Thread

Apple M6 Pro achieves the highest single-core CPU score in Geekbench 7

118 points · 145 comments · gainsurier

GeekyBear · 1789810607 · focus · HN ↗
There are also leaks for the M5 Ultra & Base M6.
M5 Ultra CPU:
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac17%2C15" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac17%...
M5 Ultra GPU:
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac17%2C15" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac17%2C1...
Base M6 CPU:
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac18%2C5" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac18%...
Base M6 GPU:
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac18%2C5" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac18%2C5
The Base M6 CPU single core is averaging a bit over 4000 on Geekbench 7.
For comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 averages 3161 on the same test.
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d2" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d...
The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus averages 2940 on the same test.
<a href="https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-ultra-7-270k-plus" rel="nofollow">https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-ultra-7-...
1. revolvingthrow · 1789816318 · focus · HN ↗
  I don’t understand those benchmarks.
  According to geekbench 7800x3d is 2400 single core, 15500 multicore. M4 pro is 3350 single core and 24750 multicore. Yet when I convert video using libsvtav1 with ffmpeg I’m getting noticeably faster performance on the desktop. And that’s with mbp, which doesn’t thermally throttle within 15 seconds.
  Is it the 96mb cache? Avx-512? Are benchmarks bullshit when comparing different architectures?
  1. GeekyBear · 1789817690 · focus · HN ↗
    Remember all those years when people claimed Apple chips were "cheating" on benchmarks because they had crypto instructions that x86 lacked?
    Apple chips don't have AVX-512.
    They do have media engines (that don't support AV1 encode), so if you switch to H.265, it will pull way ahead.
    ajross · 1789819858 · focus · HN ↗
    > Apple chips don't have AVX-512.
    Zen 4 isn't 512 bits wide though, it's a split cycle 256 bit wide SIMD engine otherwise very similar (except in register size) to M6's.
    The answer is more that Geekbench is at this point[1] heavily tuned to exactly the code Apple silicon does well: implicitly parallel wide-issue scalar code that you typically get out of modern compilers and JIT engines when throwing mostly-unoptimized "regular source code" at them. Apple has an enormous amount of instruction issue parallelism compared with x86.
    The grandparent is looking at transcoding tasks where the limit isn't instruction issue but actual compute hardware on the core. And Apple doesn't actually win by much there.
    It's just hard to know what to measure. Geekbench tends to be a metric for "feels fast doing boring interactive user stuff", which probably matches Apple's marketing imperatives well.
    [1] Really they keep moving harder in that direction with every release. The "cooling pauses" in v6 likewise seemed very much like an attempt to boost the score on fanless Apple devices. If one were the type to allege a dark conspiracy, this is a tempting spot.
    thejazzman · 1789829738 · focus · HN ↗
    I would expect cooling pauses to have the opposite effect. The
    MacBook Air/neo are the only ones without fans. Even the Studio Display has a fan
    ajross · 1789840535 · focus · HN ↗
    The cooling pause thing was just a dig at Geekbench, not specific to this discussion (thus putting it in a footnote). They tuned (the last version of their) benchmark specifically to give better numbers on hardware that tends to throttle under performance load.
    Now... you can make a reasonable case that this matches real world interactive load better. But it also happens to have the practical effect of making Apple's numbers better, and no one else's. The new benchmarks are measuring subtly different things, and the new thing they measure happens to be what Apple wants to sell. At best, that's backwards.

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