Apple’s New Next-Gen M2 Silicon Chips Claim to More Than Double the Power

Apple is upgrading M2 Silicon chips and has introduced plans for new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors.

The newly-announced M2 Pro and M2 Max processors are bound for Apple computers, claiming even more performance power over the standard M2 chip yet still pushing efficiency beyond what was demonstrated with currently available M1 and M2 models and reportedly providing 22 hours of battery life on a MacBook Pro during official testing.

Building off the original M2 chip, the M2 Pro will provide up to 32GB of unified memory, along with up to 12 CPU cores and a maximum of 19 GPU cores. It also boasts twice the memory bandwidth (up to 200GB per second), with Apple claiming smoother performance for heavier processing loads like graphics-intensive Photoshop projects.

Of course, graphics processing is also supposed to be improved, resulting in games being able to run at something closer to "console quality" compared to previous iterations of the M1 or M2.

The M2 Max continues to follow Apple's chip naming convention by pushing the numbers even further. It reportedly has approximately twice the advertised power of the M2 Pro, with up to 400GB per second of memory bandwidth and up to 96GB of unified memory. Resulting in a Silicon chip Apple says is capable of opening huge files "instantaneously" and an ability to handle "graphics-intensive projects that competing systems can't even run."

Apple's M2 Pro-powered Mac mini is available to preorder today, along with its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models containing M2 Pro or M2 Max chips. If you're not interested in preordering (or just want to know when your preorder will be shipped), the new M2 Mac mini and MacBooks will be available starting January 24.