Apple debuted the A20 Pro on the iPhone 18 Pro at its "Surprise and Shine" event on September 9. The latest Apple chipset brings two new super cores, a 7-core GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine. At launch, Apple only shared relative performance claims and didn't reveal the raw clock speeds. Now, the first Geekbench 6 result of the A20 Pro is out and the numbers are staggering.
A20 Pro Is 21% Faster in Single-Core, 30% Faster in Multi-Core
A Geekbench listing for the iPhone 18 Pro (model number iPhone19,2), running iOS 27 with 12GB memory has appeared. It shows the A20 Pro scored a whopping 4,719 in single-core and 12,677 in multi-core on Geekbench 6. To put it simply, this is the first smartphone chip to deliver such a blistering single-core performance and cross the 12,000-point mark in multi-core with just 6 cores.
Compared to the A19 Pro, which scored 3,895 in single-core and 9,746 in multi-core, the A20 Pro is around 21% faster in single-core and a massive 30% faster in multi-core. The single-core score lines up exactly with Apple's claim of "20% faster" super cores at the launch event.
| Geekbench 6 CPU | A20 Pro | A19 Pro | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 | Dimensity 9500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single-core | 4,719 | 3,895 | 3,588 | 3,315 |
| Multi-core | 12,677 | 9,746 | 10,207 | 9,914 |
I think the 3x larger vapour chamber is helping the CPU deliver remarkable performance as Apple itself claimed 40% better sustained performance, thanks to the new cooling setup.
Most interestingly, the two super cores are clocking up to a whopping 4.93GHz, which is the highest CPU frequency on any smartphone till now. For comparison, the A19 Pro's performance cores topped out at 4.26GHz, which means Apple has pushed the clock up by 700MHz, which is a huge upgrade year-over-year. Basically, Apple has quietly touched the 5GHz mark on a smartphone.
What is more interesting is that the multi-core gain (30%) is bigger than the single-core gain (21%), even though the A20 Pro comes with the same 6-core, 2+4 layout as the A19 Pro. Apart from the new vapour chamber, I think the credit goes to the new chip packaging, a 96-bit LPDDR5X memory bus and a larger 8MB L2 cache on the efficiency cores.
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The A20 Pro Reclaims the Multi-Core Crown From Qualcomm and MediaTek
Until now, Apple held the single-core lead while Android chips dominated in multi-core. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with its 8-core Oryon v3 CPU, actually beat the A19 Pro in multi-core (10,207 vs 9,746) and the Dimensity 9500 was second at 9,914.
The A20 Pro sets a new bar for multi-core performance with just 6 cores. The A20 Pro is around 32% faster in single-core and 24% faster in multi-core than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. And compared to the Dimensity 9500, the gap is even wider. The A20 Pro is 42% faster in single-core and 28% faster in multi-core.
With only six cores, Apple has taken the lead in both single-core and multi-core in one go. For a detailed analysis, you can check out our A20 Pro vs Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and A20 Pro vs Dimensity 9500 comparisons.
Sure, these are early Geekbench numbers, but Apple doesn't inflate scores and this comes directly from a Geekbench listing.
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What is Next for the A20 Pro?
The A20 Pro has set a high bar and the competition is about to catch up. Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro (could be called Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6) and MediaTek's Dimensity 9600 Pro both move to a 2nm process node with clock speeds rumoured to touch 5GHz. It will be interesting to see how these chipsets close the gap against Apple's A20 Pro.
For now, though, the A20 Pro is comfortably the fastest mobile CPU on the market. In fact, it even beats desktop-class processors in single-core performance. We will be putting the iPhone 18 Pro through our complete benchmark run soon, so stay tuned for the full picture on GPU, thermals and real-world gaming.
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