The first deliveries of the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini with M1 processors will arrive tomorrow. (If you’ve not ordered yours yet, here’s where to get the best deal.) But speed test results for the machines are already available on Geekbench, indicating that Apple has released the new computers within the company.
We’ve known for a while that the M1 Macs are fast when running software specially designed for them. The first benchmarks of the MacBook Air M1 and the like confirm to some extent Apple’s statements like “3x as fast” and “faster than 98% of Windows notebooks”.
But how do the new Macs behave with programs optimised for Intel – old software that depends on Rosetta 2 to run on the M1 systems? The answer is very well.
You can see the Geekbench results here:
The three machines record similar results, between 1,682 and 1,714 points in the single-core test and 6,802 and 7,433 multi-core. The single-threaded result is about 35% higher than the 27in iMac with Core i9 processor, which previously had the highest result among Macs. The multi-threaded is roughly in line with the Mac Pro with 8-core processor and a bit higher than the fastest version of the 16in MacBook Pro.
In other words these are fiercely rapid scores.
Geekbench is of course a synthetic test, and performance in real-world computing is what actually matters: Geekbench does not, for example, give an assessment of a machine’s ability to perform at a particular level for a long period of time because it only lasts a few minutes. But these numbers are still an indication of what Apple has achieved with its new processors.
The first reviews are in and they are positive. Read: New M1 Macs getting rave reviews.
We now wait eagerly to find out which Macs will get the M1 next. The smart money is on the new iMac.
This article is based on original reporting by Macworld Sweden and Macwelt. Translation by David Price.