iPhone 16 Re-Tested on Geekbench 6: A18 Shows Nearly 28% Increase in Multi-Core Performance

Initial A18 chip benchmarks from the iPhone 16 had it falling just short of Apple‘s previous-generation custom silicon, the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s A17 Pro. Updated benchmarks a few days ago had given us positivity about the A18 more recently. That represents a significant boost over earlier testing, with multi-core scores almost 28 percent higher than the prior results.

More About the iPhone 16’s Test

According to data from @negativeonehero, the A18 achieved a single-core score of 3,409 and a multi-core score of 8,492. These numbers represent a 9.5 percent single-core and an impressive 28 percent multi-core performance uplift over some earlier benchmarks. Though an increase, this bump up also suggests that the A18 beats out its predecessor in speed — something we’d expect from a next-gen chip.

The CPU configuration of the A18 with clock speeds at 4.04GHz is also consistent with earlier reports, according to benchmarks. However, the device tested this time around is labeled as iPhone 17,2 instead of an earlier test under the name iPhone17,3. The exact model of the tested device remains unclear, leaving some details about the performance still unknown.

The A18 is manufactured using TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, which contributes to its ability to sustain high clock speeds over longer periods, leading to better overall performance. Since the Geekbench 6 tests are relatively short-duration and non-throttling by default for everyone: even without a high-performance cooling solution it barely matters anymore. We’ll be keeping an eye on the development of another member in this family, A18 Pro with the same CPU cluster for similar or even better performance.

Of course, as we await a more detailed picture it’s important to temper expectations around these early benchmarks — this is certainly the type of data that can be subject to change and update. However, the performance in A18 and A18 Pro will be fully confirmed only when official version devices are released.

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