Apple M2 Max chip: Price, Release Date, Specs, and Everything you need to know
The M2 Max and its less powerful sibling, the M2 Pro, are the new top-tier performance for MacBooks, which are already among the best laptops on the market. Apple unveiled the new MacBook Pro 2023 laptops today (January 17). The Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max are just beefier versions of the Apple M2 chip, which is an upgrade from Apple’s first Mac-specific silicon. The MacBook Pro 14-inch (2023) and MacBook Pro 16-inch (2023) will feature M2 Pro and M2 Max chips (2023). Since we loved the 2021 MacBook Pros, the new Apple laptops look almost identical. The M2 Pro and M2 Max are Apple’s latest pro-MacBooks’ selling points because they have more powerful M2 chips inside. The M2 Max is the most powerful MacBook chip yet. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
Apple M2 Max chip: Release Date and price
The Apple M2 Max will initially be available only as an upgrade for the 2023 MacBook Pros, which go on sale January 24 on Apple’s website (opens in new tab). The 14-inch model costs $1,999, while the 16-inch model costs $2,499.As usual, Apple sells MacBook Pros in Silver or Space Gray. Both models come with an entry-level M2 Pro chip, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro 2023 has a more powerful chip. Favoring the 14-inch size won’t limit your chip options, as both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros can be ordered with up to the M2 Max chip. Upgrade your 2023 MacBook Pro to an M2 Max for about $1,000. The M2 Max costs $3,099 for the $1,999 14-inch MacBook Pro 2023 and $3,499 for the $2,499 16-inch. The upgrade to M1 Max for the 14-inch Pro 2021 costs $600, and the 16-inch costs $900.
Apple M2 Max chip: Specs
Though the 2021 M1 Max chip’s design hasn’t changed, Apple has improved it. The M2 Max has a scaled-up core architecture like the M2, M1 Max, and M1. They’re all SoCs (systems-on-chips), which integrate the CPU and GPU and use unified RAM memory for efficiency and low latency. The M2 Max has 67 billion transistors, 10 billion more than the M1 Max, and over three times the base M2 chip. That matches the M1 Max, which had more than 3x the transistor count of the M1 chip.
The Apple M2 Max has a larger GPU and the same 12-core CPU (8 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores) as the M2 Pro. The 2023 MacBook Pro’s M2 Max chip has up to 38 GPU cores, the most ever on a MacBook chip. The Apple M2 Max can’t match the Apple M1 Ultra chip’s 20-core CPU and 64-core GPU, but the Ultra is only available in the deskbound Apple Mac Studio, so if you want Apple silicon in a MacBook, the Apple M2 Max is your best bet. Apple claims the M2 Max’s 16-core Neural Engine is 40% faster than its predecessor’s. Apple’s Neural Engine helps with machine learning tasks like image processing and computational video processing, which improves your 2023 MacBook Pro’s 1080p webcam video calls. The M2 Max supports 400 GB/s memory bandwidth and up to 96GB RAM. Correct: MacBook with 96GB RAM.
Apple M2 Max chip: New Features
Apple markets its MacBook Pros and top-tier Apple silicon to mobile video pros. Apple has improved the M2 Max for video editors. The M2 Max has the most powerful hardware-accelerated media engine of the M2 Pro, M1 Pro, and M1 Max. The M2 Max has two video encoding engines and two ProRes engines, which Apple claims allows it to deliver up to twice the video encoding speed of the M2 Pro. Both models support H.264, HEVC, and ProRes. Apple claims the M2 Max can simultaneously output 4K and 8K ProRes video. The last generation of Apple silicon supported HDMI 2.0, but this one appears to support HDMI 2.1.