iPad Pro M4 Benchmarks Leaked: 9-Core Performance on iOS 17.6 Revealed

Last week, Apple hosted a special event titled “Let Loose,” unveiling not only the new iPad Pro and iPad Air but also introducing the M4 chip and the Apple Pencil Pro. The M4 chip comes in two variants: one with 10 cores (4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores), and another with 9 cores (3 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores). Following the announcement, Geekbench 6 scores for the 10-core M4 began appearing widely, while scores for the 9-core M4 only emerged in recent days.

According to Geekbench 6 CPU benchmarks, the 9-core M4 achieves a single-core score of 3630 and a multi-core score of 13060, approximately 10% lower in multi-core performance compared to the 10-core M4, which averages between 14500 and 14600. When compared to the previous generation 8-core M3, the 9-core M4 exhibits about a 13% improvement in multi-core performance. Notably, this 9-core M4 version of the iPad Pro is running iOS 17.6, an unreleased iOS version expected to be made public soon.

The new iPad Pro, equipped with the M4 chip, is built on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process. The CPU features up to 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, coupled with a 10-core GPU. This marks the first time the iPad includes dynamic cache, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing capabilities. The integrated media engine supports AV1 codec and introduces a new generation of machine learning (ML) accelerators and Apple’s most powerful neural engine to date. With higher unified memory bandwidth, the M4 chip offers improved energy efficiency and significant performance gains. The 10-core M4 will be available in the 1TB and 2TB versions of the new iPad Pro, while the 256GB/512GB models will feature the 9-core M4.