Apple M2 Pro vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600H

Apple M2 Pro

The Apple M2 Pro is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the early 2023 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 12 cores available in the chip divided in eight 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.

Apple states that the M2 Pro has a 25% higher performance than the M1 Pro in Xcode compiling.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers all 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. 

AMD Ryzen 5 5600H

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600H is a processor for big (gaming) laptops based on the Cezanne generation. The R5 5600H has six of the eight cores based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 GHz (guaranteed base clock) to 4.2 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT for a total of 12 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process.

The new Zen 3 microarchitecture offers a significantly higher IPC (instructions per clock) compared to Zen 2. For desktop processors AMD claims 19 percent on average and in applications reviews showed around 12% gains at the same clock speed.

In addition to the six CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 7 integrated graphics processor with 7 CUs running at up to 1800 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 16 MB of L3 cache can be found on the chip.

Performance

The average 5600H in our database is in the same league as the Ryzen 5 6600HS and the Core i7-1260P, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 45 W, the Lenovo Legion 5 17 is among the fastest laptops powered by the 5600H that we know of. It can be roughly 30% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 5 series chip has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 45 W, a value that laptop makers are allowed to change to anything between 35 W and 54 W with clock speed and performance changing accordingly as a result. A high-performance cooling solution is a must for a CPU like this.

The hexa-core APU is built with the 7 nm TSMC process for decent, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.