| Cult of Mac

Latest iMac blows away its predecessors

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New iMacs should get people revved up.
iMacs with new Intel processors provide plenty of performance.
Photo: Apple

Apple unveiled improved iMac versions last week, and what’s apparently an early benchmark score indicates that a top-tier model will be up to 75 percent faster than its predecessor in everyday use.

That’s not surprising, given the newer Intel processor.

Geekbench scores reveal RAM upgrades in new iPhones

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iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR
The iPhone XS Max is fast, but the smaller XS might be even quicker. The iPhone XR isn't too bad, either.
Photo: Apple

The new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR haven’t been released yet, but a handful of Geekbench scores are already available. 

These reveal more than just how fast the devices run (spoiler: very fast) but also how much RAM is in each model.

2018 MacBook Pro performance shows dramatic improvement

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The new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar up the ante for pro users.
2018 MacBook Pro performance offers the biggest year-over-year improvements since the release of the 2011 models.
Photo: Apple

The 15- and 13-inch MacBook Pro models launching this week boast significantly faster processors. Tests with the Geekbench benchmarking tool show speed increases as high as 86 percent.

The improvements come from faster Turbo Burst frequencies and more processor cores.

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chip still can’t beat last year’s iPhone

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qualcomms-new-snapdragon-chip-still-cant-beat-last-years-iphone-image-cultofandroidcomwp-contentuploads201602Apple-A9-png
There's a lot of magic in that A9 chip. Photo: Apple
There’s a lot of magic in that A9 chip. Photo: Apple

Many of this year’s high-end Androids will come with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 820 processor. It’s up to twice as fast as the Snapdragon 810 that powered many of last year’s flagships — but it still can’t beat the iPhone 6s.

According to tests carried out on GFXBench, Apple’s A9 processor outperforms Qualcomm’s best alternative — despite slower clock speeds and fewer cores.

The 12-Core Mac Pro Scores 33,000 In Geekbench!

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Screen Shot 2014-01-12 at 1.18.30 PM

When the first series of benchmarks for the new Mac Pro popped up on Geekbench in early 2013, people were initially disappointed that Apple’s Vader helmet of a desktop didn’t have benchmarks that were much better than a top-of-the-line 2012 Mac Pro.

But as we cautioned at the time, the benchmarks reflected the performance of a prototype Mac that was still six months from release, and the version of Geekbench being run against it was 32-bit, not 64-bit, all of which could result in lowered performance. In fact, we said it was likely that when the new Mac Pro was actually released, it would break 30,000 on Geekbench’s benchmarks… making it a staggeringly fast machine almost 25% faster than the previous generation was capable of.

Over the weekend, the late 2013 12-core Mac Pro popped up on Geekbench, and what do you know: it comes in at an impressive 32,912 in Primate Labs’ metrics. To clarify, that means that the new Mac Pro is over six-and-a-half times faster than the latest MacBook Air. Not shabby.

Source: Geekbench

The New Mac Pro Could Break 30,000 In Geekbench!

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A couple months ago, a series of benchmarks for the new Mac Pro popped up on Geekbench, showing off what Apple’s new machine could do. And just what could it do? Not much more than the current top-of-the-line 2012 Mac Pro, disappointing many who thought even the old Mac Pro was a dog at launch.

However, there’s a caveat. The hardware was prototype. The machine was running OS X Mavericks, which had just released its first beta. And the version of Geekbench being run against the new Mac Pro was 32-bit, and therefore not designed to fully exploit the Mac Pro’s 64-bit architecture. Is the real Mac Pro really going to be so disappointing?

No. It’s going to be blazing fast.

Leaked Benchmarks Show A New MacBook Pro Is Coming

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MacBook-Pro-with-OS-X-Mavericks

Although Apple beefed up the MacBook Air line at WWDC last month with new ultrabooks packing Intel’s Haswell processors, they have yet to upgrade the venerable MacBook Pro with the same technology. That’s a bummer, because Haswell can greatly improve battery life without sacrificing speed… surely the kind of tech you’d want in a Retina MacBook Pro.

We still don’t know when we’ll see the MBP line updated, but it’s looking like it might be happening soon, with new benchmark results for a next-gen 15-inch MacBook Pro popping up on a community benchmarking site.

Benchmarks Reveal New iPod Touch Isn’t Even Half As Fast As iPhone 5

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The iPhone 5 is way ahead of its siblings when it comes to Geekbench performance.
The iPhone 5 is way ahead of its siblings when it comes to Geekbench performance.

Geekbench benchmarks for the new iPod touch prove Apple has made lots of improvements to the fifth-generation device, with its dual-core A5 chip making it significantly faster than its predecessor. When compared with iPhone performance, however, the iPod touch is lagging far behind.

Despite the same 800MHz processor, the new iPod touch is still slightly slower then the iPhone 4S, and not even half as fast as the iPhone 5.