The M4 MacBook Pros launched this week with plenty to talk about. Performance, however, wasn’t the focus of all the attention. Apple didn’t provide many direct comparisons of how much more powerful the M4 MacBook Pro is over the previous generation of chips.
But now some leaked benchmarks for the M4 series have been put online, and they reveal just how significant of an uplift the M4 Max and M4 Pro bring. Over on X (formerly Twitter) user James Atkinson discovered some results from a Geekbench 6 benchmark for the M4 Max chip, which revealed 4,060 single-core and 26,675 multi-core scores.
These are some pretty remarkable scores, exceeding any other PCs or laptops out in the market. Industry informant @LeakerApple noted that the M4 Max GPU proved to be 90% as powerful as that in the M2 Ultra chip that powered the Mac Studio desktop in 2023.
Apple’s M4 Max is the first production CPU to pass 4000 Single-Core score in Geekbench 6.
The M4 Max is faster than the M2 Ultra in almost every way (90% as powerful as M2 Ultra in GPU). Simply incredible. pic.twitter.com/l5sntwmRWG— AppleLeaker (@LeakerApple) November 1, 2024
It should be stated that these aren’t official scores, and it’s possible for Geekbench results to be faked. However, if they turn out to be true, they show Apple taking back the lead from its competitors in a big way.
The single-core score, in particular, is higher than anything we’ve ever seen in our own testing database. For reference, all the new Intel and Qualcomm laptop chips we’ve tested land well under 3,000 in Geekbench 6, nowhere near this new M4 Max score. On the other hand, the M3 Max tested in a 14-inch MacBook Pro hit a single-core score of 3,174. Apple claimed in its press release that it had the fastest core on the market, and this would certainly confirm that ambitious claim.
The M4 Max will power Apple’s highest-end MacBook Pro, which features 12 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, and 40 GPU cores at maximum specs. Its 128GB of unified memory and peak of 546GB/s memory bandwidth is four times faster than its prior iteration, according to Apple.
After the M4 Max, Geekbench 6 benchmarks determined the M4 chip in the MacBook Pro was the next most powerful, followed by the M4 Pro in the Mac mini. Comparing the prior model chip series, the M3 Pro in the MacBook Pro came in next, followed by the M3 Max in the MacBook Pro.
We’ll have to wait and see what third-party testing says, however. The M4 MacBook Pro launches on November 8, so we should see reviews and third-party testing being published around then.