The new Apple M2 chip is being touted as a much faster SoC than its competitors, but Apple (like most tech companies) aren’t exactly reliable when it comes to in-house benchmarking, so we’ll have to see for ourselves. Like our previous review of the M1 Pro, we’re interested in how the Apple M2 performs across a selection of cross-platform applications, so we can compare it to the best parts available in the Windows world. Comparably, that means machines packing the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U and Intel Core i7-1260P.
Apple’s new M2 SoC has been integrated first into the refreshed MacBook Pro 13. Because this isn’t a laptop review, we aren’t going to evaluate the MacBook Pro 13’s credentials as a laptop — we’ve seen how Apple’s been copping some criticism for its outdated design, but we’re not concerned about that on this review.
The M2, like all Apple Silicon products, uses the Arm architecture instead of x86 that we see deployed for the vast majority of Windows systems. The CPU portion includes 8 cores, split into a 4+4 layout: four high performance Avalanche cores, and four efficient Blizzard cores.
This is the same 4+4 configuration as the M1, but with updated cores, and it contrasts to the M1 Pro and M1 Max which use more performance cores, but fewer efficient cores. That’s because those chips are designed for high performance productivity systems, while the M2 is destined for ultraportable machines. The performance cores are clocked up to 3.5 GHz, slightly higher than its predecessor.
The integrated GPU arrives in two configurations: one with 8 GPU “cores” and another with 10 GPU cores. We’re testing the 10-core variant. On the memory subsystem, it’s LPDDR5-6400 over a 128-bit bus, providing just over 100 GB/s of bandwidth; an upgrade on the M1 that used LPDDR4X, but without as much LPDDR5 bandwidth as the M1 Pro and above. The M2 also receives Apple’s powerful media engine and neural engine.
As we like to mention when we see this happen with other tech products, we find it a bit silly that Apple use the same M2 name for two distinctly different CPUs that vary in GPU configuration. While Apple doesn’t hide these specs, we feel it would be easier for consumers if the naming was different for each chip.
For testing we purchased a 13-inch MacBook Pro with the full M2 configuration. We’ve also chosen 16GB of memory to match other systems that we’ve tested, and opted for a 512GB SSD because the base configuration that only has a 256GB SSD is a bit ridiculous in 2022.
Power vs. Performance
We’re going to start with the power numbers because this will set the expectations for the performance benchmarks we have coming up.
In Cinebench R23 multithreaded we recorded 23 watts of power draw from the wall after subtracting the idle power usage of the system. This puts the general CPU package power between the two configurations of the Ryzen 7 6800U that we’ve tested, at 15W and 25W. What this suggests to us is the M2 is most equivalent to a 20W configuration when the CPU is heavily utilized, which is a typical number for an ultraportable 13-inch notebook.
The M2 is extremely impressive in how little power it uses for single-thread applications, just like the M1 Pro was. While the M2 is slightly more power hungry than before due to a small increase in frequency, it’s still using far less power than the next best configuration.
We’re looking at less than half the system power of the 6800U and an even larger gap to the Core i7-1260P. The fact that this Arm chip only clocks up to 3.5 GHz versus 4.7 GHz for the AMD and Intel chips has big implications for efficiency as most process nodes are better optimized for mid-3 GHz frequencies than anything above 4.5 GHz.
Performance Benchmarks
Let’s kick off the performance testing with Cinebench R23 multi-threading. In this workload the M2 puts up a reasonable showing, matching the Core i7-1260P despite running at a much lower power level. Compared to AMD processors, the M2 is similar to current-gen parts in both performance and efficiency. The power consumption level is between the 15W and 25W configurations of the Ryzen 7 6800U, and so is the final performance. What we’re seeing is Apple can keep up with today’s best mobile processors, but not exceed them.
In the single-threaded test, the M2 is very competent. A score of 1580 points exceeds that of the M1 Pro and also beats the Ryzen 7 6800U by 9 percent, putting its performance more around the mark of the Ryzen 9 6900HS. However, despite an upgrade to the core architecture, the M2 is still beaten by Intel’s Alder Lake line-up, including the Core i7-1260P which is 8 percent faster in this workload.
The way Intel is able to achieve this is by using higher clock speeds which push up power consumption; as a reminder, we just saw the 1260P’s single-thread power consumption is over 3x higher than the M2 and AMD isn’t much better, using over twice the power for slower performance.