Apple M2 Pro 10-Core vs Intel Xeon W-10885M

Apple M2 Pro 10-Core

The Apple M2 Pro 10-Core is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the early 2023 MacBook Pro 14 and Mac Mini entry level models. It offers 10 of the 12 cores available in the chip divided in six performance cores (P-cores) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores). The E-cores clock with up to 3.4 GHz, the P-Cores up to 3.7 GHz (mostly 3.3 GHz in multi-threaded workloads and 3.4 GHz in single threaded).

The big cores (codename Avalanche) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 36 MB shared L2 cache (up from 24 MB in the M1 Pro). The four efficiency cores (codename Blizzard) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 24 MB SLC (System Level Cache). 

The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 Bit memory controller (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The performance of the M2 Pro 10-Core should be similar to the old M1 Pro with all 10 cores. The multi-threaded performance should be slower, as the M2 10-core has two p-cores less (and 2 e-cores more) but the single-threaded performance should be better due to the faster clock speed and architectural improvements. The old M1 Pro 8-core should be noticeably slower.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro 10-core offers all 16 of the 19 cores.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine (faster than M1 Pro), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M2 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC (second generation) and integrates 40 billion transistors. 

Intel Xeon W-10885M

The Intel Xeon W-10885M is a high-end processor for workstation laptops with eight cores based on the Comet Lake architecture (CML-H, 4th generation of Skylake). The processor clocks at between 2.4 and 5.3 GHz and can execute up to sixteen threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. The processor is still manufactured in the old 14nm (14nm++) process.

The Comet Lake architecture is similar to Coffee Lake and offers the same features and is produced in the same 14nm process. Other than the improved clock rates, the memory controller now also supports faster DDR4-2933 RAM. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

The Intel Xeon W-10885M supports the management features vPro, TXT and SIPP and is the professional version of the Intel Core i9-10885H. 

Performance

The performance of the W-10885M should be slightly above the older Core i9-9980HK top model, thanks to the potential higher single core turbo. Thanks to the 8 cores and high Turbo speeds, even demanding applications should run very good on the CPU. However, long term performance is always depending on the laptop cooling system and system configuration. At the time of announcement, the Intel Xeon W-10885M is the second fastest Comet Lake-H CPU behind the Core i9-10980HK.

Graphics

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics P630 iGPU is supposed to offer a similar performance as the UHD630 in the Core i7-9880H. As a  low-end solution it will only run current games smoothly at reduced details - if at all. The P-variant uses professional drivers.

Power Consumption

Intel specifies the TDP with 45 watts and therefore the i9 is only suited for big laptops with good cooling solutions. Using cTDP-down, the CPU can also be configured to 35 Watt resulting in a reduced performance.