M4 benchmarks -- wow!

Apple silicon is advancing at an astonishing pace.

Author

Leander Kahney
November 01, 2024

Remember the old megahertz wars, when Intel trounced its rivals with the ever-increasing clock speeds of its chips?

Well, those days are long gone: Intel’s now the laggard, and Apple is the new king of chips.

Take the latest Geekbench 6 benchmarks, which show Apple’s new M4 Pro and M4 Max are the fastest-ever Apple silicon chips.

The new M4 Max chip, for example, is the first to break the 4,000 single-core score. That means the M4 Max is faster than Apple’s previously high-end — and super-expensive — M2 Ultra chip. (The M2 Ultra powers the current Mac Pro and some Mac Studio models.)

A new Mac mini with a 14-core M4 Pro chip (which costs $1,599) will run rings around a Mac Studio with the highest-end M2 Ultra chip ($3,999).

And that’s just the 14-core M4 Max. The 16-core M4 Max chip will be even speedier!

Check it out: The benchmark numbers look pretty incredible.

I’m using a couple of entry-level M1 Macs (iMac and Mac Studio), which are still plenty snappy and powerful. Just imagine the power of the M4!

Also in today’s newsletter:

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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One more thing ...

❝

Somebody once told me, “Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.” What's the top line? It's things like, “Why are we doing this in the first place? What's our strategy? What are customers saying? How responsive are we? Do we have the best products and the best people?” Those are the kind of questions you have to focus on.

— Steve Jobs, 1989.

Today’s poll

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