Apple’s new A20 Pro smartphone chip around 25% faster than its predecessor in leaked benchmark — the 2nm CPU in the iPhone Duo and 18 Pro hits nearly 5 GHz clocks
Geekbench single-core score indicates the A20 delivers a significant generational CPU performance boost this year.
We reported on the new Apple A20 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones yesterday, an integral attraction within Apple’s first foldable, the iPhone Duo, and in the iPhone 18 Pro devices. Now the first A20 Geekbench 6 benchmark results are starting to pop up online, and they’re very impressive, particularly in single-core performance. If the result spotted by Longhorn is a typical one, the 4,719 single-core and 12,677 multi-core scores mean the new A20 is around 25% faster than its predecessor. Its single-core score can also make some of the best PC CPUs look anemic.
huhApple A20 Pro Geekbench 6 numbers 🫠https://t.co/py5rdZ1ekk pic.twitter.com/Snrn9lTks9September 10, 2026
Apple’s official performance claims are interesting, as usual, but we’re always happy to see the third-party performance indicators start to emerge ahead of independent reviews. Heralding its new 2nm silicon yesterday, Apple might have actually understated the boost the A20 can deliver, with the official line about this “desktop-class” processor being the “fastest CPU in a smartphone,” and a claim that it is ‘just’ 20% faster than the previous gen. However, Geekbench isn’t the best indicator of real-world performance, and this is just a sample of one to sprinkle salt upon.
What are numbers without relevant comparisons, though? For more perspective on Apple’s newest silicon, which might also be thrown into a new Neo laptop (or desktop) in the coming months, check out the table below.
|
Apple A20 Pro |
Apple A19 Pro |
Apple M5 Max |
AMD 9950X3D2 |
|
GB6 1T |
4,719 |
~3,800 |
~4,300 |
~3,800 |
~3,600 |
GB6 nT |
12,677 |
~10,000 |
~29,000 |
~22,750 |
~28,000 |
Cores |
2P + 4E |
2P + 4E |
6P + 12E |
6P + 12E |
16C / 32T |
Clocks |
4.93 GHz |
4.26 GHz |
4.61 GHz |
4.7 GHz |
4.3 GHz |
Above, we’ve pitted the Apple A19 Pro from last year’s iPhone 17 Pro as the second comparison column entrant. Apple has worked on multiple angles to deliver improvements over last year. It says that it has both new super-cores and efficiency cores in play. Then there’s the refined 2nm process and the faster clocks, too.
For some wider context, we’ve also tabulated one of Apple’s newest M5 computer chips, a modern Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X2 laptop chip, and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, for a fun desktop PC angle. Less fun is the comparison with the Asus Zephyrus G16 2024 laptop I’m using now, with an AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 chip. Its Geekbench 6 scores of roughly 2,800 / 14,500 are easily outclassed by Apple’s new smartphone processor in 1T tests, but retain a little dignity by winning by ~1,800 points in nT tests.
Apple is opening up pre-orders for its new iPhones with A20 silicon shortly, with retail release on Friday, September 18. It usually lifts review embargoes a few days before retail. We should therefore see a broader range of benchmarks and tests from good sources in the coming week.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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thestryker So the A20 single threaded is ~10% faster than the M5 Max with a ~7% clock speed increase. However when you compare the A20 to A19 it's ~24% faster with a ~16% clock speed increase. To me this makes it look like that additional memory bandwidth is helping in this comparison.Reply -
usertests Reply
Neo is intended to use the leftover scraps.alan.campbell99 said:Could be interesting in a Neo refresh I imagine.
https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/03/macbook-neo-2-features-release-date/
Macbook Neo 2 is expected to use a binned (current, soon to be previous-gen) A19 Pro, with one less GPU core enabled.
The most obvious change is an increase to 12 GB of memory. That will be a huge improvement from the original. -
alan.campbell99 Ahah, interesting.Reply
I was thinking also about the difference if any with a laptop's possible thermal envelope, better comparison though would be to an iPad? -
usertests Reply
Idk how much better the Neo is than the iPhone with the same chip, but I remember watching some content showing that the cooling solution in the Neo was unimpressive. It's passive and fanless, and will thermally throttle when stressed.alan.campbell99 said:Ahah, interesting.
I was thinking also about the difference if any with a laptop's possible thermal envelope, better comparison though would be to an iPad?
lswbpVtAhrc
Yeah, watching this again and it's just a graphene pad and some thermal paste on the SoC. -
bimo_tok I am curious the comparison this processor with Xiaomi new processor 3nm with LPDDR6. Xiaomi claimed achieved highest Antutu benchmark.Reply -
LordVile Reply
AnTutu measures subjective things and rolls it into a score. Geekbench is purely CPU.bimo_tok said:I am curious the comparison this processor with Xiaomi new processor 3nm with LPDDR6. Xiaomi claimed achieved highest Antutu benchmark. -
JamesJones44 I'm a little skeptical of these numbers. The M6 and A20 use the same core designs using the same N2 node with similar memory bandwidth increases. Seems odd that leaked benchmarks for single thread of M6 vs M5 only show about ~5% improvement in single thread score while A20 is supposedly ~25%.Reply
One of the two leaks feel like they could be wrong.