M2 Max: benchmark results could give a first sample

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 previous results, they show a clear jump up. Since there is no official confirmation or verifiability of the results, they should be treated with due caution.

The results were seen on the Geekbench benchmark service. There appeared a Mac with the designation Mac14,6. Apple uses such identification numbers in parallel with the marketing designations. At the moment there is no Mac14 series. However, Mac 13, 1 and below are the current retail models of the Mac Studio M1 Pro and M1 Max, which could indicate that the benchmark ran on an unreleased version of Mac Studio. Otherwise, the M1 Max processors are still installed in the MacBook Pro with 14-inch and 16-inch displays.

significant leap

In performance values, the possible M2 Max has a single-core score of 2027 and a multi-core score of 14,888. For comparison: Mac Studio with M1 Max achieves values ​​between 1,700 and 1,800 for the single-core score and between 11,000 and 13,000 for the multi-core score in Geekbench results. A benchmark of an alleged M2 Max that surfaced a few weeks ago showed a much more moderate performance boost, namely 1,853 for the single-core value and 13,855 for the multi-core value. According to more information, the unknown Mac runs on 96 GB of RAM.

The solution to the puzzle of the jump in performance between the two test results could be the clock frequency. This was specified as 3.54 GHz in the previous test, but is now 3.68 GHz. Apple may be in the fine-tuning phase, where processors, which have long been designed by hardware, are timed through the software.

Initially, there were reports and rumors that Apple might launch the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips later this year. This suspicion was fueled by the release of the M2 chip, included in the MacBook Air. Whether Apple inadvertently had to postpone the date or simply never intended to introduce the Pro processors now is unknown. A release is currently expected in 2023.

(mki)