Apple's M4 Pro chip is so powerful it puts the Mac Pro to shame

4 days ago 3

An Apple M4 Pro chip next to a Mac Pro on a green background

(Image credit: Apple)

Benchmark results for Apple’s M4 Pro chip have appeared on Geekbench
They suggest the M4 Pro’s performance tops the Mac Pro’s M2 Ultra
It’s an impressive result for Apple’s brand-new M4-series Macs

When Apple revealed its new M4 Macs, it generally contrasted their performance to the M1 and M3 chips that came before. Those comparisons showed a fairly impressive step up, but a new Geekbench benchmark has shown that the M4 Pro chip can square up against Apple’s powerful Mac Pro – and absolutely dominate the encounter.

The Geekbench result shows the M4 Pro achieving a single-core score of 3925 and a multi-core result of 22669. The machine running the rest was configured with 48GB of memory and that fact, combined with its model identifier number of Mac16,7, suggests that it was a MacBook Pro.

Likewise, there are plenty of results for an M4 Pro Mac identified as Mac16,11, which is likely to be the Mac mini.

One example on Geekbench sees this machine score 3618 for single-core performance and 22113 on the multi-core test. Like Mac16,7, this computer was outfitted with 48GB of memory.

What those scores mean

Now, what do these scores mean? Well, let’s compare them to the latest Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip. There are a lot of results for this machine on Geekbench, but the most recent one sees that Mac score 2868 for single-core performance and 22065 for multi-core output.

That means that the M4 Pro pulls ahead in the multi-core test and totally demolishes the M2 Ultra in terms of single-core performance. That’s all the more remarkable because of the price you’ll pay to get each of those chips.

The Mac Pro starts at $6,999 / £7,199 / AU$11,999 for a model configured with an M2 Ultra chip with a 24-core CPU, a 60-core GPU and 64GB of memory. In contrast, you can get a Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip with a 12-core CPU, a 16-core GPU and 24GB of memory for a mere $1,399 / £1,399 / AU$2,199. Boost it up to the same 48GB of memory that the benchmarked model had and you’ll still only pay $1,799 / £1,799 / AU$2,799, yet get far better performance than the Mac Pro.

It leaves the Mac Pro in something of an awkward spot. While it will eventually migrate to the M4 series of chips, that’s not expected to happen until the second half of 2025, potentially forcing interested buyers to wait a year for updates.

While the Mac Pro has plenty of its own strengths – far superior expansion options and vast memory capacity being two of them – it’s not a good look to have its performance overshadowed by Apple’s own machines, all for a fraction of the cost.

Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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