M6 Chip Benchmark Surfaces Ahead of New Mac Mini Launch Next Week

The first unverified benchmark result for Apple's new M6 chip surfaced in the Geekbench 7 database today, offering a look at the chip's performance gains. The new Mac mini will be Apple's first device to be equipped with the M6 chip, which is 2nm.

Here is how the M6 chip scored:

• Single-core CPU score: 4,071
• Multi-core CPU score: 22,783

Here are the average M5 chip scores for comparison:

• Single-core CPU score: 3,641
• Multi-core CPU score: 17,948

If this single Geekbench 7 result is accurate, the M6 chip has up to around 12% faster single-core CPU performance and up to around 27% faster multi-core CPU performance compared to the M5 chip. Note that the M6 chip is in the new Mac mini, while the M5 chip scores are based on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, but performance should be similar.

Apple said the M6 chip has the world's fastest single-threaded CPU performance, and its 4,071 single-core score indeed tops all other Macs and PCs in the Geekbench 7 database, including the M5 Max chip (3,731) and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (3,396). Up to 27% faster multi-core CPU performance is in line with Apple's claim of up to 1.2× faster multi-threaded performance, so all of Apple's advertised claims hold up.

Here is where the M6 chip slots in for maximum multi-core CPU performance:

• M5 Ultra: 52,516
• M3 Ultra: 39,059
• M5 Max: 35,119
• M5 Pro: 33,593
• M4 Max: 29,047
• M2 Ultra: 28,789
• M4 Pro: 24,894
• M3 Max: 24,649
• M1 Ultra: 23,328
• M6: 22,783
• M5: 17,948
• M2 Max: 17,387
• M3 Pro: 16,880
• M2 Pro: 16,725
• M4: 15,477
• M1 Max: 14,299
• M1 Pro: 13,914
• M3: 11,650
• M2: 9,809
• M1: 8,582

Based on these scores, the M6 chip is more than 2.5× faster than Apple's original M1 chip.

As always, real-world performance varies.

The new Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro chips and the new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips launch on Tuesday, September 22.

We are still waiting for GPU results for the M6 chip to appear on Geekbench 7.