JANUARY 2022 MACWORLD 9Pro MacBook Pro now. Based on what we
know about the M2, it will offer a decent
improvement over the M1 and will creep a
little closer to the M1 Pro, but not enough
to come anywhere near matching it.
But for common tasks, the M2 could be
still faster than Apple’s flagship processors.
The M1 Pro’s single-core performance is
essentially the same as the M1’s (which is
expected, since the M1 Pro is based on the
M1), and if the M2 follows the path of the
A15, single-core speed will be a bit faster
than that of all the M1 chips, including the
Pro and the Max.
If the idea that the M2’s single-core
performance could be better than the M
Pro piqued your interest, an M1 Pro—and
probably any subsequent Pro chip—is
overkill for what you do in the first place.
Single-core performance is important for
common apps such as Mail and Photos, so
the speed gains there could be more
worthwhile than the multi-core
performance of the M1 Pro. But the M1 isOn the GPU side, we saw speeds that
were 40 to 50 percent faster than the
iPhone 12’s A14 chip when compared with
the higher-end iPhone 13 Pro and about
25 percent higher with the 4-core GPU in
the iPhone 13.
Compared to the M1, we’ll probably
see the M2 increase in CPU performance
to be about 15 percent with a bigger
jump in GPU performance. The M1 Pro,
with its eight or 10 CPU cores (two
efficiency cores; the rest are
performance cores), boasts multi-core
CPU performance that’s about 70 percent
better than the M1’s, so even with a nice
increase, the M2 will still be significantly
slower overall than the M1 Pro.
M2 VS. M1 PRO: NO
COMPARISON
The M1 Pro is built for software that can
take advantage of multi-core processing
and GPUs. If you’re a pro who uses CPU-
intensive apps, don’t wait—invest in an M
GEEKBENCH 5
Multi-core7, 56912,12,7,70 87, 3 8 3HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER14-inch MacBook Pro(2021) M1 Max 10-core
14-inch MacBook Pro(2021) M1 Pro 10-core
16-inch MacBook Pro(2019) 2.4GHz 8-core Core i
13-inch MacBook Pro(2020) M1 8-core
24-inch iMac(2021) M1 8-coreGEEKBENCH 5
Single-core1,1,1,1,1,HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER14-inch MacBook Pro(2021) M1 Max 10-core
14-inch MacBook Pro(2021) M1 Pro 10-core
16-inch MacBook Pro(2019) 2.4GHz 8-core Core i
13-inch MacBook Pro(2020) M1 8-core
24-inch iMac(2021) M1 8-coremobilism.org