Early insight suggests that the A14X Bionic will be a powerhouse, but comparing it to the Intel Core i9-9880H is wide of the mark

Undoubtedly, the A14X Bionic will be a powerhouse. Huawei, Qualcomm and Samsung have been unable to get close to the performance that the A12Z Bionic offers, for example, despite it being based on the almost two-year-old A12X Bionic. The A12Z Bionic outperforms the Snapdragon 865 by 27% according to our database, while even the A12X Bionic has an impressive 21% lead over Qualcomm's 7 nm chipset. We cannot compare Apple's recent chipsets with the Snapdragon 865 Plus because we are yet to test a device that possesses Qualcomm's latest chipset.

Now, Luke Miani has offered some projected performance metrics for the A14X Bionic, and they point towards a huge improvement over Apple's current high-performance chipsets. The table below is based on data extrapolated from leaked and rumoured A14 Bionic information, along with average performance gains from previous X Bionic chipsets. Miani predicts that the A14X Bionic could score around 7,480 points in Geekbench 5, which would be a huge leap over the A12X and A12Z Bionic. The regular A14 Bionic will apparently get close to the A12X Bionic too, which would represent a sizeable increase in performance over the A12 Bionic found in the iPhone 11 series.

Miani adds that a score of 7,480 in Geekbench 5 would put the A14X Bionic "nearly on par" with a Core i9-9880H. In fact, a score that high would exceed even the likes of the Core i9-9980HK, at least based on our tests anyway. To clarify, Miani merely compares the raw scores of the A14X Bionic and Core i9-9880H. Nonetheless, some outlets have run with the notion that Apple's next-generation SoC is "nearly on par" with the Core i9-9880H. As we explained in January, similar Geekbench scores does not make an ARM-based SoC comparable against a 45 W Intel processor. The architectural differences alone between ARM and x86 chipsets make comparisons like these somewhat meaningless.