The software identifies the hardware, performs the benchmarks, and sends the heading and results to the Geekbench DB. Somebody who had the machine at hand must have run it.
Internal leaks, these happen frequently. Employees have access to these devices for months prior to launch. Someone ran a benchmark and uploaded it on a machine they weren't supposed to.
No, not the same. Those are review samples who got sent the product early. Those "leaks" happen AFTER the products have been officially announced by Apple.
Leaked prior to announcement - Leaked Benchmarks Confirm M2 Chip is Up to 20% Faster Than M1 https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/15/m2-geekbench-benchmark/
Date of article: June 15, 2022 10:32 am PDT. M2 announcement was June 6.[0]
I don't feel like doing it for your other sources. They follow the same pattern. You can check official announcement dates vs "leaked" dates yourself.
That was a mistake and I updated it - only the M2 Max benchmarks leaked prior to announcement, not the M2.
Those M2 Max Geekbench benchmarks appeared on November 30, 2022. Apple announced the Apple M2 Max chip on January 17, 2023.
Similarly, those M4 Geekbench benchmarks for Mac were leaked on October 6, 2024, prior to Apple announcing the product. Apple announced the M4 Macs on October 28, 2024.
Highest among what? Is it highest among M* CPUs? Then what's the news, that the next gen is faster than the previous? Now that's a newsflash!
Or is it just an early advertisement, which it is? As in, "true Apple devotees, start planning your kidney sales to afford buying the M6 Pro among the first".
I noticed a whiff of panic at the iphone 18 launch. Opened macrumors and there like 6 articles in a row about preordering the phone, how soon you can get the phone when you preorder, how long the queues are etc.
Guess they didn't get the expected # of preorders.
I'm currently in the middle of porting a game from 2004 to run on MacOS via wine. On a 5000$ Macbook Pro, I'm getting about 4 FPS. This has multiple causes, including the game being single threaded and running through Rosetta, but damn is it hard to get good single core performance out of Macbooks.
Out of curiosity, I also ported the game to arm Linux with fex + upstreamed the wine patches in about a third the time and there's no FPS issues
If anything it's the exact opposite. They're ridiculously powerful with more memory bandwidth than pretty much any equivalent PC. It is easy to make sloppy software because you can get away with so much.
Under exactly what cooling conditions? All Apple hardware thermal throttles badly because proper cooling is ugly to Apple fans. Form over function is the norm for Apple, so no matter how fast the test results seem, the real-world machine probably will only reach these speeds for a short amount of time before thermal throttling sets in.
Cool, but Apple didn't announce any M6 Pro yet, so where is this coming from?
Probably internal tests?
The software identifies the hardware, performs the benchmarks, and sends the heading and results to the Geekbench DB. Somebody who had the machine at hand must have run it.
Internal leaks, these happen frequently. Employees have access to these devices for months prior to launch. Someone ran a benchmark and uploaded it on a machine they weren't supposed to.
How does Geekbench even verify what CPU I'm using? Couldnt you inject forged data and add a even faster M100?
I thought they were skipping the M6 pro chips (or is that just the max and ultra?) to accelerate AI focused M7.
Wait. What?
This is actually the M6 Pro and not the M6. It has 18 CPU cores to the M6's 12. The scores line up as well.
Reports have said all along that Apple is skipping M6 Pro/Max to focus on M7 generation.
I can't remember the last time an Apple chip got leaked like this.
These have leaked pretty much every single year for the M-series chips, a few weeks before launch. Occasionally for the A-series.
No, not the same. Those are review samples who got sent the product early. Those "leaks" happen AFTER the products have been officially announced by Apple.
Apple has not mentioned M6 Pro anywhere.
Not accurate, both leak very frequently.
Leaked prior to launch - Leaked Benchmarks Confirm M2 Chip is Up to 20% Faster Than M1 https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/15/m2-geekbench-benchmark/
Leaked prior to announcement - 'M2 Max' Geekbench Scores Leak Online, Revealing Rumored Specs and Performance https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/30/m2-max-chip-geekbench-r...
Leaked prior to launch - M3 Max Chip Around as Fast as M2 Ultra in Early Benchmark Results https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/01/m3-max-chip-benchmark-r...
Leaked prior to announcement - Mac M4 Chip Performance Unveiled in First Benchmarks https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/07/m4-mac-chip-benchmarks/
Leaked prior to launch - M5 Chip Achieves Impressive Feat in 14-Inch MacBook Pro Speed Test https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/17/m5-chip-macbook-pro-gee...
Leaked prior to launch - Apple's M5 Max Chip Achieves a New Record in First Benchmark Result
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/05/m5-max-geekbench-benchm...
Then add this one to the list.
Incorrect.
Date of article: June 15, 2022 10:32 am PDT. M2 announcement was June 6.[0]
I don't feel like doing it for your other sources. They follow the same pattern. You can check official announcement dates vs "leaked" dates yourself.
[0]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/06/apple-unveils-m2-with...
That was a mistake and I updated it - only the M2 Max benchmarks leaked prior to announcement, not the M2.
Those M2 Max Geekbench benchmarks appeared on November 30, 2022. Apple announced the Apple M2 Max chip on January 17, 2023.
Similarly, those M4 Geekbench benchmarks for Mac were leaked on October 6, 2024, prior to Apple announcing the product. Apple announced the M4 Macs on October 28, 2024.
Leak'em right in the eyes!
And how much would it cost?
In the current times performance/price seems to be increasingly important.
(Not to mention several other factors that once did not even exist, or were irrelevant.)
Highest among what? Is it highest among M* CPUs? Then what's the news, that the next gen is faster than the previous? Now that's a newsflash!
Or is it just an early advertisement, which it is? As in, "true Apple devotees, start planning your kidney sales to afford buying the M6 Pro among the first".
I noticed a whiff of panic at the iphone 18 launch. Opened macrumors and there like 6 articles in a row about preordering the phone, how soon you can get the phone when you preorder, how long the queues are etc.
Guess they didn't get the expected # of preorders.
That might be true but they do all those pieces with every iPhone launch. They just churn out content a lot during iPhone launch period.
Highest among all CPUs. This isn’t new for Apple. Their stuff frequently bests ryzens etc at single threaded perf
Title is “highest single core score” so it’s the highest of every cpu tested on geekbench so far, not just of the subset of Apple CPUs.
I'm currently in the middle of porting a game from 2004 to run on MacOS via wine. On a 5000$ Macbook Pro, I'm getting about 4 FPS. This has multiple causes, including the game being single threaded and running through Rosetta, but damn is it hard to get good single core performance out of Macbooks.
Out of curiosity, I also ported the game to arm Linux with fex + upstreamed the wine patches in about a third the time and there's no FPS issues
If anything it's the exact opposite. They're ridiculously powerful with more memory bandwidth than pretty much any equivalent PC. It is easy to make sloppy software because you can get away with so much.
So this is different and faster than such a result in the old scoring would have implied.
Under exactly what cooling conditions? All Apple hardware thermal throttles badly because proper cooling is ugly to Apple fans. Form over function is the norm for Apple, so no matter how fast the test results seem, the real-world machine probably will only reach these speeds for a short amount of time before thermal throttling sets in.