News Apple Introduces M2 Processor: 8-Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, up to 18% More Performance

[Admin]

Apple unveiled the details behind its new M2 processors that will debut in the MacBook Air and the 13" MacBook Pro.

Apple Introduces M2 Processor: 8-Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, up to 18% More Performance : Read more

 

[shady28]

Eh, from the article :
"Moving up to a 12-core Intel Core i7-1260P, Apple claims it delivers 87% of the peak performance while using 1/4th of the power. "

The i7-1260P is one of the weaker Alder Lake laptop parts, specifically for ultralight laptops. According to notebookcheck, their performance rating (combined score from CB R15/R20/7-Zip/X265/Blender/3dM11 CPU) places the i7-1260P just below the i5-11320H and just above the 4800U. A i9-12900H by comparison is almost 50% faster.

So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices.

I suspect that TSMC missing its original schedule for 2nm (should have been this year for volume production) is hurting Apple. They are stuck on "enhanced 5nm" for another year and disrupted their normal cadence with process node then feature/arch enhancements (a plan they seem to have stolen from Intel). The interesting stuff, on 2nm, is probably not going to come out until 2H 2023.

 

[peachpuff]

Did they say if it was faster than the 4090 this time?

 

[sundragon]

So using 1/4 the power of a comparable Intel chip in an ultra light laptop with no fan isn't good enough... Oh, if Intel could say they could provide the same performance without needing a fan and driving the battery life to 17 hours, you'd be singing in the streets but if it's Apple, you hear sour grapes: "So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices." The air is an ultra light device, what were you expecting it to be a gaming CPU/GPU in an ultra light? Oh the commenters on Tom's... My MacBook Pro does 21 hours or so of full work days before I have to charge it. There isn't an intel chip in the universe that can do the same, my brand new 12th gen intel laptop sure has hell can't even touch that. Let's hear more sour grapes and sadness Intel screwed the pooch with the 12th gen being hungry and hot just to perform better. Yay, it's 20% faster than 11th gen with 8 hours of battery life, woohoo

 

[valreesio]

My MacBook Pro does 21 hours or so of full work days before I have to charge it. There isn't an intel chip in the universe that can do the same, my brand new 12th gen intel laptop sure has hell can't even touch that. Let's hear more sour grapes and sadness Intel screwed the pooch with the 12th gen being hungry and hot just to perform better. Yay, it's 20% faster than 11th gen with 8 hours of battery life, woohoo

Not that 21 hours isn't impressive, but what is it that you do that requires you to be away from a power source for so long? I believe they say my laptop gets about 8 hours of life before it needs charged, but I'm never not far from a power outlet when I have my laptop anyway, not from necessity, but just in general.

 

[sundragon]

Did they say if it was faster than the 4090 this time?

Not that 21 hours isn't impressive, but what is it that you do that requires you to be away from a power source for so long? I believe they say my laptop gets about 8 hours of life before it needs charged, but I'm never not far from a power outlet when I have my laptop anyway, not from necessity, but just in general.

The point is over time your 8 hours will become 5 with repeated use and battery degradation. Also if you travel for work, you don't always have the option to power up. Finally, Why not give credit where it's due, they made a chip that does the work for a lot less heat and power drain? Considering Intel hasn't been able to make a chip like that even in their ultra portables for a decade now, regardless of how much money they have.

 

[shady28]

So using 1/4 the power of a comparable Intel chip in an ultra light laptop with no fan isn't good enough... Oh, if Intel could say they could provide the same performance without needing a fan and driving the battery life to 17 hours, you'd be singing in the streets but if it's Apple, you hear sour grapes: "So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices." The air is an ultra light device, what were you expecting it to be a gaming CPU/GPU in an ultra light? Oh the commenters on Tom's... My MacBook Pro does 21 hours or so of full work days before I have to charge it. There isn't an intel chip in the universe that can do the same, my brand new 12th gen intel laptop sure has hell can't even touch that. Let's hear more sour grapes and sadness Intel screwed the pooch with the 12th gen being hungry and hot just to perform better. Yay, it's 20% faster than 11th gen with 8 hours of battery life, woohoo

Maybe 5+ years ago when laptops typically didn't last more than 3 or 4 hours, battery life was a big deal. A lot of people think it's still 2016 or something.

There's a point where more battery life doesn't matter much anymore and more performance still does. For me, that's around 8-9 hours. I think that is true of most people.

There are plenty of Intel and AMD laptops with 8+ hours that will eat this M2 up and spit it out in raw performance terms. I prefer those types of laptops.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The i7-1260P is one of the weaker Alder Lake laptop parts, specifically for ultralight laptops. According to notebookcheck, their performance rating (combined score from CB R15/R20/7-Zip/X265/Blender/3dM11 CPU) places the i7-1260P just below the i5-11320H and just above the 4800U. A i9-12900H by comparison is almost 50% faster.

So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices.

Putting a performance class laptop CPU against an ultrabook class one of course isn't going make the ultrabook class one impressive. And trying to pin the entire microarchitecture on how a particular SKU performs doesn't work like that either. Otherwise I may as well look at a Celeron and go "meh, [Whatever] Lake sucks"

Let's wait until the higher performant M2 SKUs come out before we start writing M2 off or comparing it to Intel's performant SKUs.

 

[joytech22]

There are plenty of Intel and AMD laptops with 8+ hours that will eat this M2 up and spit it out in raw performance terms. I prefer those types of laptops.

Let's be honest, if you use that performance you will probably see a more realistic 1h40m battery life. In my job, my M1 MBP under significant, consistent load will still see roughly 5hrs if I'm doing generally heavy work.

I have other laptops for what I like to do, I have my gaming laptop (R5 5800H, RTX3060) and media/secondary laptop (R9 5900HX/w OLED) - under normal load and sensible power settings they both might see between 6-10 hrs of real-world use but if you NEED to use that available horsepower I doubt either would last even 2hrs.

The M1 gave me the ability to make my professional workload AND my hobbies completely portable, literally no battery anxiety. If I want to go out for a day and do some photography/video stuff, I can do that literally from dawn to dusk.

Sure, the performance is not class-leading but given the device dimensions/perks I can live with that lol

 

[escksu]

If Apple claims are indeed true (which should be very close), it will be mighty impressive and eats any intel/amd cpus for all meals!!

The chart shows that its peak power is just 15W. This is the same as U-series CPUs (P series are rated 28W).

 

[escksu]

Not that 21 hours isn't impressive, but what is it that you do that requires you to be away from a power source for so long? I believe they say my laptop gets about 8 hours of life before it needs charged, but I'm never not far from a power outlet when I have my laptop anyway, not from necessity, but just in general.

Having long battery life means you don't need to charge all the time. Great esp. when you are on the move and forgiving when you simply forogtten to charge your laptop. ITs just like phones back then when battery could last a few days before charging.

IF you are in office all day, then it doesn't make a difference to you.

 

[escksu]

Eh, from the article :
"Moving up to a 12-core Intel Core i7-1260P, Apple claims it delivers 87% of the peak performance while using 1/4th of the power. "

The i7-1260P is one of the weaker Alder Lake laptop parts, specifically for ultralight laptops. According to notebookcheck, their performance rating (combined score from CB R15/R20/7-Zip/X265/Blender/3dM11 CPU) places the i7-1260P just below the i5-11320H and just above the 4800U. A i9-12900H by comparison is almost 50% faster.

So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices.

I suspect that TSMC missing its original schedule for 2nm (should have been this year for volume production) is hurting Apple. They are stuck on "enhanced 5nm" for another year and disrupted their normal cadence with process node then feature/arch enhancements (a plan they seem to have stolen from Intel). The interesting stuff, on 2nm, is probably not going to come out until 2H 2023.

Its a 15W CPU.... What do you expect? 1260P is a 28W CPU with peak of 64W. If the charts are true, M2 has a peak of just 15W. 1/4 that of 1260P. Can 1260P run at 64W for prolog periods? The answer is no.

Both Intel and AMD has 15W variants (U-series), but performance is nowhere close to that of M2. 15W is also normal, not peak.

 

[Jimbojan]

Intel's Alder Lake is a 10nm part, so is its Raptor Lake, yet they are still running faster than M1 and M2, that shows you that Intel's architecture design is better. What is more, Intel is working hard to make its design to use less power in the future when its design in 3nm or lower, they are hiring people from Scandinavia who help Apple and Qualcomm in low power design before in Graphics. Just watch Intel's X86 will win the race sooner or later.

 

[ezst036]

Did they say if it was faster than the 4090 this time?

I had a similar thought. Nvidia's going to have to just skip a generation and release the RTX 5090 Super Ultra Mega TITAN in order to just break even with what Apple is doing over there. By the time the M3 comes out, the RTX 7090 won't be able to keep up!

But since Apple's GPUs blow every other GPU out of the water, it does beg the question: Having the fastest hardware on the planet, why isn't Mac more prominent in the gaming scene?

 

[shady28]

Its a 15W CPU.... What do you expect? 1260P is a 28W CPU with peak of 64W. If the charts are true, M2 has a peak of just 15W. 1/4 that of 1260P. Can 1260P run at 64W for prolog periods? The answer is no.

Both Intel and AMD has 15W variants (U-series), but performance is nowhere close to that of M2. 15W is also normal, not peak.

As I said, for its power usage it's impressive. What's the upgrade if I want something 50% faster in a laptop from Apple?

Correct Answer: nothing.

I don't need 30 hour battery life. I can get 8-10 hour battery life from something twice as fast as the M2 from Intel or AMD. That's why I'm not impressed.

 

[DavidC1]

The interesting stuff, on 2nm, is probably not going to come out until 2H 2023.

3nm. 2nm isn't coming until 2025 or 2026.

 

[Rdslw]

So using 1/4 the power of a comparable Intel chip in an ultra light laptop with no fan isn't good enough... Oh, if Intel could say they could provide the same performance without needing a fan and driving the battery life to 17 hours, you'd be singing in the streets but if it's Apple, you hear sour grapes: "So, not really impressed with this 2nd generation Apple Silicon. I mean yes for its power usage it is impressive, so within its segment it's impressive, but it most definitely has not pushed any performance envelope outside that for ultralight devices." The air is an ultra light device, what were you expecting it to be a gaming CPU/GPU in an ultra light? Oh the commenters on Tom's... My MacBook Pro does 21 hours or so of full work days before I have to charge it. There isn't an intel chip in the universe that can do the same, my brand new 12th gen intel laptop sure has hell can't even touch that. Let's hear more sour grapes and sadness Intel screwed the pooch with the 12th gen being hungry and hot just to perform better. Yay, it's 20% faster than 11th gen with 8 hours of battery life, woohoo

apple always picks the weakest opponent to compare themselves to. People are sour, because fanboys were promising 4000% faster stuff...
m2 performance cannot grow much because its not CISK, its only gaining when you add cores or shrink nodes. I am 99% sure 18% gain comes from wider memory access that DDR5 provides. M2 is in same ballpark as alder lake, so it will be much slower than raptor & 7'th mobile amd, not even talking about desktop variants.
AMD 6'th offers up to 24h of battery life, and were tested to provide 17 on youtube watching. So whole m2 is not as revolutionary as first one, as its not compared to 6 y old (intel) tech as m1 was...

I remind you when m1 launched, they compared themselves to "most sold laptop on amazon" which at the time was 269$ Athlon based thing...

They made intel <Mod Edit> themselves when both AMD launched zen1 and apple shown m1... but now x86 is going faster with every generation and arm stuff will be even more behind speed wise.
I agree power usage is something to be envied about, but when they will be losing performance wars, they will as well make power sucking monsters...

 

[escksu]

Maybe 5+ years ago when laptops typically didn't last more than 3 or 4 hours, battery life was a big deal. A lot of people think it's still 2016 or something.

There's a point where more battery life doesn't matter much anymore and more performance still does. For me, that's around 8-9 hours. I think that is true of most people.

There are plenty of Intel and AMD laptops with 8+ hours that will eat this M2 up and spit it out in raw performance terms. I prefer those types of laptops.

Lol.....looks like you still don't get whats the big deal with battery life..... Longer battery life doesn't mean bigger battery, it means lower power consumption.... ITs everything.... With limited space in laptops, cooling is a big problem. Lower power consumption mens your CPU/GPU can run at max speed without throttling. ITs laso means your laptop doesn't feel like an oven when you are using it. Not to mention noise..... laptop fans are extremely noisy when running at full speed.

 

[escksu]

apple always picks the weakest opponent to compare themselves to. People are sour, because fanboys were promising 4000% faster stuff...
m2 performance cannot grow much because its not CISK, its only gaining when you add cores or shrink nodes. I am 99% sure 18% gain comes from wider memory access that DDR5 provides. M2 is in same ballpark as alder lake, so it will be much slower than raptor & 7'th mobile amd, not even talking about desktop variants.
AMD 6'th offers up to 24h of battery life, and were tested to provide 17 on youtube watching. So whole m2 is not as revolutionary as first one, as its not compared to 6 y old (intel) tech as m1 was...

I remind you when m1 launched, they compared themselves to "most sold laptop on amazon" which at the time was 269$ Athlon based thing...

They made intel <Mod Edit> themselves when both AMD launched zen1 and apple shown m1... but now x86 is going faster with every generation and arm stuff will be even more behind speed wise.
I agree power usage is something to be envied about, but when they will be losing performance wars, they will as well make power sucking monsters...

The important thing for memory is latency, not bandwidth. Bandwidth only benefits GPU, not CPU.

The main thing not just about battery life, it is about power consumption and power consumption is everything when it comes to laptops.

Lower power consumption means your CPU doesn't overheat and throttle easily. Lower power means your CPU can run at max speed much longer without overheating. And of course, lower power also means longer battery without using a bigger battery. So, it means noise, heat and weight.

AMD and Intel doesn't have any answer to M1, let alone M2. No AMD/Intel CPU can match the performance of M1 yet keeping power that low.

 

[Rdslw]

AMD and Intel doesn't have any answer to M1, let alone M2. No AMD/Intel CPU can match the performance of M1 yet keeping power that low.

that's only to the certain point.
I have 3 laptops, m1 air, amd asus zenbook and old intel workstation. You dont really see difference between 15 or 25 and cooling difference between 15 and 25W is like 20grams of copper if done right, nobody will notice. if your goal is to browse web at lowest possible power, then m1 is your choice end of story. A lot of people, like me, needs more than just working laptop, and m1's just dont do what I need them to.

AMD 5500u zenbook is a little bit slower than m1, noticeably so and uses a bit more power, BUT its a laptop that allows kids to play sims4 at reasonable speed, and it does not get very hot while doing it, m1 again just dont even run it.
My usual work loads 24GB of ram before I can even start seeing results, I tried air but swapping that much causes whole laptop to be unusable.
From my perspective, m1 is ONLY usable as a web browser and video editor. Its great at video editing, but I want much more from a laptop. Obviously, low power is good, but when it's not able to run what I need, what's the point ?

as for answear m1 vs m2 vs amd check this out
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800hs
obviously its 35W part vs 20W part but performance wise, amd wins already, and 7'th gen is another solid leap forward.

 

[Lakitu_Runner]

The point is over time your 8 hours will become 5 with repeated use and battery degradation. Also if you travel for work, you don't always have the option to power up. Finally, Why not give credit where it's due, they made a chip that does the work for a lot less heat and power drain? Considering Intel hasn't been able to make a chip like that even in their ultra portables for a decade now, regardless of how much money they have.

You are making a bunch of assumptions here. First, Intel actually tried to make the chip with super long life and failed. How do you know? It is likely that market studies told intel not to bother. As was pointed out by others, when you travel be it cruise ship, bus, plane or train you can plug in no problem nowadays. Many of today's cars offer USB C or 110V plugs that you can use as well. Second, the performance of the Apple silicon is highly suspect as advertised by apple. Independent benchmarks are not confirming what apple is showing. Third, what Apple is advertising as longest battery life is not in the same context as performance comparison. I am sure not many people noticed that. Apple advertises this super long battery life and I am sure the system is specifically tweaked for that. When I use a Microsoft surface device, I get like 16 hours of battery life when I am not on wi-fi, Bluetooth is turned off and many other battery savings features are active and yes, surface has touch screen and Apple still does not support that because probably impacts battery life.

All in all, M2 looks like any other ARM based custom CPU like Amazon's Gravitron or Qualcomm's snap dragon with Apple crazy mark ups to go with it all.

 

[RodroX]

"...capacity up to 25GB of LPDDR5", that should be 24GB right ? small detail only.

Anyways, I agree with the author here, is too early to believe this performance numbers and how far they extend to a multitude of apps. Also this: "On the whole, the increased performance from the M2 seems in line with the increased transistor budget and die area..." yes it does.

Another review to wair for!!!

 

[escksu]

that's only to the certain point.
I have 3 laptops, m1 air, amd asus zenbook and old intel workstation. You dont really see difference between 15 or 25 and cooling difference between 15 and 25W is like 20grams of copper if done right, nobody will notice. if your goal is to browse web at lowest possible power, then m1 is your choice end of story. A lot of people, like me, needs more than just working laptop, and m1's just dont do what I need them to.

AMD 5500u zenbook is a little bit slower than m1, noticeably so and uses a bit more power, BUT its a laptop that allows kids to play sims4 at reasonable speed, and it does not get very hot while doing it, m1 again just dont even run it.
My usual work loads 24GB of ram before I can even start seeing results, I tried air but swapping that much causes whole laptop to be unusable.
From my perspective, m1 is ONLY usable as a web browser and video editor. Its great at video editing, but I want much more from a laptop. Obviously, low power is good, but when it's not able to run what I need, what's the point ?

as for answear m1 vs m2 vs amd check this out
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800hs
obviously its 35W part vs 20W part but performance wise, amd wins already, and 7'th gen is another solid leap forward.

Do note that "H" series of CPU are 35W variants... you need to compare the "U" series from both Intel and AMD. Also take note that 15W is base power. However, both camps allow their CPUs to go beyond 15W (mostly up to 25W provided thermal and power limits allow that).

Also, try to compare both AMD U and H series to know the performance difference between them.

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/amd-ryzen-7-6800u-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800hs

I am not sure wht power the U-series is set at when running benchmarks. But it was indicated as 28W in the comparison.

 

[escksu]

"...capacity up to 25GB of LPDDR5", that should be 24GB right ? small detail only.

Anyways, I agree with the author here, is too early to believe this performance numbers and how far they extend to a multitude of apps. Also this: "On the whole, the increased performance from the M2 seems in line with the increased transistor budget and die area..." yes it does.

Another review to wair for!!!

There won't be any incredible magic in terms of performance, the main thing is the power consumption. This is expected to be a max 15W CPU. Even below that of Ryzen and Intel U series (base 15W, peak 25-28W).

 

[sundragon]

You are making a bunch of assumptions here. First, Intel actually tried to make the chip with super long life and failed. How do you know? It is likely that market studies told intel not to bother. As was pointed out by others, when you travel be it cruise ship, bus, plane or train you can plug in no problem nowadays. Many of today's cars offer USB C or 110V plugs that you can use as well. Second, the performance of the Apple silicon is highly suspect as advertised by apple. Independent benchmarks are not confirming what apple is showing. Third, what Apple is advertising as longest battery life is not in the same context as performance comparison. I am sure not many people noticed that. Apple advertises this super long battery life and I am sure the system is specifically tweaked for that. When I use a Microsoft surface device, I get like 16 hours of battery life when I am not on wi-fi, Bluetooth is turned off and many other battery savings features are active and yes, surface has touch screen and Apple still does not support that because probably impacts battery life.

All in all, M2 looks like any other ARM based custom CPU like Amazon's Gravitron or Qualcomm's snap dragon with Apple crazy mark ups to go with it all.

OMG thank you for all the Intel shilling and excuses for Intel dropping the ball. Article after article talking towards Intel's architecture being hamstrung and they haven't figured out a way to fix it to make it less power hungry. DECADES of "10-20% better performance" with each architecture change and you're happy with it.

Google Moores Law. Intel wasn't always like this Maybe you'll realize what they are producing is hot cow dung.

"As was pointed out by others, when you travel be it cruise ship, bus, plane or train you can plug in no problem nowadays."

Haha, yeah, that's the way mobile chip designers are thinking...

I needed the laugh. I forgot how Tom's readers love being sold intel's marketing BS for decades and eat it up.