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Apple M4 benchmarks suggest it’s the king of single-core performance

Apple’s M4 CPU is beating out Intel i9-14900K chips in benchmarks.

Apple recently announced its M4 chip, and now, benchmarks of the new chip are starting to pop up on the Geekbench benchmark site. Impressively, the M4 is beating Intel’s premium i9-14900K in single-core performance.

M4 scores are cresting 3800 points, while i9-14900K scores hover around 3600 points when it comes to single-core performance. Perhaps the most impressive thing about all this is the power consumption at hand. Traditionally, the more power a chip draws, cooling requirements go up and so does performance.

With Apple’s M4 chip, though, Apple claims “compared with the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a fourth of the power.” Intel’s i9-14900K, on the other hand, is a power-hungry chip that can draw up to a maximum of 253W at its max boost clocks. 

iPads, where you’ll see the first M4 chips popping up, require far less power, thanks to how thin and light they are and their inability to rely on any sort of powerful cooling system. So, the M4 scores are all the more impressive considering how far Apple’s been able to push mobile kit.

Not only is Apple’s continued chip development impressive, but so is its pace. The M3 chip was unveiled not even a year ago in October 2023, so to see the next-generation arrive so soon is another feather in Apple’s CPU-maker cap.

All that being said, a chip like the i9-14900K significantly outcompetes an M4 in multicore performance, and you can’t (and likely wouldn’t want to) just slot an M4 into your next gaming PC, so these benchmarks are more of a testament to the power of the M4 rather than Apple trying to take Intel down.

Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a powerful tablet, it only makes sense to check out Apple’s latest iPads with the brand’s M4 chip, like the new iPad Pro.

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