iPad Pro's M4 Chip Outperforms M3 by Up to 25%

[MacRumors]

Benchmarks for the new M4 iPad Pro models have popped up on Geekbench, giving us an idea of how much faster Apple's second-generation 3-nanometer chips are compared to the M3, M2, and other prior-generation Apple silicon chips.

The 10-core variant of the M4 chip earned an average single-core score of 3,695 and an average multi-core score of 14,550 across 10 benchmarks. When it comes to single-core performance, the M4 is faster than the M3 Max MacBook Pro, and it's comparable to the M2 Max in multi-core performance.

For context, here are the single-core and multi-core scores of prior chips (all max CPU/GPU variants):

• M4 - 3,695/14,550
• A17 Pro - 2,908/7,234
• M2 - 2,540/9,360
• M2 Pro - 2,651/14,295
• M2 Max - 2,802/14,800
• M1 - 2,272/8,208
• M3 - 3,087/11,702
• M3 Pro - 3,112/15,286
• M3 Max - 3,128/20,957

Compared to the M2 in the prior version of the iPad Pro, the M4 is 46 percent faster when it comes to single-core performance, and 55 percent faster in multi-core performance. Apple didn't use the M3 in an iPad, but it is up to 24 percent faster than the M3.

Apple said that the M4 delivers up to 1.5x faster CPU performance than the M2 in the prior-generation iPad Pro, which is accurate based on the benchmarks we've seen so far.

Apple plans to bring the M4 chip family to all of its products across 2024 and 2025, with the first M4 Macs slated for later this year.

Article Link: iPad Pro's M4 Chip Outperforms M3 by Up to 25%

 

[sw1tcher]

Nice upgrade for those on M1 (and older) Macs. Skip the M3. Wait for the M4.

 

[iamgalt]

Cue all the "it's too much power for such a limited OS" comments.

 

[TSE]

How improved is the GPU?

 

[MJaP]

Pity there really isn't anything to take advantage of all that power on the iPad "Pro" that you don't have to pay a subscription for.

 

[mikethebigo]

Looking forward to seeing these chips in Macs. I was reading in some discussion threads that part of the CPU score bump could be related to the new ML accelerators (ARM's SME)? It seems like those are the tasks where performance score really increased, the other tasks were much more equivalent to M3 performance.

Per Tom's Hardware:

"The big single-core gains on Geekbench could be fueled by newly added support for Scalable Matrix Extensions (SME) — some of the subtests, like object detection and image blurring, see massive gains (~200% for object detection). Support would imply that Apple is using an ARMv9 architecture, but this isn't yet confirmed. In either case, SME would give a strong boost to some of the tests that form Geekbench’s CPU suite, bumping up the overall single-core score. However, Geekbench 6 only recently introduced support for SME with version 6.3, and Intel's competing AMX isn't supported. That's largely because matrix workloads are a better fit for other forms of compute, like the NPU or GPU, than the CPU cores. As such, it isn't clear how much real-world benefit SME would deliver if run on the CPU cores, if any, in daily usage.

The remainder of the benchmark score indicates a roughly 3% increase in performance over the prior gen M3, but we'll have to wait for more detailed testing to determine if those are the result of IPC improvements or merely from frequency increases and/or cache clock changes."

 

[DHagan4755]

Just imagine M4 Pro, M4 Max, and M4 Ultra benchmarks.

 

[StuBeck]

Wonder what real world performance is like?

Also the bullet points not being in any specific order makes direct comparisons tougher to tell than it should be.

 

[SVTmaniac]

Guess my M3 Pro MacBook Pro I just got is obsolete already.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Love it when we see single core performance stats! Thanks!

Simply claiming "it is x% faster" but it also has x% more cores, always keeps you guessing on the real-world performance increases.

The M4 looks good!! Love to see the M4 Max Mac Studio!

 

[neuropsychguy]

With how these M4s are looking, it’s going to be difficult to wait until the M5 or M6 series to upgrade my M1 Pro. I’m going to wait, but this M4 appears to be the first significant upgrade from the M1 series and might be worth it for many people.

Of course, we won’t know if that’s true until we have real world benchmarks.

 

[thadoggfather]

These iPads are gonna stall Mac sales; people will put them off until M4 variants come out (IMO) in larger numbers

No reason at this point to pay top dollar for verified old tech

(I say this as someone happy as heck with my M2 15" Air I got in the fall last year)

 

[ric22]

How will it impact Mac sales for the next few months when everyone knows we're on the cusp of getting this processor in every device? You'd have to be desperate not to wait a couple of months....

I'm fascinated to see if they do a good job with the M4 Pro, after the sideways step that was the M3 Pro.

 

[klasma]

Guess my M3 Pro MacBook Pro I just got is obsolete already.

It can’t run iPadOS, so it was obsolete from the start.

 

[CalMin]

Now that Apple allows emulators in the App Store, VMWare or Parallels needs to develop one so that we can run Windows or MacOS on these things.

 

[verymickey]

• M4 - 3,695/14,550
• M1 - 2,272/8,208

fourth generation chip and less than 2x performance increase over the first gen chip? are my expectations to high? seems... meh?

 

[ric22]

These iPads are gonna stall Mac sales; people will put them off until M4 variants come out (IMO) in larger numbers

No reason at this point to pay top dollar for verified old tech

(I say this as someone happy as heck with my M2 15" Air I got in the fall last year)

Ha, we were writing exactly the same thing at the same moment. Great minds...

 

[bobbie424242]

Cue all the "it's too much power for such a limited OS" comments.

What has Eddie Cue to do with this ?

 

[BuffyzDead]

At first glance, looks like this New M4, smokes the M3 Max in my 2023 MBP.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

• M4 - 3,695/14,550
• A17 Pro - 2,908/7,234
• M2 - 2,540/9,360
• M2 Pro - 2,651/14,295
• M2 Max - 2,802/14,800
• M1 - 2,272/8,208
• M3 - 3,087/11,702
• M3 Pro - 3,112/15,286
• M3 Max - 3,128/20,957

@MacRumors/@jclo, friendly suggestion- your list of benchmark data is fairly hard to appreciate. A horizontal bar graph in a more logical order makes more sense (why is M1 right in the middle of the data, M4 at the top, M3 at the bottom?, A17 Pro second?)

 

[klasma]

Love it when we see single core performance stats! Thanks!

Simply claiming "it is x% faster" but it also has x% more cores, always keeps you guessing on the real-world performance increases.

The M4 looks good!! Love to see the M4 Max Mac Studio!

That might be premature, see the quotes in https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...performs-m3-by-up-to-25.2425947/post-33123550
You can’t necessarily extrapolate real-life performance from Geekbench scores.

 

[vegetassj4]

Duh....there are 4 M chips now.
4-3 = 1.
t = t0/(1-v2/c2)1/2
1/4 = 0.25.
4 is up from 3.
c = νλ
Therefore +25%.

 

[ric22]

Still wouldn't upgrade from a personal M1 myself, until the single core speed is close to doubled... one or two more generations, I guess. Not knocking the M4 at all, it looks awesome, but the M1 is awesome enough for non-pro stuff.

 

[Yimbaz]

Cue all the "it's too much power for such a limited OS" comments.

If they don't like those comments they should do something about the OS.

 

[CalMin]

Guess my M3 Pro MacBook Pro I just got is obsolete already.

It was obsolete the moment you bought it. I wouldn't lose any sleep over this - my M1Pro is ancient by Apple Silicon standards and it's still more computer than I can use.