The latest benchmarks of Apple's M3 CPUs are in and the M3 Pro specifically has secured the top position in PassMark's single-thread benchmark.
Apple M3 Pro Grabs Away The Top Single-Core CPU Spot From Intel's Core i9-14900K In PassMark Benchmark
The Intel Core i9-14900K CPU became the fastest single-threaded chip in the PassMark benchmark last month when it made its debut but it didn't take long for Apple's M3 CPU family to replace it as the new fastest chip on the block. The benchmark database now includes performance scores of all three M3 SKUs which include the M3 8-Core, M3 Pro 11-Core, and M3 Max 16-Core.
Coming to the performance results, the M3 Pro 11-core is the fastest amongst the three with a score of 4910 points followed by the M3 Pro 12-core which scores 4,841 points and lastly, we have the M3 8-core which scores 4784 points. The Apple M3 Pro 11-Core ends up faster than the Intel Core i9-14900K CPU by 1% while the other two chips end up with comparable single-core scores.
Apple made a huge deal about the single-threaded performance of its M3 class chips during the official announcements and it looks like the CPU does hold a lot of potential in this segment but when it comes to multi-threaded performance, the Core i9-14900K easily outperforms the 16-core M3 Max with a 34% uplift in performance and a 56% lead over the 12-Core M3 Pro. Following are the results in detail:
Passmark Benchmark (Single-Thread)
Passmark Benchmark (Multi-Thread)
In terms of multi-core performance, the M3 & M2 12/11 core chips perform almost identically while the 8-core sees a 24% boost in performance thanks to higher clock speeds. To sum things up:
- M3 Max 16-Core vs M2 Max 12-Core (MT) = +52% Increase
- M3 Pro 12-Core vs M2 Pro 12-Core (MT) = +0.2% Increase
- M3 Pro 11-Core vs M2 Pro 10-Core (MT) = +20% Increase
- M3 8-Core vs M2 8-Core (MT) = +24% Increase
Earlier benchmarks did show that the IPC gain from M2 to M3 chips was minimal so the extra core counts on the M3 Max & the forthcoming Ultra chips will be the major component in driving performance further up. So it looks like x86 CPUs still have a major edge over the newest Apple M3 chips. Both Intel and AMD also have newer chips on the horizon, further putting pressure on the Apple CPU progression. Plus there are also reports of NVIDIA and AMD entering the Arm space in the coming years which would be a major threat to Intel and Apple if the companies manage to succeed.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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