Apple M4 SoC analysis - AMD, Intel and Qualcomm currently don't stand a chance
Is Apple's M4 Chip a Game-Changer for Tech Giants?
Apple's new M4 SoC, built on a 3 nm process, has significantly outperformed competitors AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm in single-core performance, with improvements also noted in multi-core performance. The M4 chip, which features up to 10 cores, debuts in the latest iPad Pro models rather than MacBooks, offering enhanced efficiency and power management. Variants of the iPad Pro with larger SSD storage also feature more powerful versions of the M4 chip and additional RAM. Despite its impressive performance, the full potential of the M4 SoC will be better understood once it is integrated into MacBook models, where more extensive testing can be conducted.
How does the M4 SoC's multi-core performance compare to its single-core performance and to other processors in the market?
The M4 SoC's multi-core performance shows a significant improvement over its predecessor, the M3, and also outperforms many other processors in the market. In Geekbench 6.2 multi-core tests, the M4 SoC with three performance cores surpassed the old M3 SoC by about 10%, while the M4 with all four performance cores showed a 22% advantage over the M3. This places the M4 above the MacBook Pro 14 with the small M3 Pro in terms of performance.
In comparison to other processors, the M4's multi-core performance is ahead of high-clocked models such as the Core Ultra 9 185H or the Ryzen 9 8945HS. However, the current HX processors are faster. The M4's multi-core performance is also respectable when considering its power consumption, which is around 15 watts during the benchmark. This makes the new M4 SoC more power-efficient than its competitors while offering exceptional performance.
As for single-core performance, the M4 SoC shows a 20% advantage over the Apple M3 in single-core scenarios, and it can clearly take the single-core performance crown in comparison to other processors5. The M4's single-core performance is particularly impressive when considering its power consumption of around 5 watts in single-core scenarios.
Overall, the M4 SoC's multi-core performance is highly competitive in the market, offering significant improvements over its predecessor and outperforming many other processors, all while maintaining low power consumption.
What advancements has Apple made in the GPU performance of the M4 SoC compared to the M3?
Apple's M4 SoC has continued with the same 10-core GPU architecture as the M3, which means that the basic structure and features such as dynamic caching, hardware-based mesh shading, and ray tracing are maintained from the previous generation4. Despite this architectural similarity, there have been performance improvements. The M4 GPU shows a 12% performance increase over the M3 GPU during the Geekbench Metal test56. This suggests that while the architecture remains the same, the performance enhancement could be due to factors like improved process technology, which may allow higher clock rates, and optimizations at the architectural level that are not explicitly detailed4. Thus, the M4 SoC delivers a modest but notable improvement in GPU performance compared to its predecessor, the M3.