On the evening of January 17, Apple quietly launched the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch notebooks, and did not hold a grand launch event for them. In addition to being upgraded to M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch also support HDMI 2.1 interface.
Recently, iFixit, a well-known foreign team, disassembled the two newly released MacBook Pros, showing users the internal structure of the new MacBook Pros.
iFixit said that dismantling the new MacBook Pro did not find too many surprises. The overall structure is no different from the old MacBook Pro equipped with M1 ProMax, only the chips were replaced with M2 Pro and M2 Max.
The M2 Pro continues the framework of the previous M2 chip and is built with TSMC’s second-generation 5nm process. It has a 12-core CPU and a 19-core GPU, and supports up to 32GB of high-speed unified memory. The M2 Max is more luxurious in terms of specifications, with a 12-core CPU and a doubled 38-core GPU, as well as a 16-core neural network engine and a high-speed unified memory up to 96GB.
In the benchmarking platform, Apple’s 12-core M2 Max ranks first in the PassMark notebook single-core performance rankings. The second and third places are all M2 Pro models with a slightly lower frequency. The fourth place is the M2 model, followed by Intel’s 12th generation. Core HX series processors.
This is enough to show the power of the M2 series chips, but this is because the i9-13900HK has not yet been launched. After the notebook equipped with this processor is launched, perhaps the M2 Max’s number one throne will change hands.
The old MacBook Pro is only equipped with an HDMI 2.0 interface. When users use this interface, they can output a maximum of 4K 60 frames.
The old MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch support ProMotion technology and have a higher refresh rate. Once an external 4K display is connected, the maximum refresh rate of only 60 frames will make users feel fragmented. After all, HDMI 2.0 bandwidth is only 18Gbps .
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with M2 Pro and M2 Max are already equipped with HDMI 2.1 interface, and the bandwidth has doubled from the previous 18Gbps to 48Gbps.
With such a huge increase in bandwidth, the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch can support a picture output of up to 8K 60 frames, and a 4K display can output a picture with a refresh rate of up to 240 frames. Definitely good news.
As iFixit disassembles the new MacBook Pro’s SSD,Surprisingly, it is found that the new MacBook Pro also has the problem of slowing down the speed of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13-inch SSD equipped with the M2 chip.
In the previous dismantling of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13 inches, iFixit found that Apple did reduce the 256G SSD version by one NAND flash memory chip. The original M1 had two NAND flash memory chips, each 128G, but the M2 only had A 128G NAND flash memory chip, the consequence of this is that the reading speed of the M2 version SSD is 50% slower than that of the M1 version.
In other words, the base model with 512G storage space in the new MacBook Pro has the same problem as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13-inch. The 512G storage of the old MacBook Pro has 4 NAND chips, while the new one has only 2, but Later models are not affected by this.
This means that the new MacBook Pro just changed the chip, and even reduced the configuration in the SSD configuration. It’s like Apple copied a bowl of cold rice that replaced light soy sauce with dark soy sauce and reduced the portion size, forcing consumers to buy higher-priced models.