How does the iPhone’s A18 Pro SoC compare to M-series?
The A18 Pro found in the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max is surprisingly powerful for something that sits in your pocket. In single core benchmarks, it’s very close to a M4. For GPU Metal benchmarks, the A18 Pro is fast as a M1 SoC. Learn more…
Read MoreHow much Memory do I need for My Mac?
With Apple’s new baseline of 16 GBytes of RAM on their M4 or newer devices, 80% of users can comfortably run dozens of browser tabs and a single primary app such as Photoshop, Lightroom, or Figma without experiencing any performance issues. Most people won’t need to get upgraded RAM except… If you’re a “power user”…
Read MoreHow much SSD/Hard Drive Space do I need for My Mac?
Unlike Apple’s new RAM baseline of 16 GBytes of RAM, Apple’s unfortunately still skimping on hard disk space with just 256 GBytes of SSD on their non-Pro models (Airs and Minis). Most Mac mini owners can get an external, fast (and well ventilated) SSD and move their Home directory onto it for around $100. But…
Read MoreCan you upgrade the storage on Apple Silicon devices?
Yes, on some of them but Apple does not officially support and they may void your warranty if you do it as you have to open up your Mac and take it apart. It’s definitely not possible on the MacBooks as the “SSDs” are soldered on but on the Mac Studio and Mac mini M4…
Read MoreWhat’s Geekbench and how is each score type important?
Geekbench 6 is a MacOS app that benchmarks CPU and GPU performance using tasks that mirror real-world usage. Its four main score types — Single-Core, Multi-Core, GPU Compute, and ML Workloads — each reflect different aspects of device performance. Single-Core CPU Score What it measures: Performance of a single CPU core. Real-world relevance: – App…
Read MoreIs it true Apple previously designed their own CPUs before the A and M-series?
Yes, before Apple was using Intel CPUs for their Macs, Apple collaborated with Motorola and IBM on the PowerPC CPU line. While we don’t have much details on the PowerPC chips themselves, we have information on some of the Macs that used the PowerPC CPUs in a post Millennium retrospective.
Read MoreWhat kind of power do M series chips consume?
Apple’s M chips are extremely power efficient. Please read our full blog post about how many watts Apple Silicon consume during idle and peak usage.
Read MoreWhat is your “Bang for Buck” score?
The “Bang for Buck” score is a helpful metric designed to measure the overall value of a Mac computer by balancing performance against its cost. To calculate this score, we first take the Geekbench performance benchmarks for Single-Core CPU, Multi-Core CPU, and GPU Metal tests, normalize the GPU Metal score – dividing it by 7.3,…
Read MoreWhat is a “binned” versus “non-binned” Apple M chip?
Binned vs. Non-Binned Apple Silicon Chips On Apple Silicon chips (like the M1 through M4, and future M5), “binned” and “non-binned” refer to variants of the same processor. During manufacturing, chips are tested, and those with slightly underperforming cores have them disabled—resulting in binned versions. Binned Chips Binned chips are processors that did not fully…
Read MoreWhat is your “Performance” score and what is “Normalized Combined Geekbench Score”?
The Normalized Geekbench Score (NGS) labeled as “Performance” on many of our graphs/charts) combines three metrics—single-core CPU, multi-core CPU, and adjusted GPU Metal score—into a single number, providing a balanced indicator of overall system performance. Because Geekbench 6 Metal GPU scores are in the hundreds of thousands, they can overwhelm CPU scores when combined (added…
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