Macs never had good performance anyway. People don’t buy it for their perfs but rather for macOS and Mac softwares/apps . In terms of power efficiency the m2 pro will still be far ahead I’m sure . But it is indeed kinda disappointing

This is in line with what the M2 offers over the M1. I don't know why anyone is surprised.
The real improvement for the M2 gen (for laptops at least) is those juicy new A15 derived efficiency cores. They should really help improve the battery life, especially on the 14" MBP.
But yes, for those people waiting for a big leap, it's been clear for a while you'll be waiting for the M3, and that isn't going to come out for a good while yet.

I do find it funny that everyone who was like "OMG Apple Silicon so much better than x86, look at the massive performance/efficiency improvement!" is now like "Why isn't every year like the M1 year!?"
I love my M1 Max but clearly so many of the people clamoring for Apple Silicon back when it was still just a rumor/just announced had no idea how chip design actually works.
Switching to Apple Silicon wasn't a magic wand that was going to allow Apple to stay miles ahead of Intel/AMD forever.

Exactly this .

Hmm people aren’t expecting intel to m1 improvement every year,but I think it would be fair to expect 20% jumps, like those we used to have on iPhones you know? Prior a15, we had 15/20% increase every year iirc . Now it’s slowing down a lot


Anyway, as you said , the new E cores are MUCH better than those of the m1 , which should help the 14”…especially since instead of the 2e+8p, we now have double the amount of e cores , with a 4e+8p design !

That said , I’m not sure the chip is what drains a lot of battery, on notebook check you can see that M1 Pro vs m1 isn’t that big in terms of power usage, and that the main culprit seems to be the new display with 2000 zones and 8000 leds to control .

 

[now i see it]

While the first M chip made a splash with very high performance, think of that as the debut. From here on out I suspect, the performance increase for each next gen chip will be marginal- 10-15%. Just like intel did/does.

 

[Macintosh Quadra 840av]

Happily looking to trade in my MBP M1 Max for a newer version with 96GB of RAM, rather than this 64GB.

 

[Return Zero]

How you came to 40% improvement figure for GPU ?

I was disappointed by the GPU performance of the m1max, to be honest, I was expecting at least another 50-60% over what it is currently. I mean, it's a damn expensive machine.

The 40% comes from M2 over M1 (3.6 Tflops vs 2.6 Tflops). Real world improvements were seen anywhere from 25% to 45% depending on the test. The Max and Pro should be roughly in line with those improvements.

 

[WilliApple]

Time to buy an M1 Pro MacBook Pro after seeing these leaks! I can find it for $500 cheaper.

 

[seanmills1020]

I am waiting for the M5. Apple has already hired the designer for it.

 

[falkon-engine]

96 GB of RAM on the M2 Max looks excellent... but that score is extremely underwhelming given that Raptor Lake is available with double the multicore score. Perhaps this score is not final and was run when the machine was under load. Yes RPL consumes a ton of power under heavy all-core loads, but under light load, it's relatively reasonable at anywhere between 15-30 Watts, and no more than 80W during things such as Windows update etc.

 

[FasterQuieter]

Hardly seems worth it. May as well wait for 3nm.

 

[xgman]

While the first M chip made a splash with very high performance, think of that as the debut. From here on out I suspect, the performance increase for each next gen chip will be marginal- 10-15%. Just like intel did/does.

seems about right...

 

[guzhogi]

If it's only marginally faster, are there any other advantages? Extra display support so we can use 3+ displays? Kinda wish Intel would update Thunderbolt to support PCIe 5+. That kind of stuff.