Apple M4 Max makes Geekbench debut with 31% performance uplift over M3 Max
Earlier today, we saw the Apple M4 Pro in action alongside a high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro. On the CPU side, it easily trounced last year's Apple M3 Pro and even Apple M3 Max. Now, we get to see Apple's most powerful laptop CPU, the Apple M4 Max, in action.
In Geekbench 6.2, it scores 4,060 and 26,675 points in the single and multi-core tests, respectively. This is the maxed-out M4 Max version with a 16-core CPU (4.5 GHz boost). The 16-inch MacBook Pro it was tested with features 128 GB of RAM, the most supported by Apple this generation.
Compared to the Apple M3 Max (3,096/21,243) the M4 Max is 31% faster in single-core and 25% faster in multi-core. That is a phenomenal performance increase that one can attribute largely to a newer architecture and likely a higher power budget.
On the GPU side, the Apple M4 Max scores 192,532 points in Geekbench's Metal benchmark, making it 24% faster than the Apple M3 Max (155,214). While the benchmark doesn't explicitly specify the GPU has 40 cores, the rest of its specs (16-core CPU, 128 GB RAM) strongly hint at it.
The Apple M4 Max is shaping up to be one of the most powerful laptop CPUs launched this generation. Nothing from Intel/AMD/Qualcomm comes close, but that might change next year once AMD's Strix Halo CPUs are out and about.
If Apple decides to stack two M4 Max side-by-side and launch an M4 Ultra, it would be truly over for the competition. However, the M3 Ultra never came to be and so far, the rumour mill has been largely silent about such a chip existing.
