Apple M2: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
M2 provides acceptable benchmark performance at 9.40% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.
Summary
Apple started M2 sales 10 June 2022. This is a 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 a 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 ranking | 814 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Market segment | Laptop | |
| Series | Apple Apple M-Series | |
| Power efficiency | 44.48 | of 100.00 (Ryzen Z1 Extreme) |
| Release date | 10 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 cores | 8 (Octa-Core) | |
| Threads | 8 | |
| Base clock speed | 2.424 GHz | of 4.7 GHz (FX-9590) |
| Boost clock speed | 3.48 GHz | of 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS) |
| L1 cache | 2 MB | of 80 KB (EPYC 9965) |
| L2 cache | 20 MB | of 2 MB (Xeon 6980P) |
| Chip lithography | 5 nm | of 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core) |
| Number of transistors | 20000 Million | of 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 Watt | of 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P) |
Graphics specifications
General parameters of a GPU integrated into Apple M2.
| Integrated graphics card | Apple 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.
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.
Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core
Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.
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.
Send your test results of Apple M2.
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 2639 configurations using Apple M2 in our database.
