Upper panel: azimuthal variations of the synchrotron cutoff energy. The black crosses show the best fit values obtained in Paper I by analyzing the X-ray spectra extracted from regions A − L of Fig. 2, left panel (error bars indicate the 90% confidence levels). The green/red curves show the values derived from our MHD models RUN2_G and RUN2_UN, respectively, by considering the 15 regions shown in the central and right panel of Fig. 2. The dashed crosses indicate the values in the bulge region. Lower panel: same as upper panel for model RUN1_G (blue curve).