Apple M2 Pro makes Geekbench debut with phenomenal generation-over-generation gains

Apple's decision to silently launch its new M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs come off as a tad puzzling. Usually, Apple reveals its hardware with much fanfare and one can't help but wonder why this launch was so low-key. Nonetheless, the M2 Pro is shaping up to be quite the powerhouse, as confirmed by a recent Geekbench listing. It has shown up on the benchmarking platform (via MacRumors) alongside a Mac Mini.

The Apple M2 Pro scores 1,952 and 15,013 points in the Geekbench single and multi-core tests, respectively. That represents a 10% increase over the last-gen M1 Pro (1,769/12,499) in single-core performance and a 20% increment in multi-core. Even the better-specced M1 Max (1,780/12,656) falls flat against the M2 Pro, although an apples-to-apples comparison between the two would be unfair given the latter features two extra E cores.Furthermore, Geekbench is a CPU-intensive test and the M1 Max will almost certainly flex its muscles in a more GPU-bound scenario.

One can attribute the M2 Pro's stellar performance increase in part to Apple's chip designing prowess and the improved TSMC N5P node it is manufactured on. With no M2 Ultra coming anytime soon, the M2 Max will be the best Apple SoC on the market, at least until the 3 nm M3 and its derivatives are out and about. That said, the M2 Pro and M2 Max should offer enough processing power to chew through most video-related workloads. For everything else, there's the Intel Core i9-13980HX and AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX.

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