Leaked Apple M2 benchmarks reveal promising multi-core gains and impressive GPU performance

Twitter user BenchLeaks recently spotted the first Geekbench 5 test results for the M2 processors from Apple, and, thanks to Tom’s Hardware’s detailed comparisons with previous gen as well as competitor models, we now have a clear enough picture of what to expect from Apple’s latest chips. As expected, the M2 does not beat the M1 Pro in some scenarios, but, as an entry-level SoC, it certainly impresses in the graphics department.

Looking at the single-core scores, the M2 is beating even the M1 Pro (8-core version )by a small margin, and appears to be around 10% faster than the M1. Tom’s Hardware points out that this is due to the higher clocks and the improved memory subsystem coming from the A15 Bionic mobile chips. The M2 is also beating any similar models from Intel and AMD in single-core workloads.

When it comes to multi-core workloads, however, the M2 only beats the M1, Intel’s i7-11800H and AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H. The M1 Pro is marginally faster, although the M2 manages to beat every other chip in Crypto  multi-core workloads. Intel’s i7-12800H is obviously far ahead due to its superior core count. Compared to the M1, the performance gains of the M2 hover around 16%.

The more impressive performance gains are recorded with the graphics tests that show 67% improvements over the M1 model. While not exactly as fast as the M1 Pro, the M2 still manages to beat Intel’s i7-12800H by around 45%.

Like any other testing tool, the Geekbench 5 suite may not reflect real-world performance with 100% accuracy, so we could see some different M2 results upon its launch this July. The GPU gains are more or less accurate, nevertheless, and the M2 seems to offer compute performance similar to an i5-12600K. It remains to be seen if the new M2 memory subsystem can make a bigger multi-core difference in optimized applications.

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