The Performance of Apple M2 Max Chips: A Solid Generational Improvement Over M1 Max
We have been testing the performance of Apple's new M2 Max chips, which are significantly faster than their predecessors. In this article, we will delve into the details of these tests and explore how the M2 Max chips perform in various workloads.
One of the areas where the M2 Max chips excel is in multi-threaded workloads such as web applications and video editing. We have seen a 15.1 percent improvement in CPU performance across the board for the M2 Max set, ranging from around 11 to 20 depending on what you're doing. This means that apps that make use of multi-core performance are noticeably quicker to run on the M2 Max compared to the M1 Max.
For example, we found that Affinity photo and DaVinci Resolve run much better on the M2 Max now. This is likely due to the enhanced media engine with decoders for HEVC/H.264 and ProRes, which play a significant role in accelerating workflow and making good use of CPU-GPU resources. The difference between the two machines is obvious not just in the responsiveness of the timeline and color workflows but also in final renders.
We ran Geekbench 6 tests to compare the performance of the M2 Max chips with the M1 Max. In the OpenCL test, we see a 21.8 performance gain over the 32 core M1 Max. However, when running through Apple's Metal framework, which is what these Graphics calls are optimized for, we see an 18 gain and it's about 44 better than the 24 GPU core M1 Max that we had in our Mac Studio.
In contrast, the Blackmagic raw speed test shows a slightly less impressive 12.9 improvement on the other hand. If we go to Affinity photo 2, GPU raster performance is up 26.1 percent over the M1 Max and the combined GPU performance score is a whopping 37.3 percent higher.
We also ran the RAW graphics performance of DaVinci Resolve with ProRes, which shows that it's noticeably better on this Mt Max machine. The enhanced media Engine with the decoders for hevc h.264 and prores all play a part in this but b-raw is using the GPU to decode DaVinci Resolve.
The Enhanced Media Engine with the decoders for HEVC/H.264 and ProRes makes good use of CPU-GPU resources, which results in an obvious difference between the two machines. This laptop can give my PC workstation a run for its money on some of these projects. And what's even more impressive is that this laptop is doing that on battery power.
However, to answer whether or not it's a worthwhile upgrade, we need to consider your workflow. If your workflow is predominantly CPU-focused, such as audio production or software development, then I would probably skip this generation and wait for M3 Max which is likely to be an even bigger Leap Forward unless of course you could benefit from the up to 96 gigabytes of RAM available with M2 Max.
But most users won't need that. If your workflow is predominantly GPU-focused, such as 3D rendering, illustration, high-end photography, then there are games to be had particularly if you're going from the 24 GPU core M1 Max to the 38 core M2 Max but unless you're regularly doing large batch tasks where a performance increase could save you time then again I don't think I'd be inclined to upgrade just yet.
However, if your workflow will benefit from CPU-GPU machine learning and or media engine upgrades like for example video editing with Pro codecs then the M2 Max is enough of a jump up to make it a worthwhile upgrade. M3 Max is still probably 18 months away and there is nothing else on the market offering the performance and the efficiency of the M2 Max.
Of course, if you don't already own an M1 Max computer then no doubt you'll just be completely blown away by what the M2 Max chips offer. Sure there are faster PCS out there but these Pro level Apple machines offer a phenomenal level of performance across such a wide range of disciplines and you can have those chips in a class leading laptop chassis with genuine all-day battery life.
The M2 Max then is a solid generational improvement over M1 Max might not be the leap forward that some were hoping for but that will likely come with the M3 generation and tsmc's new three nanometer fabrication processes and those look really interesting but we'll save that for another day anyway.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhere's a question how much of an improvement is Apple's M2 Max chip over the M1 Max I've spent some time actually using the M2 Max for real workloads so that I can give you my real world Impressions and that also means I can give you my opinion on whether I think it's worth upgrading from M1 Max to M2 Max and of course we'll have some benchmarks too so let's get into it we bought this 16 inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Max chip to replace our M1 Max Max studio and we needed more portability and when this nicely specked refurbished model became available through our local Apple Store I jumped at the chance now this is the full fat M2 Max with the 38 core GPU and just like with the M1 Max there are two chip options available the only difference being the number of Graphics calls on the M2 Max you can have 30 or 38. with the M1 Max it was 24 or 32. so the M2 model gets more GPU cores and therefore should offer more graphics performance but those Graphics cause themselves are clocked at a higher frequency than the M1 so each individual core should also be more performant the M2 Max also gets two additional CPU cores for a total of 12. there are eight performance cores just like with the M1 Max and four efficiency cores so the new chip gains two more efficiency cores and in theory this should enable more low power background tasks to run and make the chip more power efficient the CPU core designs in M2 Max aren't so different from the M1 generation but the key thing is that they run at a higher clock speed Apple's claiming that M2 Max delivers a 20 performance Improvement to CPU 30 Improvement to GPU and a 40 Improvement to the neural engine that's the 16 machine learning calls that are included on the Chip And if you're using a lot of AI Tools in your workflow you'll probably appreciate that performance Improvement there are other improvements in the M2 Max system on chip including improved media engines those are used for video encoding and decoding and this is especially beneficial to anyone who's working with prores video footage because it's almost twice as fast as the M1 Max when you export prores video from Final Cut Pro another improvement with the M2 Max chip is that maximum RAM is now 96 gigabytes compared to 64 with M1 Max and there's support for an 8K display at 60 hertz or 4K at 240 hertz over HDMI and some of those features alone might make the upgrade worthwhile for some now though let's look at some benchmarks and I'm going to be using the M1 Max with 32 GPU cores as the comparison machine whenever we do a graphics test but I did the CPU tests on the Mac Studio before we sold it and that's the model with 24 GPU cores but the difference in GPU cores doesn't affect CPU performance they're both exactly the same so let's start with the geekbench 6 CPU single core Benchmark where we see a 15.6 Improvement for M2 Max over M1 Max that of course is to be expected thanks to those higher clock speeds and in cinebench R23 the single core test we see an 11.6 Improvement and that's probably more representative of the actual single core performance gain the geekbench 6 test includes machine learning tasks which the M2 Max is slightly better at and if you compare the geekbench 5 scores we're actually seeing a 13.3 Improvement in this area let's see if that same difference holds up in the Affinity photo Benchmark looking at the score for single core vector graphics performance we see a 14.5 Improvement if I asked a single core performance typically makes a difference to general computing tasks you might see it in things like web browsing web apps office app like word processing and spreadsheets and just the general feeling of snappiness from your computer question is have I noticed a performance difference in the real world my daily driver laptop is the 14 inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max and I've had this since this model launched so I'm pretty familiar now with how it performs can I tell the difference between this laptop and the 16 inch with the M2 Max for typically single core tasks maybe the M2 Max does feel slightly snappier at times but that's pretty subjective when you've got a laptop that already has a very fast single core performance comparing it with a different machine that's maybe 12 or 13 faster still it's just not going to be that noticeable in general usage for example if you're using Microsoft Excel online and it's performing fast enough that it never gets in your way it never feels slow then what benefit will you see if it's running 12 percent faster behind the scenes of course I am generalizing a little bit here but it is true that more serious workloads and tasks would usually rely on multi-core performance so let's check that out again starting with the benchmarks and in geekbench 6 the multi-core CPU score for the M2 Max shows that benefit of the higher clock speeds and those additional cores even if they are only efficiency cores we're seeing a 20.1 percent improvement over the M1 Max this carries through to cinebench R23 the multi-core test here is 19.9 improved over M1 Max Apple did say that the M2 Max offers 20 better CPU performance than M1 Max and that's exactly what we're getting in these tests if we move over to the Affinity photo 2 Benchmark we find multi-cpu performance for vectors is 10.1 percent better than M1 Max and raster graphics performance is 14.2 percent improved but the overall combined multi-cpu score shows a 23.2 percent uplift over the M1 Max chip so if you're working with apps like Affinity designer or Adobe Illustrator you're likely to see smaller gains than Apple's 20 claims but maybe apps like Affinity photo and Adobe Photoshop get a little bit closer to that stated Improvement let's take a look at the Blackmagic raw speed test now this is showing how well the CPU can decode a stream of 8kb raw video with a compression ratio of 12 to 1. and as you can see we're getting a 26.5 improvement over M1 Max that is pretty considerable though In fairness it's more likely that you'll be using the GPU to do this particular task because it's much better at it still having this additional CPU performance isn't going to hurt video editors let's now just show a few benchmarks from browser bench these are a combination of CPU and GPU tests starting with motion Mark which simulates in-browser graphics performance here we are seeing only a 5.8 increase though it is possible that the Viewpoint sizes weren't identical on the two tests so perhaps take that under advisement Jetstream is a JavaScript and webassembly benchmark test which is designed to simulate the performance of advanced web applications and here we can see an 18.1 percent improvement with M2 Max and finally speedometer which measures the responsiveness of web applications and we have a 15.1 percent Improvement here so pretty solid CPU gains across the board for the M2 Max set ranging from around 11 to 20 depending on what you're doing but is this General performance uplift noticeable in real world usage yes it is so apps that make use of multi-core performance are noticeably quicker to me anyway in particular I found Affinity photo and DaVinci Resolve run much better on the M2 Max now I do realize that GPU is playing a part in that overall perception so we better take a look at that next if we look at geekbench 6 The opencl Test shows that the 38 GPU core M2 Max offers a 21.8 performance gain over the 32 core M1 Max when we look at the same test running through Apple's metal framework which is what these Graphics calls are optimized for we see an 18 gain and incidentally it's about 44 better than the 24 GPU core M1 Max that we had in our Mac Studio so that does seem like a pretty decent gain in RAW graphics performance but let's just run that Blackmagic raw speed test again have a look at the GPU metal score now we see a slightly less impressive 12.9 Improvement on the other hand if we go to Affinity photo 2 GPU raster performance is up 26.1 percent over the M1 Max and the combined GPU performance score is a whopping 37.3 percent higher so small wonder that I can notice that performance difference when using Affinity photo the performance for our normal workflow in DaVinci Resolve is noticeably better on this Mt Max machine we're typically working with a combination of 6kb raw and prores or 4K hevc h.264 or prores video files and these absolutely fly on the M2 Max the enhanced media Engine with the decoders for hevc h.264 and prores all play a part in this but b-raw is using the GPU to decode DaVinci Resolve makes good use of CPU GPU and Apple's media engines to accelerate workflow and the difference between the two machines is obvious not just in the responsiveness of the timeline and in color workflows but also in final renders in fact this laptop can give my PC workstation a run for its money on some of these projects and that's a PC with dual Nvidia RTX 5000 gpus a 32 core threadripper Pro and 128 gigs of RAM and this laptop is doing that on battery power we with amazing power efficiency and for these specific video editing workflows it's very difficult to beat these Apple silicon chips so yes for my workflow I can absolutely notice the difference between the M1 Max and the M2 Max but does that make it a worthwhile upgrade think we can answer this question if your workflow is predominantly CPU focused for example audio production or software development then I would probably skip this generation and wait for M3 Max which is likely to be an even bigger Leap Forward unless of course you could benefit from the up to 96 gigabytes of RAM available with M2 Max but most users won't need that if your workflow is predominantly GPU focused for example 3D rendering illustration high-end photography then there are games to be had particularly if you're going from the 24 GPU core M1 Max to the 38 core M2 Max but unless you're regularly doing large batch tasks where a performance increase could save you time then again I don't think I'd be inclined to upgrade just yet if your workflow though will benefit from CPU GPU machine learning and or media engine upgrades like for example video editing with Pro codecs then the M2 Max is enough of a jump up to make it a worthwhile upgrade M3 Max is still probably 18 months away and there is nothing else on the market offering the performance and the efficiency of the M2 Max of course if you don't already own an M1 Max computer then no doubt you'll just be completely blown away by what the M2 Max chips offer sure there are faster PCS out there but these Pro level Apple machines offer a phenomenal level of performance across such a wide range of disciplines and you can have those chips in a class leading laptop chassis with genuine all-day battery life the M2 Max then is a solid generational improvement over M1 Max might not be the leap forward that some were hoping for but that will likely come with the M3 generation and tsmc's new three nanometer fabrication processes and those look really interesting but we'll save that for another day anyway thanks for spending a bit of your time with me today I hope you found this video useful and if you did please let the YouTube algorithm know by giving us a thumbs up hold down if you prefer and maybe subscribing to the channel and leaving a comment below and I'll see you again soon for some more geekeryhere's a question how much of an improvement is Apple's M2 Max chip over the M1 Max I've spent some time actually using the M2 Max for real workloads so that I can give you my real world Impressions and that also means I can give you my opinion on whether I think it's worth upgrading from M1 Max to M2 Max and of course we'll have some benchmarks too so let's get into it we bought this 16 inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Max chip to replace our M1 Max Max studio and we needed more portability and when this nicely specked refurbished model became available through our local Apple Store I jumped at the chance now this is the full fat M2 Max with the 38 core GPU and just like with the M1 Max there are two chip options available the only difference being the number of Graphics calls on the M2 Max you can have 30 or 38. with the M1 Max it was 24 or 32. so the M2 model gets more GPU cores and therefore should offer more graphics performance but those Graphics cause themselves are clocked at a higher frequency than the M1 so each individual core should also be more performant the M2 Max also gets two additional CPU cores for a total of 12. there are eight performance cores just like with the M1 Max and four efficiency cores so the new chip gains two more efficiency cores and in theory this should enable more low power background tasks to run and make the chip more power efficient the CPU core designs in M2 Max aren't so different from the M1 generation but the key thing is that they run at a higher clock speed Apple's claiming that M2 Max delivers a 20 performance Improvement to CPU 30 Improvement to GPU and a 40 Improvement to the neural engine that's the 16 machine learning calls that are included on the Chip And if you're using a lot of AI Tools in your workflow you'll probably appreciate that performance Improvement there are other improvements in the M2 Max system on chip including improved media engines those are used for video encoding and decoding and this is especially beneficial to anyone who's working with prores video footage because it's almost twice as fast as the M1 Max when you export prores video from Final Cut Pro another improvement with the M2 Max chip is that maximum RAM is now 96 gigabytes compared to 64 with M1 Max and there's support for an 8K display at 60 hertz or 4K at 240 hertz over HDMI and some of those features alone might make the upgrade worthwhile for some now though let's look at some benchmarks and I'm going to be using the M1 Max with 32 GPU cores as the comparison machine whenever we do a graphics test but I did the CPU tests on the Mac Studio before we sold it and that's the model with 24 GPU cores but the difference in GPU cores doesn't affect CPU performance they're both exactly the same so let's start with the geekbench 6 CPU single core Benchmark where we see a 15.6 Improvement for M2 Max over M1 Max that of course is to be expected thanks to those higher clock speeds and in cinebench R23 the single core test we see an 11.6 Improvement and that's probably more representative of the actual single core performance gain the geekbench 6 test includes machine learning tasks which the M2 Max is slightly better at and if you compare the geekbench 5 scores we're actually seeing a 13.3 Improvement in this area let's see if that same difference holds up in the Affinity photo Benchmark looking at the score for single core vector graphics performance we see a 14.5 Improvement if I asked a single core performance typically makes a difference to general computing tasks you might see it in things like web browsing web apps office app like word processing and spreadsheets and just the general feeling of snappiness from your computer question is have I noticed a performance difference in the real world my daily driver laptop is the 14 inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max and I've had this since this model launched so I'm pretty familiar now with how it performs can I tell the difference between this laptop and the 16 inch with the M2 Max for typically single core tasks maybe the M2 Max does feel slightly snappier at times but that's pretty subjective when you've got a laptop that already has a very fast single core performance comparing it with a different machine that's maybe 12 or 13 faster still it's just not going to be that noticeable in general usage for example if you're using Microsoft Excel online and it's performing fast enough that it never gets in your way it never feels slow then what benefit will you see if it's running 12 percent faster behind the scenes of course I am generalizing a little bit here but it is true that more serious workloads and tasks would usually rely on multi-core performance so let's check that out again starting with the benchmarks and in geekbench 6 the multi-core CPU score for the M2 Max shows that benefit of the higher clock speeds and those additional cores even if they are only efficiency cores we're seeing a 20.1 percent improvement over the M1 Max this carries through to cinebench R23 the multi-core test here is 19.9 improved over M1 Max Apple did say that the M2 Max offers 20 better CPU performance than M1 Max and that's exactly what we're getting in these tests if we move over to the Affinity photo 2 Benchmark we find multi-cpu performance for vectors is 10.1 percent better than M1 Max and raster graphics performance is 14.2 percent improved but the overall combined multi-cpu score shows a 23.2 percent uplift over the M1 Max chip so if you're working with apps like Affinity designer or Adobe Illustrator you're likely to see smaller gains than Apple's 20 claims but maybe apps like Affinity photo and Adobe Photoshop get a little bit closer to that stated Improvement let's take a look at the Blackmagic raw speed test now this is showing how well the CPU can decode a stream of 8kb raw video with a compression ratio of 12 to 1. and as you can see we're getting a 26.5 improvement over M1 Max that is pretty considerable though In fairness it's more likely that you'll be using the GPU to do this particular task because it's much better at it still having this additional CPU performance isn't going to hurt video editors let's now just show a few benchmarks from browser bench these are a combination of CPU and GPU tests starting with motion Mark which simulates in-browser graphics performance here we are seeing only a 5.8 increase though it is possible that the Viewpoint sizes weren't identical on the two tests so perhaps take that under advisement Jetstream is a JavaScript and webassembly benchmark test which is designed to simulate the performance of advanced web applications and here we can see an 18.1 percent improvement with M2 Max and finally speedometer which measures the responsiveness of web applications and we have a 15.1 percent Improvement here so pretty solid CPU gains across the board for the M2 Max set ranging from around 11 to 20 depending on what you're doing but is this General performance uplift noticeable in real world usage yes it is so apps that make use of multi-core performance are noticeably quicker to me anyway in particular I found Affinity photo and DaVinci Resolve run much better on the M2 Max now I do realize that GPU is playing a part in that overall perception so we better take a look at that next if we look at geekbench 6 The opencl Test shows that the 38 GPU core M2 Max offers a 21.8 performance gain over the 32 core M1 Max when we look at the same test running through Apple's metal framework which is what these Graphics calls are optimized for we see an 18 gain and incidentally it's about 44 better than the 24 GPU core M1 Max that we had in our Mac Studio so that does seem like a pretty decent gain in RAW graphics performance but let's just run that Blackmagic raw speed test again have a look at the GPU metal score now we see a slightly less impressive 12.9 Improvement on the other hand if we go to Affinity photo 2 GPU raster performance is up 26.1 percent over the M1 Max and the combined GPU performance score is a whopping 37.3 percent higher so small wonder that I can notice that performance difference when using Affinity photo the performance for our normal workflow in DaVinci Resolve is noticeably better on this Mt Max machine we're typically working with a combination of 6kb raw and prores or 4K hevc h.264 or prores video files and these absolutely fly on the M2 Max the enhanced media Engine with the decoders for hevc h.264 and prores all play a part in this but b-raw is using the GPU to decode DaVinci Resolve makes good use of CPU GPU and Apple's media engines to accelerate workflow and the difference between the two machines is obvious not just in the responsiveness of the timeline and in color workflows but also in final renders in fact this laptop can give my PC workstation a run for its money on some of these projects and that's a PC with dual Nvidia RTX 5000 gpus a 32 core threadripper Pro and 128 gigs of RAM and this laptop is doing that on battery power we with amazing power efficiency and for these specific video editing workflows it's very difficult to beat these Apple silicon chips so yes for my workflow I can absolutely notice the difference between the M1 Max and the M2 Max but does that make it a worthwhile upgrade think we can answer this question if your workflow is predominantly CPU focused for example audio production or software development then I would probably skip this generation and wait for M3 Max which is likely to be an even bigger Leap Forward unless of course you could benefit from the up to 96 gigabytes of RAM available with M2 Max but most users won't need that if your workflow is predominantly GPU focused for example 3D rendering illustration high-end photography then there are games to be had particularly if you're going from the 24 GPU core M1 Max to the 38 core M2 Max but unless you're regularly doing large batch tasks where a performance increase could save you time then again I don't think I'd be inclined to upgrade just yet if your workflow though will benefit from CPU GPU machine learning and or media engine upgrades like for example video editing with Pro codecs then the M2 Max is enough of a jump up to make it a worthwhile upgrade M3 Max is still probably 18 months away and there is nothing else on the market offering the performance and the efficiency of the M2 Max of course if you don't already own an M1 Max computer then no doubt you'll just be completely blown away by what the M2 Max chips offer sure there are faster PCS out there but these Pro level Apple machines offer a phenomenal level of performance across such a wide range of disciplines and you can have those chips in a class leading laptop chassis with genuine all-day battery life the M2 Max then is a solid generational improvement over M1 Max might not be the leap forward that some were hoping for but that will likely come with the M3 generation and tsmc's new three nanometer fabrication processes and those look really interesting but we'll save that for another day anyway thanks for spending a bit of your time with me today I hope you found this video useful and if you did please let the YouTube algorithm know by giving us a thumbs up hold down if you prefer and maybe subscribing to the channel and leaving a comment below and I'll see you again soon for some more geekery\n"
