Apple A20 Pro Benchmarks Beat Android Flagships, Macs and Desktop Chips

Apple’s A20 Pro chip has now shown up in enough benchmarks to line it up against nearly everything else on the market. That covers current Android flagships, Apple’s own Mac chips, desktop and laptop processors from AMD and Intel, and the GPU and Neural Engine side of the chip too.

The first widely reported numbers came from a Geekbench 6 listing tied to devices identified as iPhone19,2 and iPhone19,3, the model numbers for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. That listing put the Apple A20 Pro at 4,719 single core and 12,677 multi core, on a six core layout split between two performance cores and four efficiency cores.

Geekbench 7 uses a different scale than Geekbench 6, so the Apple A20 Pro’s own score reads as 4,006 single core and 11,460 multi core in the tables below. Apple also increased memory bandwidth by 50 percent over the Apple A19 Pro, reportedly through a wider 96 bit memory interface, and the whole jump dwarfs the roughly 10 percent gain Apple managed the last time it changed manufacturing nodes, from the Apple A16 Bionic to the Apple A17 Pro.

The Apple A20 Pro Beats Every Android Flagship in Single Core

Across this set of Geekbench 7 benchmark results, the Apple A20 Pro’s single core lead over current Android chips is not close, and it grows the further down the list you go.

The Apple A20 Pro leads every chip on this list in single core, by margins ranging from about 32 percent over the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to nearly 290 percent over the Huawei Kirin 9050 Pro. Multi core is close to a sweep too, with one exception: the Xiaomi Xring O3 edges ahead by about 3 percent, likely down to its 10 core design against the Apple A20 Pro’s 6.

Apple’s Own M3, M4 and M5 Chips Trail It in Single Core Too

The pattern holds inside Apple’s own lineup. On the same Geekbench 7 benchmark scale, the Apple A20 Pro’s 4,006 single core score beats every current Mac chip, including the Apple M5.

The Apple A20 Pro’s lead over the Apple M5 is a modest 7 percent in single core, its smallest margin against any chip on this list, which says something about how close a phone chip has gotten to Apple’s laptop silicon. Multi core flips the story entirely. The Apple M5 pulls 39 percent ahead, the Apple M4 pulls 27 percent ahead, and even the Apple M3 stays 5 percent ahead despite trailing in every other comparison here.

A20 Pro Beats Intel and AMD Desktop Chips in Single Core Performance Too

In this benchmark, the Apple A20 Pro’s single core score keeps winning against real desktop and laptop silicon by wide margins. Multi core is where the extra cores on a desktop motherboard take back control, though not against every chip on this list.

The Apple A20 Pro is about 26 percent faster in single core than the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and about 33 percent faster than the Intel Core i9-14900KS. Against Intel’s Panther Lake laptop chips, the gap widens further, up to 88 percent over the entry level Intel Core Ultra 5 332.

Multi core tells a different story for the flagship desktop chips. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Core i9-14900KS both pull well ahead, since they carry 16 and 24 cores against the Apple A20 Pro’s 6. The surprise sits lower down the Panther Lake stack. The Apple A20 Pro beats the Intel Core Ultra 5 325 by about 3 percent and the Intel Core Ultra 5 332 by about 64 percent in multi core, both of which are laptop chips rather than a phone.

The Apple A20 Pro GPU Also Jumps Ahead of the Apple A19 Pro

On the graphics side, the Apple A20 Pro’s 7 core GPU makes a jump of its own. All of the scores below come from the Geekbench Metal benchmark, which only runs on Apple hardware.

That is a 40 percent generational jump over the Apple A19 Pro, and it lines up with Apple’s own graphics claim at launch. Against Apple’s own Mac GPUs, the gap is much bigger. The Apple A20 Pro’s GPU sits at roughly 27 percent of the Apple M5 Max’s score, which is still a notable result for a chip that has to fit inside a phone rather than a laptop chassis.

A power efficiency chart from the Chinese testing channel Geekerwan put the Apple A20 Pro through 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light benchmark, which runs on both iOS and Android, plotting score against sustained power draw measured directly off the board.

At the same GPU power draw, the Apple A20 Pro scores about 40 percent higher than the Apple A19 Pro, which shows the actual architecture gains rather than a new chip running at a higher power ceiling. On the peak numbers, the Apple A20 Pro also pulls well clear of the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 scores close to the Apple A19 Pro it is meant to compete with rather than the newer chip.

Our Take

The single core numbers matter more than people give them credit for, since that is still the number that decides how an iPhone feels in daily use. Beating the Apple M3 and closing in on the Apple M5 on a chip that goes inside a phone is a genuinely rare result, and edging out two of Intel’s own Panther Lake laptop chips in multi core is the number I did not see coming.

The efficiency number is the one that actually convinces me this is a real architecture jump. Getting 40 percent more performance at the same power draw as last year’s chip is extremely impressive.

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