First M4 Max benchmark tears apart the M2 Ultra Mac Studio

Late on Thursday, supposed benchmarks for the M4 Pro surfaced on Geekbench, seemingly showing that the M4 Pro is an extremely powerful chip. On Friday, benchmarks for the M4 Max have practically cemented the M4 range's status as the most powerful chips Apple's ever made.

The benchmark for the Mac16,5, a 16-inch MacBook Pro, appeared in the Geekbench results browser early on Friday morning. The listing states it uses an M4 Max chip with 16 cores, divided into 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, and a clock speed of 1.5GHz.

The main figures for the listing say the Mac scored 4,060 for Geekbench's single-core test, and 26,675 for the multi-core version.

By comparison, the early M4 Pro results scored the single-core test at 3,925 and the multi-core at 22,669.

Both of these results are much higher than the 2023 Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra. That model is listed with 2,777 for the single-core test and 21,351 for the multi-core, even though the model tested had 24 CPU cores.

As early benchmarks for models that have yet to be released to the public, the figures should be considered with trepidation. It is entirely possible that the numbers are faked or wrong.

That said, they do seem to be fairly realistic and in line with the performance claims Apple has made in its announcements.

As reviewers and other early users get to try out the new Mac models, the multitude of benchmarks will offer a true view of performance improvements.

It does, however, tease at what an M4 Ultra chip could be like. Effectively two M4 Max chips with an interconnect and therefore double the cores, the score should also be about twice as high as the M4 Max.