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)

Score

0

900

1800

2700

3600

4500

5400

0

900

1800

2700

3600

4500

5400

M3 Pro 11-Core 4910

Core i9-14900K 4852

M3 Pro 12-Core 4841

M3 Max 16-Core 4816

M3 8 Core 4784

Core i9-13900K 4656

Ryzen 9 7950X 4307

M2 Max 12-Core 4151

M2 Pro 12-Core 4125

M2 Ultra 4119

M2 Pro 10-Core 4105

M2 8-Core 3945

Passmark Benchmark (Multi-Thread)

Score

0

11667

23334

35001

46668

58335

70002

0

11667

23334

35001

46668

58335

70002

Ryzen 9 7950X 63230

Core i9-14900K 60897

Core i9-13900K 59659

M2 Ultra 24-Core 48634

M3 Max 16-Core 39921

M3 Pro 12-Core 26921

M2 Pro 12-Core 26284

M2 Max 12-Core 26263

M3 Pro 11-Core 25923

M2 Pro 10-Core 21535

M3 8-Core 19139

M2 8-Core 15422

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% IncreaseM3 Pro 12-Core vs M2 Pro 12-Core (MT) = +0.2% IncreaseM3 Pro 11-Core vs M2 Pro 10-Core (MT) = +20% IncreaseM3 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.