Apple M2 Max vs Intel Core i5-10200H vs Apple M2

Apple M2 Max

The Apple M2 Max is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the early 2023 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 12 CPU cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores). The E-cores clock with up to 3.4 GHz, the P-Cores up to 3.7 GHz (mostly 3.3 GHz in multi-threaded workloads and 3.4 GHz in single threaded).

The big cores (codename Avalanche) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 36 MB shared L2 cache (up from 24 MB in the M1 Pro). The four efficiency cores (codename Blizzard) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 49 MB SLC (System Level Cache). 

The unified memory (32, 64, or 96 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 512 Bit memory controller (400 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The CPU performance should be quite similar to the M2 Pro as only the higher memory bandwidth and bigger L3 cache could make a difference for some workloads.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Max offers a 30-core GPU or a GPU with all 38 cores.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine (faster than M1 Max), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M2 Max is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC (second generation) and integrates 40 billion transistors. The power consumption of the CPU part is up to 36 Watt according to powermetrics. When fully loading the CPU and GPU cores, the chip uses up to 89 Watt and the CPU part is limited to 25 Watt.

Intel Core i5-10200H

The Intel Core i5-10200H is a fast quad-core processor for laptops with four cores based on the Comet Lake-H series (4th generation of Skylake architecture). The processor clocks at between 2.4 and 4.1 GHz  and can execute up to eight threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. According to Intel, the CPU is manufactured on 14nm (14nm++) process.

The Comet Lake architecture is similar to Coffee Lake and offers the same features and is produced in the same 14nm process. Other than the improved clock rates, the memory controller now also supports faster DDR4-2933 RAM. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

The Core i5-10200H supports no vPro, TXT or SIPP. These business features are available in the faster (and later released) Core i5-10400H (2.6 - 4.6 GHz).

Performance

The performance is only minimal better than the Core i5-9300H thanks to the support for faster DDR4-2933 RAM. This means, the CPU is well suited for demanding tasks, although the faster versions offer a significantly higher Turbo Boost clock speed for faster single core execution. 

Power consumption

This 10th gen Comet Lake processor has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 45 W, a value that laptop manufacturers are allowed to reduce somewhat, 35 W being the lower limit. Doing so will result in lower clock speeds and lower performance. Either way, this CPU is too power-hungry to be used as the base of a passively cooled laptop.

Intel Core i5-10200H is built with an old, as of late 2022, 14 nm Intel process for subpar energy efficiency.

Apple M2

The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with  up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.

The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.

According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.

The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.