Apple M2 performance leaked on Geekbench – surprise or disappointment?

We already know the performance of the new Apple M2, thanks to leaks on Geekbench. This SoC comes to market as the successor to the Apple M1, which pleasantly surprised us when it was launched almost two years ago. Let’s see what we find now that we have these performance leaks.

Apple M2, Geekbench leaks confirm the performance boost announced by Apple

Apple announced the M2 SoC just a week and a half ago, at its WWDC 2022 event, and it came with perhaps very modest performance promises, considering it’s been almost 2 years since the launch of the M1.

This is none other than the successor to the Apple M1, an SoC that greatly surprised us in 2020: let’s keep in mind that Apple made a very risky move by abandoning Intel processors with x86 architecture to move to processors of its own with ARM architecture. There was a lot of uncertainty about application compatibility and performance, but Apple knew how to bring this product to market and the first Mac M1s have been a success.

Now, we finally know the performance of the Apple M2, whose leaked Geekbench data shows a performance increase by ~11% in single-core CPU, ~18% in multi-core CPU, and an astonishing ~42% in GPU. These are in line with what Apple has promised, which talks of an 18% CPU and 35% GPU boost.

The leaks come from a mysterious “Mac 14.7″, which makes us intuit that this is a 14-inch MacBook Pro. Interestingly, an update to the 14” hasn’t been announced yet, yes to the 13″, so the 14″ must be on its way.

What we still have no information in the form of benchmarks is the consumption of Apple M2. This SoC should be characterized, like its predecessor, in that all this great performance is offered with a very restrained consumption. It is the strength of using the ARM architecture and its energy efficiency.

The new Apple M2 processor will be available in the new 13″ MacBook Pro with an M2 chip, and the new MacBook Air, starting in July. That’s when we’ll have a lot more details about the performance of this SoC.

In any case, everything looks just as Apple painted it for us. It would be terrible if the performance was even worse than what was shown in the presentation. Admittedly, the Apple M2 is a great chip, and it’s probably very efficient, but after 2 years we were expecting a bigger improvement.