Thanks to a review by Hardware Unboxed, (opens in new tab) we have a quick look at the gaming performance of Apple’s new M2 chip. The YouTube channel took an M2 Macbook and tested it against a Ryzen 7 6800U in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The M2 outperformed the AMD despite the Ryzen 7 6800U packing one of AMD’s fastest gaming iGPUs to date, the Radeon 680M.
The M2 is Apple’s successor to the groundbreaking M1 chip it released nearly two years ago. However, it is not a generational leap over the M1 but a refresh over the M1 with moderate performance improvements. Apple says users can expect an 18% performance improvement over the M1, thanks to a newer core architecture, slightly faster CPU clocks, and the move to LPDDR5 memory with up to 100 GBps of bandwidth.
But the only exception to the M2’s mediocre performance is in the GPU. The GPU, on the contrary, has received a very respectable uplift over the M1, with a 35% performance improvement. Admittedly, it isn’t the whopping 67% improvement like we hoped it would be from rumors, but it is better than 18% nonetheless. To do this, Apple has added two more cores to the GPU, giving the M2 iGPU 3.6 TFLOPs of computing performance.
Undoubtedly the addition of two GPU cores along with faster LPDDR5 RAM feeding the graphics engine is how the M2 beat the Ryzen 7 6800U in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
In Hardware Unboxed’s gaming results, the M2 beat the Ryzen 7 6800U by 2 to 3 FPS on the Medium, High, and Highest (BTAO) graphical presets at a resolution of 1920 x 1200. With a 30 FPS average between the two chips, the “small” 2-3 FPS difference equals the M2 gaining a 7.6% to 10% performance boost over the Ryzen 7 6800U.
It is a massive upgrade over the original M1’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider results of 32 FPS at 1920 x 1080 on the low graphical preset (according to LinusTechTips (opens in new tab)). It also outperforms the Ryzen 7 6800U, which has the Radeon 680M, constituting 12 RDNA 2 CUs and a maximum boost frequency of 2.2 GHz on the 6800U model.
The M2’s gaming results are overall even more impressive considering it is not designed for gaming and is targeted toward content creation and productivity apps. Unfortunately, macOS is also not intended for gaming, so there is a chance a lot of performance is being left on the table due to unoptimized code within the graphics API.
The M2 also sips far less power than almost every single mobile APU on the market today, including AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) mobile APUs, which were heavily advertised as ultra-efficient CPUs for notebooks.
But, 30 FPS isn’t exactly ideal and most PC games on the market today are not compatible with macOS, which makes the M2 a terrible choice for PC gaming anyways. It’s fantastic that Apple’s M2 chip can game by integrated graphics standards, but you’d be far better served with a Ryzen 7 6800U equipped notebook if you actually want to play games. Or you could always use a cloud gaming service like GeForce Now if you really want to game on a Macbook.
