Updated | Apple M4: New Geekbench listing highlights 25% single-core performance improvement over Apple M3

Update 2024/05/08 11:28 CET: An earlier version of this article incorrectly compared the M4's Geekbench 6.3 Metal score with Geekbench 5 scores of the Apple M3 and M3 Pro. It has now been corrected to Geekbench 6.0 across all tests.

Edited article:

The Apple M4 showed up on Geekbench yesterday for the first time. That particular listing shed some light on its performance gains, but the picture was nowhere near complete. A set of new results have emerged online, giving us a better idea about what the new Apple chip has in store for us, and it is nothing short of mind-blowing.

The Apple M4 scores 3,767 and 14,677 points in Geekbench 6.2's single and multi-core benchmark. Its second run is even more impressive with scores of 3,810 and 14,541. That is a 25% performance bump in single-core performance over the last-gen Apple M3. The Apple M4's multi-core performance is more or less on par with the last-gen 11-core M3 Pro.

Furthermore, the Apple M4's performance core can boost up to 4.4 GHz, the highest so far on an Arm-based SoC. In essence, it leaves the Snapdragon X Elite in the dust. The x86-based competition from Intel and AMD seem to be no better off, at least on the single-core front.

On the GPU side, the Apple M4 scores 53,792 in Geekbench's Metal benchmark. Its predecessor, the Apple M3, scores around 43,789 points. That represents a 22% increase in performance. While this is a massive win for Apple, many argue that such computing power is wasted on a platform like iPadOS. Then again, new MacBooks powered by the M4 should land soon, allowing users to take full advantage of the chip's firepower.