We’ve already reported how Apple’s new MacBook Neo is putting the frighteners on PC laptop makers. Now comes news that early benchmarks show the chip beating every single x86 CPU currently available when it comes to single-core performance in Cinebench 2024. Yep, that includes desktop monsters like AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X and Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285HX.
Notebookcheck ran the new budget laptop, which goes for $599 full retail or $499 with an education discount, through its paces. With a score of 147 points in the Cinebench 2024 rendering test, it beats every x86 out there and is only bested by other Apple CPUs.
For the record, Notebookcheck puts the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X at 139 points and the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX on 135 points. Incredible for a phone chip? Yup. But arguably not surprising.
That’s because the A18 Pro iPhone chip used in the MacBook Neo is closely related to the Apple M4 used in various Mac computers. In short, it has the same Performance and Efficiency cores as the M4, just fewer of them with a lower power budget and clock speeds.
Where the basic M4 has four P and six E cores, the A18 Pro has just two P cores and four E cores. But, again, they’re the same cores. So, that iPhone chip has the same single-thread IPC or instructions-per-clock capability as any M4 chip.
Officially, the A18 Pro’s P cores max out at 4.04 GHz, while the basic M4 can hit 4.46 GHz on its P cores, the Pro and Max Variants very slightly more. For what it’s worth, the newer M5 chip is another animal again, and hits 200 points in Notebookcheck’s Cinebench 2024 testing.
While one could dismiss this as just one benchmark, given that the A18 Pro chip is a known quantity and understanding how it relates to Apple’s M silicon, the result is highly plausible. Apple makes extremely powerful CPU cores, that’s for sure, even if, for pure performance, the one application type where you might still lean towards a high-clocked x86 CPU with a dollop of extra cache, AMD X3D-style, is gaming.
In many ways, perhaps more remarkable than the fact that Apple’s newest and cheapest-ever laptop is so competitive with x86 CPUs for single-core performance is the knowledge that you get the same grunt in an iPhone. OK, the thermal realities of an iPhone mean that it won’t sustain that performance for very long.
But still, the A18 Pro isn’t even Apple’s newest iPhone chip. The A19 Pro on the latest iPhone 17 Pro is even faster. Bananas, really.
