Apple silicon-powered Macs show promising performance benchmarks which have appeared on Geekbench as developers begin to speed test these new Macs. It appears that even with an older Apple A12 SoC variant (A12Z), they already run as fast as some Windows devices.
Jonny Evans for Computerworld:
This data doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, we know these Macs are running an early beta of the operating system; we also know that the speed tests themselves are not optimized for the processors or the OS.
In fact, the data simply gives us a little insight into how well these Macs handle code when run in what Apple calls Rosetta 2 emulation, which is quite promising in itself…
Apple is currently shipping limited quantities of Developer Transition Kit Macs to developers. These are Space Gray Mac minis with 16GB of RAM and Apple Silicon A12Z processors – the same chip that powers the iPad Pro, which is itself a variant of the processor used in the iPhone XS/XR…
That data suggests these developer-only, early field test Apple Silicon Macs achieve average scores of around an 811 points (single-core) and 2871 (multi-core) in contrast to the 726/2831 scores achieved by Microsoft’s Surface Pro X…That’s a promising start for Macs running a version of a two-year old chip – and bodes well for future iterations, particularly as Apple’s silicon migrate to 5- and then 3-nanometer process designs.
MacDailyNews Take: Wintel isn’t going to know what hit them!
Apple’s Developer Transition Kit is an iPad packed into a Mac mini case, running an Apple A12 variant — not even an A13 — and yet Apple knows it’ll be plenty for developers to “make it so.” They’ll get their apps running well on an A12Z, this glorified iPad stamped with Mac branding, and when the first Macs with Apple’s custom silicon ship to the public by the end of the year, they’ll be packing A14-class SOCs.
We’ll have to bolt ’em down, lest they spontaneously take flight!
I can’t wait to see the benchmarks almost as much as I can’t wait to see the faces of the remaining Wintel boat anchor holdouts when they see the benchmarks!
Yes, this is going to be FUN! And fun, dear friends, is exactly what we need after the start of this wonderful year. — SteveJack, MacDailyNews, June 23, 2020
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]