Alleged Apple A18 Pro Geekbench scores highlight up to a 28% performance boost over the A17 Pro

So far, the overwhelming consensus in the rumour mill is that the iPhone 16 Pro's Apple A18 Pro (tentative) gets bested by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and even the MediaTek Dimensity 9400. The supposed benchmark scores of Qualcomm's flagship indicate it scores 3,500 points in Geekbench 6's single-core test and about 10,000 in multi-core. A Weibo leaker has now shed light on how the Apple A18 Pro fares in comparison.

The first Weibo post (now deleted) suggests the SoC scores 3,570 and 9,310 in Geekbench 6, making it about 22% faster than the A17 Pro in single-core performance and 28% in multi-core. Similarly, in Geekbench 6, the A18 Pro scores 2,571 (20% faster than the A17 Pro) and 7,359 (38% faster). However, these scores seem a bit too high for two chips launched within a year of each other, especially considering the A18 Pro uses TSMC's N3E node, which many consider a downgrade over the A17 Pro's N3B.

The next Weibo post paints a more realistic picture, with the A18 Pro scoring 2,822 and 8,571 in Geekbench 6 and 2,517 and 7,359 in Geekbench 5. These are more or less identical to that of the Apple A17 Pro. The leaker adds that this data does not reflect how the chip will perform in its final state. Apple, like every other OEM, is playing around with parameters to check how high (or low) it can push the A18 Pro. Additionally, the OP adds that the first set of scores was recorded at the beginning of this month (March 2024), while the latter was a more recent result.

Lastly, the leaker also sheds light on the A18 Pro's GPU performance. GFXBench's Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen benchmark (1440p), can maintain 83 FPS, making it about 38% faster than the A17 Pro (60.5 FPS). This seems plausible because generation-over-generation gains for Apple GPUs are always double-digit. Whether or not it has the chops to take on the Exynos 2500's RDNA 3-based Xclipse and Qualcomm's Adreno 940 GPU remains to be seen.

As always, the above A18 Pro scores are speculation and should be treated as such until more data emerges. The real value will certainly be somewhere in between the two. The competition is stiff this time around, with the new Nuvia-powered Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, the Cortex-X5-powered MediaTek Dimensity 9400 and the Samsung 3GAP-made Exynos 2500 all competing for the position of best smartphone SoC.

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