Apple started 2023 unveiling two of its newest chips M2 Pro and M2 Max that power up MacBook Pro and Mac mini boosting their performance to new heights. The two SoCs (systems on a chip) provide excellent professional performance and power efficiency that leads the industry.

M2 Pro

M2 Pro extends up the M2 architecture to provide up to a 32GB of rapid unified memory, a 12-core CPU, and a 19-core GPU. The upgraded technologies in the M2 Pro include Apple’s powerful media engine and a quicker 16-core Neural Engine with ProRes video encode and decode modes, and playback of multiple 4K and 8K ProRes video streams while using very little power.

The groundbreaking performance and capabilities of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are furthered by M2 Pro, which for the first time offers professional capability to the Mac mini.

Main Features of the M2 Pro Chip

1- Memory Bandwidth

The latest ‌M2‌ Pro chip has the same, top-of-the-industry memory bandwidth as its corresponding predecessor, M1 Pro. The M2 Pro chip provides up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, much as the M1 Pro.

2- Longer Battery Life

The M1 Pro chip has two high-efficiency cores while M2 Pro chip comes with four efficiency cores thus allowing the new Macs to do intense tasks while consuming less energy and preserving battery life.

3- Numerous Extra Transistors

Thanks to the use of nanometer technology M2 Pro chip consists of 40 billion transistors that is roughly 20 percent more than M1 Pro, and twice the amount in M2.

4- Connect More Displays

‌M2‌ Pro chip supports 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and Mac mini models up to two external displays. M2‌ Pro supports two 6K displays over Thunderbolt, or one 6K display at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one 4K display at 144Hz over HDMI.

5- Faster Graphics

GPU with M2 Pro chip can be configured up to 19 graphics cores that are three more than in the ‌M1 Pro‌. Moreover, it comes with a bigger L2 cache, so Graphics are therefore up to 30% quicker than with M1 Pro chip.

Apple provides some specific benchmarks for certain apps with M2 Pro:

Image Processing in Photoshop

• Compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro processor, M2 Pro is up to 40% quicker.
• Compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the Intel Core i9 CPU, M2 Pro is up to 80% quicker.

Code compiling in Xcode:

• M2 Pro compiles code up to 25% quicker than M1 Pro.
• M2 Pro compiles code up to 2.5x quicker than MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor.

Apple will certainly only provide comparisons and data that favorably portray the new M2 Pro chip and M2 Max processors. Your findings may differ greatly Depending on your testing environment and the precise setups you’re using.

The key thing to remember is that most people aren’t updating their MacBook Pro every generation. The comparison between the M1 Pro and M2 Pro isn’t useful for most people. A more useful comparison is comparing performance to older machines.