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I Compared Apple’s M6, M5 Pro and M5 Max Specs So You Don’t Have To
Apple’s first 2nm chip is also its smallest new Mac chip in the lineup. Here is how the M6, M5 Pro and M5 Max compare, and who should buy which.
For years, Apple silicon followed a simple rule. A new generation arrived, and it beat the old one at every tier. The M6 breaks that rule.
The M6 is the first chip Apple makes on a 2-nanometer process, and it is newer than every other chip in the lineup. It is also smaller than the M5 Pro and M5 Max in the ways that matter most to professionals. If you’re deciding between them, the generation number is the least useful thing to look at.
What Apple actually launched
The M6 has a 12-core CPU (two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores), a 12-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in every core, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple says it supports up to 32GB of unified memory at up to 170GB/s of bandwidth.
Apple debuted it in the new Mac mini, alongside the M5 Ultra in the Mac Studio. As of this writing, that Mac mini is the only place you can get an M6.
