[ad_1]
Apple’s A- and M-series chips have always shared a lot of technology, but the MacBook Neo is the first time Apple has shipped a Mac that is literally using an iPhone processor in it. The Apple A18 Pro, originally shipped in the iPhone 16 Pro in late 2024, includes two high-performance CPU cores, four high-efficiency CPU cores, and five GPU cores (the chip can have a maximum of six, but one is disabled in the Neo’s iteration).
Though we’re also comparing it to the M5 MacBook Air and a few other laptops, we’ve focused on comparing the MacBook Neo to the old M1 MacBook Air, the closest thing the Neo has to a true predecessor. Our version is the high-end configuration with four high-performance CPU cores, four high-efficiency CPU cores, eight GPU cores, and 16GB of unified memory. Based on iPhone 16 Pro benchmarks, conventional wisdom held that the A18 Pro would mostly outperform or match the old M1, thanks to its newer CPU and GPU architectures.
And in the Geekbench 6 benchmark, that’s true. Newer, faster performance cores allow the Neo to trounce the old M1 in Geekbench’s single-core performance tests, running around 42 percent faster than the M1. In the multi-core test, the M1 and the A18 Pro are roughly tied, with the M1 edging out the A18 Pro by just a couple percentage points. The Geekbench Compute test, which runs a few non-gaming GPU-accelerated workloads, also shows the M1 beating the A18 Pro by around 10 percent. Not nothing, but close to a wash, right?
I like Geekbench. I think it does a good job of measuring what normal everyday computer performance feels like—mostly people need small bursts of fast performance, like when they open a file or launch an app or load a new browser tab, and then a bunch of low-power CPU cores that can juggle background tasks without killing the battery. Geekbench is good at measuring that. On balance, it’s fine that this is The One Benchmark Everyone Runs On Everything.
[ad_2]
Source link