Apple M2 vs Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 vs Intel Core 2 Duo T9800
Apple M2
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The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.
The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.
According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.
The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.
Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.
The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.
Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400
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The Core 2 Duo SL9400 is a power saving low voltage CPU for thin and light laptops. It offers a good performance for the 1.86 GHz clock rate, as it features the full 6 MB level 2 cache of the used Penryn core.
Intel Core 2 Duo T9800
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The Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 was the top dual core CPU for laptops at the time of introduction. Later it was topped by the Core 2 Duo T9900 / X9100. Still the T9800 is a high end laptop CPU which is well suited for single and dual threaded applications.
Due to the high clock speed, the T9800 offers enough performance for demanding games (in 2009) and applications. On average, only faster dual cores (like the T9900 or fast Core i7) or Core i7 quad cores can be faster than the T9800.
The T9800 uses a Penryn (Montevina Update) core that features 2 integer units, 1 floating point unit, 1 load unit, and 1 store unit in a 14-stages long pipeline. Due to the Wide Dynamic Execution Technology, the core is able to simultaneously execute up to four instructions.
The integrated Enhanced Speedstep is able to downclock the core dynamically as low as 800 MHz to save power (in idle mode).
The Core 2 Duo T9800 can be used in a Socket P socket with 479 pins: Socket P / Micro Flip-Chip Pin Grid Array (Micro-FCPGA) requires 479-pin surface mount Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket (mPGA479M socket) or Micro Flip-Chip Ball Grid Array (Micro-FCBGA) for surface mount (479-ball)
| Model | Apple M2 | Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 | Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 | ||||||||||||||||
| Series | Apple M2 | Intel Core 2 Duo | Intel Core 2 Duo | ||||||||||||||||
| Series: Core 2 Duo Penryn |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Clock | 2424 - 3480 MHz | 1860 MHz | 2920 MHz | ||||||||||||||||
| L1 Cache | 2 MB | 128 KB | |||||||||||||||||
| L2 Cache | 20 MB | 6 MB | 6 MB | ||||||||||||||||
| L3 Cache | 8 MB | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cores / Threads | 8 / 8 | 2 / 2 | 2 / 2 | ||||||||||||||||
| TDP | 20 Watt | 17 Watt | 35 Watt | ||||||||||||||||
| Transistors | 20000 Million | 410 Million | 410 Million | ||||||||||||||||
| Technology | 5 nm | 45 nm | 45 nm | ||||||||||||||||
| Features | ARMv8 Instruction Set | Enhanced Speedstep, Intel VT, TXT | Virtualization (VT-x), Trusted Execution, Intel 64, Enhanced Speedstep, Execute Disable Bit | ||||||||||||||||
| iGPU | Apple M2 10-Core GPU ( - 1398 MHz) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Architecture | ARM | x86 | x86 | ||||||||||||||||
| Announced | |||||||||||||||||||
| Manufacturer | www.apple.com | ark.intel.com | ark.intel.com | ||||||||||||||||
| Codename | Penryn | Penryn | |||||||||||||||||
| FSB | 1066 | 1066 | |||||||||||||||||
| Voltage | 1.050V - 1.150V V | 1-1.25 V V | |||||||||||||||||
| Die Size | 107 mm2 | 107 mm2 | |||||||||||||||||
| max. Temp. | 105 °C | 105 °C | |||||||||||||||||
| Socket | BGA956 | Socket P (BGA479, PGA478) | |||||||||||||||||
| $284 U.S. | $530 U.S. |
Benchmarks
Average Benchmarks Apple M2 → 0% n=0
Average Benchmarks Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 → 0% n=0
Average Benchmarks Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 → 0% n=0
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
