Benchmark results that have appeared online may allow initial conclusions to be drawn about the performance of Apple’s upcoming M2 Max chip. Compared to earlier results, they show a clear jump upwards. Since there is no official confirmation or verifiability of the results, they should be treated with due caution.
The results were viewed in the benchmark service Geekbench. A Mac with the designation Mac14,6 appeared there. Such identification numbers are used by Apple in parallel with the marketing designations. At the moment there is no Mac14 series. However, Mac13,1 et seq. are the current retail Mac Studio models M1 Pro and M1 Max, which could indicate that the benchmark was run on an unreleased version of a Mac Studio. The M1 Max processors are otherwise still installed in the MacBook Pro with 14-inch and 16-inch displays.
Significant leap up
In the performance values, the possible M2 Max has a single-core value of 2027 and a multi-core score of 14,888. For comparison: The Mac Studio with M1 Max achieves values between 1700 and 1800 for the single-core score and 11,000 to 13,000 for the multi-core score in Geekbench results. A benchmark of an alleged M2 Max that appeared a few weeks ago showed a much more restrained increase in performance, namely 1853 for the single-core value and 13,855 for the multi-core value. According to further information, the unknown Mac is operated with 96 GB of RAM.
The solution to the riddle for the jump in performance between the two test results could be the clock frequency. This was specified as 3.54 GHz in the earlier test, but now it is 3.68 GHz. Apple may be in the fine-tuning phase, in which the processors, which have long since been designed by the hardware, are clocked via the software.
Initially, there were reports and rumors that Apple could release the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips later this year. This suspicion was fueled by the release of the M2 chip, including in the MacBook Air. Whether Apple had to involuntarily postpone the date or whether it was simply never intended to present the Pro processors now is unknown. A release in 2023 is currently expected.
(mki)