A16 Bionic Performs 5 Percent Slower Than A15 Bionic in Multi-Core Run, but Is the Fastest Mobile SoC in Single-Core Tests

The first benchmark of the iPhone 14 Pro sporting Apple’s latest A16 Bionic has come forth, and though it dominates in single-core, the A15 Bionic gets the better of its successor in the multi-core run.

New Benchmark Result Also Reveals That iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max Will Ship With 6GB RAM

The results were shared by ShrimpApplePro, with a small watermark at the bottom of the Geekbench 5 image indicating that he likely got those results from the Chinese micro-blogging website Weibo. Other details reveal that the iPhone 14 Pro that was subjected to the test features 6GB of RAM, which Apple did not mention during its official announcement, though past reports have consistently mentioned that the ‘Pro’ models will be treated to 6GB of LPDDR5 memory this year.

Coming to the tests, the A16 Bionic running in the iPhone 14 Pro achieves a single-core score of 1879, making it the fastest smartphone SoC in this benchmark category. Unfortunately, where we immediately assumed that the custom silicon would be slightly faster than the A15 Bionic, these results surprised us. Where the A15 Bionic achieves a multi-core score of 4885 when compared to MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000, the A16 Bionic is around 5 percent slower, with a score of 4664.

In fact, the A16 Bionic is barely faster than the Dimensity 9000, and that could be due to many factors. Firstly, Geekbench 5 scores are easily manipulated, so we recommend our readers to treat these results with a pinch of salt for now. Secondly, it is possible that the Geekbench 5 app is not ready for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and by extension, the official iOS 16 update.

We will revisit these results when commercial units of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max start getting shipped to the masses, and after running the latest Geekbench 5 update, perhaps we will get a clearer picture of how the A16 Bionic performs. Given that Apple’s latest SoC is mass produced on TSMC’s 4nm architecture, these results are disappointing, but luckily, we will have more information for our readers soon, so stay tuned.