![]() ![]() The base model has a 512 GB SSD, which is probably fine for most folks. In a more mainstream consumer system like the Dell we can accept that in a supposedly pro system like this it's a recurring disappointment. Unfortunately, the same is true of the 1 TB SSD there's no upgrading since the flash chips are soldered directly to the motherboard. That memory is soldered, just like all the LPDDR5 memory in most ultra portable systems available today. And all that is without a single change in the memory spec, which is still 16 GB of LPDDR5 with a total bandwidth of 200 GB per second. The rest of the M2 Pro's parts got a face lift as well, as Apple promises that 18% increase in GPU core count over its fully-enabled predecessor will give the latest GPU a 30% graphics performance uptick. That 4 MB L2 for the efficiency cores remains unchanged.Īnyway, enough about the CPU until we get into performance. This gets doubled on M2 Max processors, so rather than the 24 MB L2 cache of the M1 Max, the new version gets 32 MB. Both M1 Pro and M2 Pro give the efficiency cores 4 MB of L2 of their own to split, as well, for a total of 20 MB. According to the sysctl utility built into macOS, all M1 Pro models have 12 MB L2 cache for its CPU cores, whereas the M2 Pro reports 16 MB available. The rest of whatever performance differences we see likely come down to optimizations that Apple was able to achieve from generation to generation, along with a larger L2 cache. That's a modest 8.4% bump from the M1 Pro's reported 3.2 GHz. According to the info section in Geekbench 5, the M2 Pro's performance cores are clocked at 3.47 GHz, compared to 3.2 GHz in the M1 and M1 Pro. What that doesn't account for is the improved per-thread performance that Apple has achieved with the M2. As a result, getting 33% more performance cores over the base model is more like a $300 premium.Īpple's M2 Pro and memory chips (source: Apple) The only way to get a full complement of CPU cores on the 14" MacBook Pro is to spend $500 extra, but that includes a $200 upcharge to get to 1 TB of storage. If we'd gone with the base model of the MacBook Pro M2 Pro, we'd have the same six performance cores, and all the gains would come by way of two efficiency cores. If you're clinging to an x86 Mac notebook it might be time to upgrade. Performance will be close enough, but we do expect that the late-2019 MacBook Pro with a now ancient 9th-generation Core processor would trail this model by a huge margin. Because of this, and because of the relatively small bump in single-threaded performance, this is not something you'd buy to replace an M1 Pro machine. ![]() That model is missing two performance cores and two GPU cores from the full-fat version (also found in the base 16" model from 2021, which we'll use in comparisons later), so the number of performance CPU cores really hasn't changed. To be fair in our comparison to the M1 Pro, we need to remember that last year's review unit sported a trimmed-down version of the chip. The GPU has seen a sizable bump too, as this model has 19 of Apple's GPU cores, compared to 14 last time around. That's two of each more than the last 14" MacBook Pro that we looked at. Built on the second generation of TSMC's 5-nanometer fabrication process, the M2 Pro has a dozen CPU cores split between eight performance and a quartet of efficiency cores. We were suitably impressed by the M1 Pro found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro, and the recently-released M2 Pro amps things up considerably - more cores, more clock speed, and more GPU. That said, let's dig in and meet the 2023 MacBook Pro.Īpple MacBook Pro 14" (2023) Specifications As such we get the full retail experience, with no chance of any funny business. ![]() Apple didn't provide review units, so we're paying for this out of pocket. So let's hope that the internals are worth the time, effort, and money. And that's true here, too - Apple's design works. After all, we'd be hard pressed to tell apart the first generation of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon from the 10th generation because the design works. While the external design might be familiar, that's a good sign. But that was almost three years ago, and today we're getting around to reviewing the second iteration on this particular design. Apple rocked the computing world when it announced its transition away from x86 processors and to its own Arm64-based designs at the virtual WWDC in the summer of 2020. We'll just come right out and say it: the 2023 14" MacBook Pro isn't revolutionary, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. ![]()
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