Apple M2 silicon performance in PassMark – better than 12900?!

The performance of Apple’s new silicon M2 in PassMark It shows that this laptop sample managed to appear at the level of desktop class processors. In fact, the M2 has managed to register an extraordinary single-core score in this benchmark and beat various Alder Lake models. However, in multiple tests, Apple’s chip is not very powerful.

Apple’s ARM-based processor managed to rank fourth in the single-core (desktop) chart, while this chip is a laptop sample used in the new 2022 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. Of course, there is no doubt that a version of it will also be used in desktop devices such as Mac Mini and iMac. However, the M2 chip performs well against its high-end x86 desktop rivals, at least in the single-core segment.

Apple M2 silicon performance in PassMark

PassMark assigned 4116 points to Apple’s system-on-chip in the single-threaded section, which means that only Intel’s Core i9 12900KF, Core i9 12900K, and Core i9 12900KS models are higher than that. The M2’s score is even higher (albeit by a very small margin) than the Core i9 12900, which has a maximum clock of 5.1GHz with a maximum power of 202W. For comparison, the M2 uses a frequency of 3.5 GHz for the powerful Avalanche cores and 2.8 GHz for the low-power Blizzard cores at a thermal power of 20 watts.

However, despite the extraordinary performance of the Apple processor compared to competitors, the situation is completely different in multiple tests. We also saw such an event in Apple M1, which was unique in the single-core PassMark section, but was considered only a mid-range sample in CPU Mark. M2 scored 14,933 points to rank 466. Slightly higher at 464 is the Core i3 12300 processor with only 4 cores (8 threads), which was praised by critics for its good performance.

Overall the M2 silicon offers good single-core performance, which paints a bright future for the M2 Max and M2 Ultra models. Apple’s chip is currently 9.61 percent better than the M1, but in the CPU Mark section, this drops to just 2.44 percent.