Qualcomm Adreno 740 vs Apple M2 Max 38-Core GPU vs Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU

Qualcomm Adreno 740

The Qualcomm Adreno 740 is a smartphone and tablet GPU that is integrated within the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. The chip will be available starting early 2023 and will be used mainly in high-end Android devices. 

According to Qualcomm, the Adreno GPU offers a 25% improved performance compared to the Adreno 730 predecessor in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. First benchmarks show that the Adreno GPU can even beat the Apple A16 GPU (iPhone 14 Pro series) in synthetic benchmarks. Therefore, the Adreno 740 is the fastest graphics chip for smartphones in 2022.

The iGPU supports hardware accelerated ray tracing and a game post processing accelerator (for bloom, depth of field and motion blur). Another first, is the support for Vulkan 1.3.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is produced in the modern 4nm process at TSMC.

Apple M2 Max 38-Core GPU

The Apple M2 Max 38-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering all 38 cores in the M2 Max Chip.

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 512 bit bus (up to 400 GBit/s).

Thanks to the additional cores and architectural improvements, the M2 Max GPU should clearly best the old M1 Max GPU with 32 cores and therefore be the fastest iGPU currently available.

The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10). A new feature in the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 of 2023 is the support for HDMI 2.1 and 8k output.

The Apple M2 Max is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC. According to the internal powermetrics tool, the GPU uses up to 53.6 Watt (performance mode) and the whole chip (including the CPU) up to 89 Watt.

Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU

The Apple M2 Pro 16-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering all 16 of the 19 cores in the M2 Pro 10-Core Chip.

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 256 bit bus (up to 200 GBit/s).

According to Apple, the performance of the 19-core-GPU should be 30% higher than the old 16-core-GPU in the M1 Pro. Therefore, the cut down 16-core version should still beat the old full-featured 16-core M1 Pro slightly and the old 14-core more clearly.

The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10). A new feature in the MacBook Pro 14 of 2023 is the support for HDMI 2.1 and 8k output.

The Apple M2 Pro is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC.