Apple ‘M2 Max’ Chip Shows Up in Benchmarks Again

Apple’s upcoming “M2 Max” chip was once again spotted on Geekbench’s database on Thursday, this time indicating a more respectable jump in performance as compared to its predecessor, the M1 Max.

Last week, the M2 Max chip showed up on Geekbench with a single-core score of 1,853 and a multi-core score of 13,855. The M1 Max chip in the Mac Studio, in comparison, scores 1,755 in single-core and 12,333 in multi-core, so the earlier benchmarks represented a rather underwhelming generation-over-generation performance gain of just 5.5% in Geekbench’s single-core test and 12.3% in the multi-core benchmark.

These new benchmark results sing a sweeter song, though, with a single-core Geekbench 5 score of 2,027 and a multi-core result of 14,888 points. The latest results propel the M2 Max ahead of the M1 Max by 15.5% in single-core performance and 20.7% in multi-core performance. Now that looks more like a generational performance uplift.

As we noted when the previous benchmarks surfaced, Apple is likely still working on optimizing the chip so the numbers may not accurately depict the performance of the final product. Even these results may not be representative of what Apple will actually end up launching.

Apple is expected to launch a pair of high-end chips based on the same foundation as the M2 chip it unveiled earlier this year but much beefier. M2 Pro and M2 Max will reportedly come packaged in new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, and possibly a refreshed Mac mini, in early 2023.

The latest M2 Max benchmarks come from the same configuration as the previous ones. They are from a system, labelled only as “Mac 14,6,” featuring a single M2 Max chip with 12 CPU cores and 96GB of memory running on macOS 13.2.

However, this week’s results are from an M2 Max chip clocked at 3.68 GHz. That’s a tad higher than last week when the CPU cores were clocked at 3.54 GHz. The M1 Max, meanwhile, boasts a CPU clock speed of 3.23 GHz.

It looks like Apple is still pushing the next iteration of Apple Silicon to its limits. Who knows, the company might be able to squeeze even more performance out of M2 Max by the time it debuts next year.

Apple has several new Mac models in the works for next year, including at least one iMac. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant is reportedly even internally testing an Apple Silicon Mac Pro powered by some incarnation of the M2 chip.

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