Initial GeekBench results show significant gains for iMac with Intel’s Coffee Lake processors

If you’re hankering for a speed boost from the new generation of Intel processors, 2019 might be the year for it.

Geekbench has just released the test results of Intel’s 8th and 9th-generation Coffee Lake chips.

All of the new 27-inch 5K models offer superior performance compared to their 2017 counterparts, with single-core performance up an average of 6 to 11 percent and multi-core performance up 43 to 49 percent for six-core models. The higher-end models with 3.6GHz 8-core Core i9 chip offer the biggest boost in multi-core performance, with speeds up 66 percent. 

The highest-end iMac earned a single-core score of 6157 and a multi-core score of 32293, compared to the 5864/1971 single and multi-core scores of the equivalent high-end machine. 

The base model 2019 27-inch iMac with a 3.0GHz 6-core 8th-gen chips saw significant gains, fetching a single-core score of 5222 and a multi-core score of 20145, as opposed to the 4767/13682 on the low-end 2017 model iMacs.

As such, 6-core and 8-core chips in the 27-inch iMac models are now competitive with the 8 and 10-core scores from the 2017 iMac Pro models. The 8-core iMac also saw a 16 percent higher single core performance and 10 percent lower-multicore performance that the 10-core iMac Pro.

The 21.5-inch 4K iMac saw more modest gains. The single-core performance rose from 5 to 15 percent, with multi-core performance increasing by 10 to 50 percent.

The report also noted that performance gains in the 2019 iMac models are due to higher frequencies and core counts as the underlying architecture hasn’t been updated. 

Apple’s newest iMac models were announced last week and have been arriving to customers this week. Aside from Intel’s new 8th and 9th-generation Coffee Lake chips, Radeon Pro Vega graphics options, and faster RAM, there have been no other improvements to the 2019 iMac models.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via MacRumors and GeekBench