Apple's M4 Max is the single-core performance king in Geekbench 6 — M4 Max beats the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X | Tom's Hardware

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Benchmarks of Apple's newly launched M4 Max have started to surface at Geekbench. Unsurprisingly, Apple has retained its performance crown and has taken over at the helm of Geekbench as the fastest chip. Even the multi-core performance puts Intel's and AMD's latest offerings to shame, that too at a fraction of the power.

The test bench features the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, which hosts the M4 Max in all its glory. Apple's latest and updated design allows the M4 Max to blaze through the benchmark—scoring 4,060 points in the single-core test and 26,675 points in the multi-core test. The M3 Max results were taken from the Geekbench 6 database, while the remaining results are from our reviews of the processors.

The M4 Max has secured the single-core crown in Geekbench 6. The chip was roughly 30% faster than last year's M3 Max in single-core performance and 27% in multi-core performance.

On the x86 end, AMD and Intel pale in contrast. The M4 Max handily keeps up even in multi-core at a fraction of the power—beating Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K by around 19% in the single-core category and 16% in the multi-core category. Compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X, the M4 Max showed 18% higher single-core performance and 25% higher multi-core performance.

The M4 Max is Apple's flagship SoC targeted at data scientists, 3D artists, and professionals. The top-end configuration packs 16 CPU cores (twelve performance and four efficient) and 40 GPU cores alongside up to 128GB of unified memory - accessible by both the CPU and GPU. Apple has also kitted its new MacBook Pro lineup with support for Thunderbolt 5, delivering speeds of up to 120 Gb/s.

Apple's new M4 lineup is a solid response to the latest AI PC wave from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. While the performance outlook is excellent, pricing remains a concern since Apple has always charged a premium for its products. The full-fat M4 Max configuration in question will set you back $3,999. Content creators and productivity-centric users might eye laptops with dedicated graphics solutions at that price point.

Geekbench isn't the best benchmark for comparing chips. Therefore, it'll be interesting to see how the M4 Max performs in something like Cinebench or HandBrake to see whether Apple's latest chip still beats the competition. The M4 Max-powered MacBook Pro 2024 deliveries are set to begin on November 8, so we'll soon see what the M4 Max can do.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

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