The MacBook Pro M2 Max Might Not Live Up to Expectations

In case you did not know, Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max is currently a hot topic. Until now, people have been making a list of things they want to see in the new models, which mostly narrows down to performance upgrades. And if you are someone who has a list such as that, there is something that you need to catch up on.

So, the latest update is that the Geekbench scores for the M2 Max have just surfaced on the internet. And from this listing, it seems like the MacBook Pro M2 Max might fail to offer a significant upgrade over the other M2 MacBooks and M1 MacBooks.

Geekbech Score of the Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max

The supposedly new Mac model got listed in the Geekbench 5 benchmark database, which basically gives you an idea of how well the CPU can perform. And according to the listing, the Apple Macbook Pro M2 Max scored 1889 points in the single-core test, while for the multi-core round, it got 14586 points. But the score is not the only thing; the Geekbench snippet also tells you more about the specs of the Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max. Let's take a closer look into the listing, shall we?

As you can see, the new MacBook Pro is equipped with a 12-core processor, which is clocked at 3.4 GHz. The CPU seems to have 128 KB of L1 instruction cache, 64 KB of L1 data cache, and 4 MB of L2 cache. In addition to that, the Geekbench score listing shows that the laptop has 96 GB of RAM, which is actually the main highlight of the listing.

Decoding the Geekbench Scores

Let's compare the listing with the current MacBook Pro M1 Max to get a better idea about the scores. Before anything else, let's talk about the RAM, as I believe it will be the most eye-catching thing about the M2 Max. The M1 Max maxes out at 64 GB of RAM. And as the Geekbench listing of M2 Max shows 96 GB of RAM, you can expect to see a 50 percent increase in the RAM department.

Additionally, the new M2 Max appears to have 12 cores, which is four more than what the regular M2 has to offer. And as you know, higher cores mean that the CPU will be more capable of handling resource-demanding tasks. So, you could say that the M2 Max will be more ready to meet all your heavy workloads. But the real question is, how much of an improvement can you expect from the Apple M2 Max over the M1 Max CPU?

MacBook M1 Max vs MacBook M2 Max: GeekBench Score Comparison

Well, the single-core for the M1 Max Geekbench 5 score is 1785, while it gets 12825 when it comes to the multi-core score. That means the Apple MacBook Pro M2 Max is expected to get around a 13 percent upgrade in multi-core performance. And when it comes to single-core performance, the increase is around 6 percent. So, in comparison, M2 Max offers a relatively minor improvement over the M1 Max MacBooks.

Is this the same performance leap we saw in M1 Max? To be honest, no! In the single-core test, M1 Max offered around a 3 percent increase in performance over the regular M1 modes. However, the performance leap was around 70 percent on the multi-core test. Now 70 percent is not a small number, and it is indeed something worth upgrading to!

What about the regular M2 MacBooks? The single-core score for the M2 is 1836, while the multi-core score for the CPU is 8665. Comparing that to the M2 Max score, the single-core performance is about 3 percent more, while the multi-core performance is about 68 percent more. However, you must consider the fact that the score of the M2 is taken from a system that has 24 GB of RAM, and a higher RAM could have made the M2 model get a better score.

Keep saving up or Score a Good Deal on regular Apple MacBook M2 and M1 Models?

The scores indicate that the M2 Max will not be a groundbreaking upgrade over the MacBook M1 Max models. And this might make you wonder if you should actually wait for the MacBook Pro M2 Max. Well, honestly, the current Apple MacBook M2 and M1 Max models offer decent overall performance. And when these laptops were released, they were good upgrades over the regular M1 models.

From what the reviews say, M2 MacBook Pro delivers 18 percent better performance than the MacBook M1 models in multi-core tasks. And M1 was already good at handling demanding applications.

Along with that, you have to consider that MacBook Pro M2 models are already going on sale. We have seen pretty good prices on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In fact, some of the retailers offered the MacBooks at the lowest price ever. And even if you missed the chance to grab one during the last two events, you still have the Christmas sale to look forward to. On that sale, you can expect to see fairly good discounts on all the current MacBook models, including the MacBook Pro M2 laptops.

In a nutshell, if you think that the performance of the current-gen MacBook M2 models is good enough for your day-to-day task, taking advantage of the sales would be a good idea for you. On the other hand, Apple does introduce new features with a new chipset. So, if you want to stay future-proofed, you might want to wait for the MacBook Pro M2 Max models.