Apple M2: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

M2 provides acceptable benchmark performance at 9.76% of a leader's which is a 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX.

Summary

Apple started M2 sales 10 June 2022. This is notebook processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 8 cores and 8 threads, and is based on 5 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3480 MHz and a locked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is processor with a TDP of 20 Watt.

Primary details

Apple M2 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking802
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Market segmentLaptop
SeriesApple Apple M-Series
Power efficiency44.50of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U)
Release date10 June 2022 (2 years ago)

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores8 (Octa-Core)
Threads8
Base clock speed2.424 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.48 GHzof 50 MHz (i486DX-50)
L1 cache2 MBof 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache20 MBof 2 MB (Xeon 6980P)
Chip lithography5 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Number of transistors20000 Millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+

Compatibility

Information on Apple M2 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Power consumption (TDP)20 Wattof 3100 ‑ 4500 (Ryzen 7 7435H)

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Apple M2.

Integrated graphics cardApple M2 10-Core GPU ( - 1398 MHz)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Apple M2. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Apple M2 9.76

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

Apple M2 14933

Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.

Apple M2 1215

Cinebench 15 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R15 (standing for Release 15) is a benchmark made by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version (sometimes called Single-Thread) only uses a single processor thread to render a room full of reflective spheres and light sources.

Apple M2 223

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Apple M2's performance relative to its closest rivals among notebook CPUs.


Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Apple M2, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Apple M2 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 2425 configurations using Apple M2 in our database.

RTX 4090 GeForce RTX 4090
1.4% (35/2425)
RTX 4070 Ti GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
0.04% (1/2425)
RX 7900 XTX Radeon RX 7900 XTX
0.1% (3/2425)
RTX 3080 GeForce RTX 3080
0.08% (2/2425)
RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
0.08% (2/2425)
RTX 3070 GeForce RTX 3070
0.2% (4/2425)
RX 6800 Radeon RX 6800
0.04% (1/2425)

All comparisons with Apple M2

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


3.5 584 votes

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Questions & comments

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