Of course, it’s also worth noting that these chips use the more powerful Coffee Lake R cores that are designed specifically for use in desktop computers. Apple’s 2019 27-inch iMac, equipped with an eight-core 3.6GHz/5.0GHz Intel i9-9900K CPU comes in with average single-core scores of 6224 and multi-core scores of 33143.

While Apple’s newest MacBook Pro comes the closest we’ve ever seen to offering desktop performance, it still doesn’t quite measure up to Apple’s equivalent desktops. These are still respectable speed bumps, but nothing that will likely have anybody rushing out to buy a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. The updates to the 13-inch MacBook Pros are less remarkable, with all of them still offering only dual- and quad-core i5 and i7 CPUs with a maximum performance of 2.8GHz/4.7GHz, although they’re all using Intel’s latest eighth-generation versions of those CPUs. While Apple refreshed both the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros this week, it’s really only the bigger 15-inch models that are seeing significant performance gains. It’s this latter, highest-end model that’s been benchmarked here. It’s also worth noting that Apple sells two variations of the new 8-core MacBook Pro the base octo-core model comes with a 2.3 GHz i9 that can burst up to 4.8 GHz, with the option to bump that to 2.4/5.0 GHz for an extra $200.

Of course, there are other factors than just raw CPU speed that may contribute to increased performance as well. Apple’s claims are a bit more generous, with the company promising “up to” 40 percent faster performance than a six-core MacBook Pro, and double the performance of a quad-core model. In practical terms, the Geekbench results show about a 10 percent increase in single-core speeds and an impressive 29 percent in multi-core performance.

Geekbench macbook pro comparison