A few days ago, it became clear that the M2 GPUs don't offer the kind of power needed for professional work laptops. Graphic editors, especially those opting for the 2023 Mac Pro , might feel it's not a worthwhile investment. However, as CPUs, Apple's M2 Pro and Ultra are currently dominating PassMark's rankings of the best laptop CPUs.
This website features several CPU rankings based on benchmark scores, making it a fairly reliable benchmark for CPU performance. Recently, Apple's M.2 processors were crowned the best for laptops, surpassing the Intel Core Alder Lake processors for laptops announced last year.
Currently, the best CPU for laptops is an M2
The PassMark ranking of single-core laptop CPUs in benchmarks has been updated with Apple's new M2 Max and Pro chips. Thus, the first four positions belong to the M2 family. But the Intel Raptor Lake-HX announced earlier this year is coming soon, and with the M2s little difference between the Alder Lakes, this position may only last a few weeks.
According to PassMark's rankings for laptop CPU single-threaded performance, the Apple M2 Max takes the top spot, followed by the 10- and 12-core variants of the M2 Pro and the standard M2 chip. Intel's best laptop chip currently on the market, the Core i9-12900HX , comes in fifth. As for AMD's fastest single-threaded CPU in this benchmark, it's the Ryzen 7 7735HX, which ranks 25th.
While neither Intel nor AMD chips can break the 4.000-point barrier in the single-core test, Apple's latest M2 chips do so with a comfortable margin. The 12-core M2 Pro variant is slightly slower than the 10-core version , scoring 4.174 points. The M2 Max goes a bit further, achieving a score of 4.283 points.
It's worth remembering that once Intel launches the Core i9-13900HX, i9-13950HX, and i9-13980HX—the high-performance Raptor Lake CPUs for laptops expected in the coming weeks—significant changes in the rankings could occur. It's also important to note that, unlike M.2 chips, these Intel chips will likely require more robust cooling systems to keep temperatures under control.
Source: Kitguru
