Apple announced this Tuesday (17), without much fanfare, the new generation of Mac mini, its compact desktop, and new models of MacBook Pro. The common characteristic among the unpublished computers is the M2 Pro and M2 Max, the brand’s new high-performance processors designed with a focus on professional applications more complex.
The chips have the same configuration of up to 12 cores as their respective predecessors, M1 Pro and M1 Max, but with a “new generation” CPU that promises improvements in raw hardware performance. On the other hand, there are significant increases in graphics core count, unified memory capacity, and more.
Both processors are manufactured with a new 5-nanometer lithography that ensures more energy efficiency and therefore better performance. See details of each of the new processors below.
An entry-level option for the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, but equipping the most powerful Mac mini model, the M2 Pro is a processor with 40 billion transistors produced using a “second generation” 5-nanometer process, ensuring even more efficiency and performance than the first version of lithography used in the M1 Pro.
In addition to boasting 20% more transistors, the M2 Pro promises to be 20% faster in multithreading than its predecessor thanks to its hybrid architecture that combines up to 8 high-performance cores with 4 high-efficiency cores, allowing notebooks powered by this hardware to have even greater autonomy.
The GPU, which can be configured with 16 or 19 cores, has raw performance improved by up to 30%, resulting in image processing and gaming much faster than the previous model. Apple data shows that the new processor manages to be 40% faster than the M1 Pro in tasks in Adobe Photoshop.
For professionals who demand the best performance in a portable device, the M2 Max is Apple’s most advanced processor today. We’re talking about a platform with 67 billion transistors — three times more than the M2 — that guarantees twice the unified memory bandwidth of the M2 Pro.
The M2 Max also has 12 CPU cores, but its GPU can be configured with 38 cores. This hardware’s unified memory is 50% larger than the M1 Pro’s, so you can configure it with up to 96GB of RAM. The Neural Engine, which manages machine learning tasks, follows with 16 cores.
Like the M2 Pro, the M2 Max has video encoding and decoding engines to speed up rendering tasks and dedicated processing. Among the chip-accelerated codecs are H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW. ProRes has the advantage of having native encoding and decoding, ensuring more energy efficiency.
