Apple’s M4 Max Sets New Speed Records as the Fastest CPU on the Market and M4 Ultra Yet to Come

Apple revealed new MacBook Pro models this week, with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chipsets. The new M4 Pro chip in the Mac mini has already produced some impressive results, making it the fastest Mac ever. However, M4 Max takes it to a whole new level, ranking among the top PC chips on the market.

To begin, all of these comparisons are based on Geekbench 6 results. Geekbench is a simple point of comparison until the new Macs arrive in people’s hands, and it only provides an approximate estimate. M4 Max may not be ideal for all workflows.

M4 Max vs previous Apple Silicon

Apple said that the new MacBook Pro chip would be the fastest laptop chip on the market and would be around 20% faster than the M3 Max when it was first announced. However, the initial Geekbench scores indicate a more encouraging outlook.

One of the initial Geekbench scores for the M4 Max showed a single-core score of 4060 and a multi-core score of 26675. For comparison, M3 Max achieved a multi-core score of 21097, implying that M4 Max is around 26% quicker, at least in Geekbench.

Additionally, it outperforms the M2 Ultra by about 24%, which achieved a multi-core score of 21471.

M4 Max vs PC chips

We can also compare the new M4 Max to the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and the Intel Core i9-14900K, two of the greatest PC chips available from AMD and Intel.

While scrolling through Geekbench, it appears that this is the best benchmark for the 9950X: it achieves a single-core score of 3630 and a multi-core score of 26653, just slightly below the M4 Max’s multi-core score. Single core also leads the pack.

On the Intel side, the highest score found for the Core i9-14900K appears to be this one, with a single-core score of 3144 and a multi-core score of 23044. M4 Max is about 15% quicker than Intel’s greatest desktop processor, although this is only a laptop chip.

We have yet to see Apple’s M4 Ultra chip, which should approximately quadruple the M4 Max because it combines two Max dies using UltraFusion technology. This delivers nearly double the performance while minimizing performance losses.

M4 Ultra is expected to debut in the Mac Studio and Mac Pro mid-next year.