Apple announced its new M2 chip at WWDC 2022. The new chip will initially be available in the new 13.6-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Interestingly, benchmarks for the new chip have surfaced online ahead of either notebook’s retail availability, and they seem to live up to the claims Apple executives made on stage.
The Geekbench scores for the new M2 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Pro surfaced on the benchmark’s website. The benchmark data reveals that the new chip runs at 3.49GHz, up from the M1 chip’s 3.2GHz clock speed. This clock speed boost seems to have translated into a single core Geekbench score of 1919, which is an 11.56 percent better score than the M1 chip’s 1707.
In the multi-core test, the M2 chip scored 8928 points, up from the M1’s 7419 points — a 19.45 percent improvement. On stage, Apple claimed that the new M2 chip is 18 percent faster than its predecessor. The leaked Geekbench 5 scores align with the company’s claims.
CPU Benchmarks have leaked for Apple's M2 chip!
3.49GHz CPU clock vs M1's 3.2GHz
Single-core performance gain vs M1: 11.56%
Multi-core performance gain vs M1: 19.45%A little bit better than my estimates. I'm impressed!https://t.co/TGHOHw77Ds
Thanks to @amoss_137 for sharing. pic.twitter.com/NS9xODnOdX— Vadim Yuryev (@VadimYuryev) June 15, 2022
In case you missed the WWDC announcements where the M2 chip was revealed, here’s an excerpt:
“The new chip is based on the second-generation 5nm process, allowing for 50 percent more bandwidth than the M1 chip, pegged at 100GB/s. Packing 20 billion transistors, the chip comprises an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU with support for 24GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The CPU is made up of four performance cores and four performance cores. Moreover, the GPU is also a step up from the M1 chip’s eight-core GPU. The company claims the M2 chip delivers 87 percent of a 12-core chip’s performance while drawing just a quarter of the power.”
“GPU performance has been improved by 25 percent. The chip also packs support for 6K external displays and a next-generation media engine supporting 8K video.”
At its developer conference, the Cupertino-based firm announced that it would start retailing the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models with the M2 chip in July. However, earlier this week, the company announced that pre-orders for the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro would open ahead of schedule. So, the wait won’t be long until we get a look at detailed performance benchmarks.
