Apple has announced the release of its new M2Pro and M2Max chips, as well as 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that will feature these chips. Additionally, a new version of the Mac mini will also be available with the M2Pro and M2 chips. Pre-orders for the new products will begin on January 19th at 9am and will be available for purchase on February 3rd.
According to the official press release, the M2Pro chip is built on a second-generation 5nm process and features a staggering 40 billion transistors, an increase of 20% over the M1Pro chip and double that of the M2 chip. It features a 12-core CPU, which offers a 20% increase in multi-threaded performance over the M1Pro chip, a 19-core GPU that delivers a 30% increase in graphics performance over the M1Pro, support for up to 32GB of unified memory and 200GB/s memory bandwidth, and the capability to connect up to two external displays and play up to 23 4K ProRes video streams at the same time.
The M2Max chip is even more powerful, with 67 billion transistors, which is three times more than the M2 chip and 100 billion more than the M1Max chip. It features the same 12-core CPU, but with a 38-core GPU that can deliver a 30% increase in graphics performance over the M1Max chip. It supports up to 96GB of unified memory and 400GB/s memory bandwidth, can connect up to four external displays and play up to 10 8K ProRes video streams simultaneously.
Both the M2Pro and M2Max chips feature Apple’s new 16-core neural engine that can perform up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, which is 40% faster than the previous generation. The M2Pro chip can perform hardware accelerated encoding and decoding of H.264, HEVC and ProRes videos, while the M2Max chip features two video encoding engines and two ProRes video engines that can offer up to twice the video encoding performance of the M2Pro chip.
With the new chips, the 16-inch MacBook Pro can offer up to 2.8 times faster performance than its predecessor, while the 14-inch MacBook Pro can offer up to 2.6 times faster performance. The Mac mini with the M2Pro chip can offer up to 3.5 times faster performance and the Mac mini with the M2 chip can offer up to 3 times faster performance.
