Apple toys with the competition - MacBook Neo offers more single-core performance than any mobile processor from AMD, Intel or Qualcomm

When Apple announced its new budget MacBook Neo, there were some questions about the performance of the smartphone processor. After our initial benchmarks, we can clearly say that Apple pretty much just toys around with the competition from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm because the single-core performance of the MacBook Neo is better than any other mobile processor (except for Apple's M4 and M5 chips). And we are talking about a processor from 2024.

We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario.