Apple's A18 delivers solid performance gains, challenges Ryzen 9 9950X in single-core Geekbench

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Imagine what Apple's A18 Pro could do.

Apple A18
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple's latest A18 (non-Pro) application processor for smartphones not only challenges AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X and Apple's M4 in single-thread workloads in Geekbench 6, but it seemingly beats all previous-generation flagship CPUs for desktops and laptops. But when it comes to multi-thread, the limited amount of cores certainly makes an impact on performance. 

Apple's vanilla A18 processor packs two high-performance cores operating at up to 4.0 GHz (the first time the company's smartphone processor hits such a high frequency) and four low-power cores. The new A18 system-on-chip (SoC) scores 3409 points in a Geekbench 6 single-thread benchmark and 8492 points in Geekbench 6 multi-thread benchmarks, both are very good results. In fact, they are 15.5% higher for single-thread performance and 16.6% higher for multi-thread performance when compared to its direct predecessor, the A16 Pro. The new chip is also tangibly faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, at least on this one test.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 A18A17 ProA16 BionicSnapdragon 8 Gen 3
General specifications2P+4E, up to 4.0 GHz2P+4E, up to 3.77 GHz2P+4E, up to 3.46 GHz5P+3E, up to 3.01 GHz
Single-Core3409295026411959
Multi-Core8492727969894989
Sourcehttps://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7714134https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7710531Row 4 - Cell 3 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7139153

When compared to PC-grade processors, A18 looks pretty good too. It beats Apple's M3, AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X, and Intel's Core i9-14900KS processors in the single-thread Geekbench 6 benchmark. It also challenges AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, but falls behind Apple's own M4 (which has 400 MHz higher clocks) both CPUs have considerably higher power budgets. As you might expect, then it comes to multi-thread performance, A18 with its six cores falls significantly behind PC-grade processors. Hence, the intrigue is whether the eight-core A18 Pro can challenge Apple's M3.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 A18M3M4Ryzen 9 9950XCore i9-14900KS
General specifications2P+4E, up to 4.0 GHz4P+4E, up to 4.05 GHz4P+6E, up to 4.40 GHz16P/32T, 4.30 GHz - 5.75 GHz8P+16E/32T, 3.20 GHz - 6.0 GHz
Single-Core34093076369734823362
Multi-Core849211863137782358423445
Sourcehttps://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7714134https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3343681https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7708799https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7707083https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7709430

Keeping in mind that the A18's frequency increase, when compared to its predecessor is 6%, the majority of single-thread and multi-thread performance improvements should be attributed to microarchitectural enhancements.  

While the performance increases look modest, this isn't particularly surprising as Apple's A18 is made on TSMC's N3E (3nm-class) process technology that was architected to reduce costs compared to N3B (3nm-class), at the cost of transistor density rather than to tangibly increase performance or lower power consumption (even though N3E enables a bit higher clocks and reduces power compared to N3B). In other words, Apple had a limited transistor budget to add here. 

One thing to keep in mind about Geekbench 6 results is that we are dealing with a synthetic benchmark, and the real-world performance of Apple's A18 and A18 Pro will be different. Nonetheless, Geekbench 6 results seemingly demonstrate that Apple's own performance estimates are accurate (who said they are not based on Geekbench 6 though?) and that the company's new processors can offer about 15% performance improvements over the A17 Pro in best-case scenarios. 

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Cooe
    🤦... For the love of freaking god, can we PLEEEEEASE stop pretending that Geekbench is an even REMOTELY accurate representation of modern AMD CPU performance??? That hasn't been the case for basically the entire time the Zen macroarchitecture has existed, but got DRAMATICALLY WORSE after Zen 2! 🤷

    (Let ALONE when trying to compare CPU's across different ISA's like x86 to ARM! Which is risky, questionable business even WITH properly optimized/scoring CPU architectures like something from the modern branches of the Intel Core macroarchitecture or ARM's modern core designs.)

    Just look at Threadripper multi-core performance scaling in Geekbench vs literally any actual real-world heavily multi-threaded CPU workload! It's absolute freaking NONSENSE GARBAGE!!!

    In closely related news, CPU-Z is another popular synthetic benchmark that's become essentially WORTHLESS for modern AMD CPU's, but at least in that case it didn't start until 2022's Zen 4.

    (That said, it's still totally INEXCUSABLE that it remains utterly broken/unoptimized on Zen 4/5 to this very day! And even more so that Geekbench remains borked for practically every single Zen core ever! )
    Reply
  • Pierce2623
    Cooe said:
    🤦... For the love of freaking god, can we PLEEEEEASE stop pretending that Geekbench is an even REMOTELY accurate representation of modern AMD CPU performance??? That hasn't been the case for basically the entire time the Zen macroarchitecture has existed, but got DRAMATICALLY WORSE after Zen 2! 🤷

    (Let ALONE when trying to compare CPU's across different ISA's like x86 to ARM! Which is risky, questionable business even WITH properly optimized/scoring CPU architectures like something from the modern branches of the Intel Core macroarchitecture or ARM's modern core designs.)

    Just look at Threadripper multi-core performance scaling in Geekbench vs literally any actual real-world heavily multi-threaded CPU workload! It's absolute freaking NONSENSE GARBAGE!!!

    In closely related news, CPU-Z is another popular synthetic benchmark that's become essentially WORTHLESS for modern AMD CPU's, but at least in that case it didn't start until 2022's Zen 4.

    (That said, it's still totally INEXCUSABLE that it remains utterly broken/unoptimized on Zen 4/5 to this very day! And even more so that Geekbench remains borked for practically every single Zen core ever! )
    I’m a fan of AMD but I’m also a fan of transparency. AMD vs Intel in single threaded Geekbench is actually a fairly good representation of how they perform against each other in an average real work load. Of course it doesn’t scale well with Threadrippers, it’s a consumer biased benchmark for chips up to about 32 threads. Creating a synthetic workload that properly illustrates single threaded performance while scaling well to an infinite number of cores is basically impossible. Regardless you can’t show me that AMD does significantly worse in Geekbench vs Intel than they do in Cinebench vs Intel. That being said, Arrow Lake isn’t shaping up any better than Zen 5.
    Reply
  • parkerthon
    Cooe said:
    🤦... For the love of freaking god, can we PLEEEEEASE stop pretending that Geekbench is an even REMOTELY accurate representation of modern AMD CPU performance??? That hasn't been the case for basically the entire time the Zen macroarchitecture has existed, but got DRAMATICALLY WORSE after Zen 2! 🤷

    (Let ALONE when trying to compare CPU's across different ISA's like x86 to ARM! Which is risky, questionable business even WITH properly optimized/scoring CPU architectures like something from the modern branches of the Intel Core macroarchitecture or ARM's modern core designs.)

    Just look at Threadripper multi-core performance scaling in Geekbench vs literally any actual real-world heavily multi-threaded CPU workload! It's absolute freaking NONSENSE GARBAGE!!!

    In closely related news, CPU-Z is another popular synthetic benchmark that's become essentially WORTHLESS for modern AMD CPU's, but at least in that case it didn't start until 2022's Zen 4.

    (That said, it's still totally INEXCUSABLE that it remains utterly broken/unoptimized on Zen 4/5 to this very day! And even more so that Geekbench remains borked for practically every single Zen core ever! )
    You never said what is a good test to compare the cpus that you mention have an unfair shake vs apple chips. Or are you saying it’s not possible?
    Reply
  • rjranay
    at the end of the day it still boils down which architecture is supported by your day to day applications
    Reply
  • CelicaGT
    All that performance on the table, utilized by most to doomscroll through TikTok...
    Reply
  • TheHerald
    Cooe said:
    🤦... For the love of freaking god, can we PLEEEEEASE stop pretending that Geekbench is an even REMOTELY accurate representation of modern AMD CPU performance??? That hasn't been the case for basically the entire time the Zen macroarchitecture has existed, but got DRAMATICALLY WORSE after Zen 2! 🤷

    (Let ALONE when trying to compare CPU's across different ISA's like x86 to ARM! Which is risky, questionable business even WITH properly optimized/scoring CPU architectures like something from the modern branches of the Intel Core macroarchitecture or ARM's modern core designs.)

    Just look at Threadripper multi-core performance scaling in Geekbench vs literally any actual real-world heavily multi-threaded CPU workload! It's absolute freaking NONSENSE GARBAGE!!!

    In closely related news, CPU-Z is another popular synthetic benchmark that's become essentially WORTHLESS for modern AMD CPU's, but at least in that case it didn't start until 2022's Zen 4.

    (That said, it's still totally INEXCUSABLE that it remains utterly broken/unoptimized on Zen 4/5 to this very day! And even more so that Geekbench remains borked for practically every single Zen core ever! )
    The single thread portion of Geekbench is actually fairly decent. In other words, nah, you are wrong.
    Reply
  • dada_dave
    "Hence, the intrigue is whether the eight-core A18 Pro can challenge Apple's M3."

    The A18 Pro CPU is still 6 cores, it just has access to a larger cache (presumably SLC rather than L1/L2). The A18 Pro might be ever so slightly faster because of that extra cache in certain workloads and I think there's a difference in thermal designs of the chassis the chips are put in which may affect tests with greater emphasis on endurance than GB, but otherwise the A18 and A18 Pro should be pretty similar for CPU speed - which is what we see in the current pre-release benchmarks:

    https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/11/iphone-16-pro-geekbench/
    Reply
  • parkerthon
    CelicaGT said:
    All that performance on the table, utilized by most to doomscroll through TikTok...
    Not wrong since most people are oblivious that the more you watch some topic, the more you are suggested to consume more… but I laugh my ass off on TikTok when I choose to dive into it(no alerts, ever). The ones after the debate were fantastic.
    Reply
  • federal
    Cooe said:
    🤦... For the love of freaking god, can we PLEEEEEASE stop pretending that Geekbench is an even REMOTELY accurate representation of modern AMD CPU performance??? That hasn't been the case for basically the entire time the Zen macroarchitecture has existed, but got DRAMATICALLY WORSE after Zen 2! 🤷

    (Let ALONE when trying to compare CPU's across different ISA's like x86 to ARM! Which is risky, questionable business even WITH properly optimized/scoring CPU architectures like something from the modern branches of the Intel Core macroarchitecture or ARM's modern core designs.)

    Just look at Threadripper multi-core performance scaling in Geekbench vs literally any actual real-world heavily multi-threaded CPU workload! It's absolute freaking NONSENSE GARBAGE!!!

    In closely related news, CPU-Z is another popular synthetic benchmark that's become essentially WORTHLESS for modern AMD CPU's, but at least in that case it didn't start until 2022's Zen 4.

    (That said, it's still totally INEXCUSABLE that it remains utterly broken/unoptimized on Zen 4/5 to this very day! And even more so that Geekbench remains borked for practically every single Zen core ever! )
    Geekbench was originally developed for Apple products (but back when they used Intel CPUs). and its core code is still primarily developed on and for Apple products and their instruction sets, both hardware and OS calls. It's ported to other products but not as optimized or tuned for those I/O calls and chip instruction sets, so the results for Qualcomm, AMD, or Intel chips will be somewhat random - sometimes over, more often under performing versus most anecdotal user experiences.
    It's not intentionally trying to favor anything, but you have to develop and initially test on something, and that something is going to be the most consistent (and usually best performing) in terms of benchmark comparability across CPU families. It seems it's still mostly Macs, for Geekbench (but they're closed source at this point, making it hard to say for sure).
    All benchmarks are tuned by weighting a mix of instructions and data to arrive at a score. That weighting has to be tuned on something. For an example of how much weighting affects scores, watch frame rates change on a game as it's played. Same app, same hardware, same everything except for the particular mix of calls being made at any given time. Different OS's and hardware do better or worse depending on the instruction and where and how much data is being loaded/stored. You have to tune for something...
    Reply
  • dada_dave
    federal said:
    Geekbench was originally developed for Apple products (but back when they used Intel CPUs). and its core code is still primarily developed on and for Apple products and their instruction sets, both hardware and OS calls. It's ported to other products but not as optimized or tuned for those I/O calls and chip instruction sets, so the results for Qualcomm, AMD, or Intel chips will be somewhat random - sometimes over, more often under performing versus most anecdotal user experiences.
    It's not intentionally trying to favor anything, but you have to develop and initially test on something, and that something is going to be the most consistent (and usually best performing) in terms of benchmark comparability across CPU families. It seems it's still mostly Macs, for Geekbench (but they're closed source at this point, making it hard to say for sure).
    That's not really accurate. Jon Poole was inspired to write benchmarking software because of the lack of good cross platforming benchmarking software back in the G4/G5 days and he wanted to compare how his Macs were actually running, but Geekbench itself has always been cross platform from the beginning with an emphasis on cross platform. A good history of it here:

    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/geekbenchs-creator-on-version-6-and-why-benchmarks-matter-in-the-real-world/
    Every test has strengths and weaknesses and GB is no exception but it correlates well with SPEC and other such multi-test CPU benchmark suites. Different versions have had different optimization issues and outright bugs, including some over the years for the Mac, but in general Linux (added in GB 2) has actually tended to be the fastest OS when normalized on the same hardware - which again is mirrored by results from other cross platform benchmarks.

    As for the first response here about AMD CPUs, I'm not certain but I'm assuming he's upset by the changes to MT benchmarking in GB 6 which does indeed tend to limit the effectiveness of high core count systems like threadripper on many of its subtests. This is covered in the article but GB 6 is probably more accurate as a result for the target audience as many real world applications run by everyday users are not in fact embarrassingly parallel. GB 6 still has some embarrassingly parallel workloads, it didn't get rid of them entirely, but it is trying to reflect what the average user rather than a workstation user will experience. Thus it isn't that AMD CPUs in particular are being treated unfairly but rather all high core/thread count systems will see diminishing returns in MT GB 6 compared to 5. Again, this was a deliberate choice to focus on certain kinds of workloads and user audience. Poole felt that GB 5 in particular was being misused to over sell the average computer user on systems that they didn't need, couldn't take advantage of, or even worse, were potentially slower than other, cheaper systems on the tasks users actually were doing daily.
    Reply