Apple A18 GPU vs Apple A18 Pro GPU

Apple A18 GPU

The Apple A18 GPU is an integrated graphics card in the Apple A18 SoC from the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus models in 2024. The A18 GPU integrates five cores, hardware ray tracing and mesh support. Apple states that the A18 GPU is up to 40% faster than the A16 GPU in the iPhone 15. In our benchmarks, the graphics unit is positioned between the old A16 GPU and the A17 Pro GPU with 6 cores.

Compared to the A18 Pro, the A18 does not offer the improved display engines and video processors.

In our measurements, the power consumption under load is just above the older generations but below the A18 Pro GPU.

Apple A18 Pro GPU

The Apple A18 Pro GPU is a relatively fast graphics adapter that the A18 Pro SoC comes equipped with. This iGPU has 6 cores and is RT-enabled; it may be based on the same architecture as M4-series GPUs are while running at lower clock speeds and having fewer cores to work with.

The slower A18 GPU does not just have 1 core less; it also has to be content with older display engine and video encoder/decoder.

Performance

In our October 2024 testing, it managed to beat the 7-core M1 GPU in many tests. Overall, its benchmark scores are most comparable to those of the Immortalis-G720 MP12, Adreno 740 and Adreno 750.

Any 2024 and 2025 iOS game will run great given the power on offer. We can't help but note however that synthetic benchmarks usually stress the GPU for just a few minutes at a time; sustained performance in real-world tasks will be much lower than what benchmark results suggest, since iPhones come without active cooling of any kind.

Power consumption

The A18 Pro SoC appears to consume up to about 10 W when under high load, with average sustained power consumption figures hovering around 4 W. The GPU's share in these values is probably something close to a half, give or take.

The pretty modern TSMC N3E manufacturing process makes the A18 Pro GPU very power-efficient, as of late 2024.