Alleged M4 benchmarks verify Apple's iPad Pro performance claims

Apple's new iPad Pros run the M4 processor

The new iPad Pros skipped straight to M4, and initial benchmarks show the potential performance improvements match Apple's claims.

Apple's M4 processor won't be available in the wild until devices arrive in customers hands on May 15. But, that may not have stopped some reviewers with pre-release units from performing benchmarks with Geekbench.

A device called iPad16,6, which appears to be the latest iPad Pro with M4 with 10 cores shows a 3,767 single core and 14,677 multi core score. For context, that's almost an exact 1.5x CPU performance boost from a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with M2, which scored 2,590 single core and 10,019 multi core.

Geekbench scores for the iPad16,6

Another benchmark for iPad16,6 showed up with a 53,792 metal score for the GPU. That's a more modest improvement from the M2 iPad Pro scoring 46,575.

The new benchmarks arrived a few hours after an ML score for the M4's Neural Engine was discovered with a 9,234. It beat out the M3's Neural Engine, but not the M3 Max.

The Neural Engine test is suspect because it shows iOS 18, which hasn't leaked. The other new benchmarks all show iOS 17.5, which is in beta.

The data is fresh and unverifiable at this time, but it appears to indicate Apple's claims made during the "Let Loose" announcement are accurate. The baseline M-series processor makes small gains with each generation, but the more important upgrades aren't tested by Geekbench.

Real world gains will be easier to determine when users are able to compare workflows like exporting a file or running a game. Benchmark tools provide a decent baseline for comparison, but are not meant to be definitive.

More tests will have to be run once the M4 iPad Pro models launch in a week. Expect early reviews to touch on workflows and benchmarks as well.

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19 Comments

tht 5417 comments · 23 Years

About 1 week ago

3767? Holy Shit!

JustSomeGuy1 322 comments · 6 Years

AppleInsider said:

The baseline M-series processor makes small gains with each generation, but the more important upgrades aren't tested by Geekbench.
Small gains?!? Are you nuts? It's looking like 15-20%. That a *monster* number to put up. It instantly makes the M4 the fastest consumer CPU in the world, single core. (To the extent you accept GB6 as reasonable, which... is reasonable.)

tht said:

3767? Holy Shit!

You think that's holy? Wait until it ships in the M4Max, or the Studio M4whatever. If they are consistent those have a good shot at passing 4000.

JustSomeGuy1 said:

tht said:

3767? Holy Shit!

You think that's holy? Wait until it ships in the M4Max, or the Studio M4whatever. If they are consistent those have a good shot at passing 4000.

Well, if this level of single core performance holds up across most of the GB sub-benches, that is very very very good score. Very good score. I thought 3400 was going to be the target, but 3800? Wow. There is a submission at 3810 now. They had to bump the clock to 4.4 GHz to do it, so it is not entirely IPC improvements. Wonder how much power it is using.

Yes. 4000 may be possible in a MBP or Studio if they give it more power, or more cache, or more memory performance. I do think having this level of performance in a 5.1 mm tablet is more impressive than in a laptop.

KITA 389 comments · 6 Years

Apple has done some impressive things on the machine learning front it seems for the M4 CPU.

Apple M3 (Mac) vs Apple M4 (iPad Pro):

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/6017019?baseline=6016039

Essentially double for Object Detection has massively boosted their overall score. Background Blur also seeing significant gains: