Several Geekbench performance scores of the as yet unreleased M2 Max chip have come to light, as well as details of unreleased Macs in a recent metadata trawl, all of which give an insight into the specification and performance of the new Apple Silicon M2 Mac System on a Chip.
The First Results - Not That Impressive
The first results on Geekbench are for a M2 Max chip with 96GB of unified memory. The listing is for a Mac14,6 which could make it either a next-generation Mac Studio or MacBook Pro computer.
The first test shows that the M2 Max chip scored 1,853 in single-core and 13,855 in multi-core, which compares to 1,755 in single-core and 12,333 in multi-core for an M1 Max chip in a Mac Studio computer.
What this shows is that the single-core score is up by 5.6%, and the multi-core score increases by 12.3% from the M1 Max to the M2 Max SoC, which doesn’t appear to be particularly spectacular.
The M2 Max scores show that the computer tested is running macOS 13.2, which we understand will be the first version of the macOS that will support the new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors and is expected to be released in the MacBook Pro laptop in March 2023.
A Second Test - A Little More Impressive
These second set of Geekbench scores don’t differ any more details of the upcoming M2 Max powered computers.
However, the results are more of an improvement over the M1 Max, and it is suggested that this is because this second set of results were done on an M2 Max computer with a higher clock speed, 3.68 GHz instead of 3.54 GHz.
These show a single-Core score of 2027, which is a 15.5% improvement on the M1 Max and a Multi-Core score of 14888, which is a 20.7% improvement over the M1 Max.
Details Of Two Unreleased Macs Surface In November 2022 Steam Survey
Now two as yet unreleased Mac computers have been found in Steam’s November 2002 survey, which gathers anonymous data from Steam users, who give their permission for this data to be collected. The data includes the computer model number, CPU type and memory size.
The two unreleased Macs have the Apple identifiers Mac14,6 and Mac15,4. The Mac14,6 is the same model as the Geekbench results above, and it is understood to relate to the M2 Max SoC either in a MacBook Pro or a Mac Studio. However, the Mac15,4 identifier has been seen before, but the consensus is that it is another M2 Max powered computer.
One other thing we have learnt from Steam’s metadata is that the OS used was macOS 12.2.1 and macOS 12.3.1, which is the first time we have seen a reference to macOS Ventura 12.3.
What Do You Think?
There you have it. The first set of results were not spectacular, but the second set are more of an improvement. It is expected that the production version of the M2 Max chips will improve again. Even so, the performance improvements would make it questionable as to whether it would be worthwhile for current owners of an M1 Max-powered computer to upgrade.