Early M2 Max benchmarks may have just leaked online

New benchmark results for what may be a new Mac using a M2 Max processor have surfaced, but do not show a dramatic improvement over its predecessor.

The figures on Geekbench are for a device that identifies itself as "Mac14,6." References to this Mac were first spotted back in July 2022, though it remains unclear whether it's a MacBook Pro or another device such as a new Mac Studio.

New Mac's Geekbench 5 scores!
12 cores, 96GB of RAMhttps://t.co/74dOcmgTod pic.twitter.com/PXl8Ul9eVp
— ShrimpApplePro (@VNchocoTaco) November 30, 2022

As first spotted by leaker ShrimpApplePro, the Geekbench figures includes details of the device's configuration. As reported, the device features 96GB RAM, which is more than a current MacBook Pro can offer, but less than the Mac Studio.

The CPU is listed as being "Apple M2 Max," and the data includes that it's one 12-core processor running at 3.54 GHz. The single-core score is 1853, and the multi-core score is 13855.

This appears to be the sole M2 Max record on Geekbench. There are obviously many for its year-old predecessor, the M1 Max, and a typical result for that is 1787 single-core, 12826 multi-core.

So it appears from this one example — assuming it is not fabricated — that the M2 Max may not offer as significant performance improvement as expected.

In case we haven't been clear enough, the provenance on the benchmark is unclear.

It had been predicted that a new MacBook Pro with an M2 or M2 Max processor would be released before the end of 2022. However, Tim Cook's comments at the last earnings call have made it sound unlikely, and Apple does not often release new hardware in December that it has not already previously launched.

23 Comments

blastdoor 3565 comments · 15 Years

About 1 year ago

The M2 in the MBA gets a single core score of 1899, so these results seem ballpark reasonable to me -- within the range of testing reliability.

polymnia 1080 comments · 15 Years

I’ll be quite satisfied with 96 GB of RAM. I can’t replace my 2017 iMac and it’s 64 GB RAM with a MBP until it offers a higher RAM ceiling. I do advanced Photoshop editing in my work that taxes any RAM configuration. I had guessed at this capacity after seeing the M2 MBA 1.5x it’s max RAM. Good to see that guess pan out (?).

Faster processors are fine, but the RAM ceiling of the MBPs prior to Apple Silicon was the real pain point for people like me. Glad to see they continue to move the ball forward.

mpantone 2243 comments · 18 Years

blastdoor said:

The M2 in the MBA gets a single core score of 1899, so these results seem ballpark reasonable to me -- within the range of testing reliability.

This makes zero sense. The two scores are nearly identical.

The purported benchmark is for an M2 Max. If the score and name of the processor are to be believed then there is no performance improvement with the M2 Max. And Apple most certainly will not release a new SoC that has the identical performance as a predecessor.

Remember: M_ < M_ Pro < M_ Max < M_ Ultra

This Geekbench score is likely fake or maybe the SoC's name was incorrectly reported.

My belief is that an M2 Max will need a 15-30% performance uplift over an M2 Pro to make it marketable.

Assuming Apple does not jump process nodes with the M2 Max, I'm guessing that the performance boost on standard integer and floating point tests will be more modest with greater improvements for machine learning tasks.

9secondkox2 3125 comments · 8 Years

M2 is a good setup, just not mind blowing as the m1 max was at launch. M3 has been the one to wait for. Must be why Apple wanted to move m2 to 3nm. Automatic gains across the board, likely with more overhead for higher clocks as well.

96 GB in a notebook would be a barrier breaker. No reason to not get one. Personally, I’ve been holding for a notebook or iMac M series with 128 GB or more, but 96 may be a sweet spot.

The studio is a rip off at its price points (should have just called it Mac mini pro-since that’s what it is-and sold it reasonably) and not really looking to Jump into Mac pro pricing.

The m2 currently doesn’t seem like a confidence point for Apple to jump into a Mac Pro with. So they may be accelerating a run with M3 - which may be where the M2 3nm rumors originated. Even an m2 at 3nm “extreme” setup would perhaps only match nvidia graphics from last year and match the most radical volcanic intel setups on the cpu side. With the Mac Pro taking so long, more is expected of it and Apple wants to make a statement.

Won’t be surprised to see an M3 Extreme Mac Pro announced this summer and available by the fall. M2 based MacBook pros probably launch in February or march.

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

mpantone said:

blastdoor said:

The M2 in the MBA gets a single core score of 1899, so these results seem ballpark reasonable to me -- within the range of testing reliability.

This makes zero sense. The two scores are nearly identical.

The purported benchmark is for an M2 Max. If the score and name of the processor are to be believed then there is no performance improvement with the M2 Max. And Apple most certainly will not release a new SoC that has the identical performance as a predecessor.

Remember: M_ < M_ Pro < M_ Max < M_ Ultra

This Geekbench score is likely fake or maybe the SoC's name was incorrectly reported.

My belief is that an M2 Max will need a 15-30% performance uplift over an M2 Pro to make it marketable.

Assuming Apple does not jump process nodes with the M2 Max, I'm guessing that the performance boost on standard integer and floating point tests will be more modest with greater improvements for machine learning tasks.

The M2 is very similar to the M1 in Geekbench:

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

It is however much faster for GPU (40%) and some video encoding.

These tests would suggest M2 Pro/Max might be the worst outcome expected for an upgrade - delayed to 2023 and using the same N5P process as M2 so the better N3 upgrade might not come until 2024.

There's a possibility they could make the GPU cores on N3 and the CPU cores on N5P but it's more likely they will do N5P.

While it's disappointing not having significant CPU improvements, a 40% GPU boost is a pretty good upgrade. It would have been nice to have it released this year though.