The official Geekbench benchmark tests are out for the A11 Bionic chip powering the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X, and the results show Apple’s latest offering standing head and shoulders above the competition. The A11 Bionic turned out to be 25 percent faster than the previous 10 Fusion in single core tests and a whopping 80 percent faster in multicore tests. The multicore scores astoundingly even top out above the 13” MacBook Pro, although AppleInsider is quick to note that a laptop’s CPU is tasked with driving a much larger display. That also likely accounts for why the iPhone 8 tests better than the iPhone 8 Plus, and why the 8 Plus tests better than the X; namely, the higher the screen resolution, the more the processor has to work to run it and the less it will be able to dedicate to other tasks.
Competitors like Samsung have shipped out their high-resolution screens without doing as much work on the chip that powers the device, leaving their benchmark numbers similar to that of much cheaper devices despite the pretty screen. Apple is outpacing the Qualcomm and Samsung chips powering those devices, taking advantage of the scale of its ecosystem to invest heavily in chip development and then use the same chips across its iPhone, iPad and Apple TV product lines for multiple years. The A11 continues that tradition at an accelerated pace, along with delivering additional neural net, GPU and camera ISP capabilities that aren’t even accounted for in benchmark testing.
