The Geekerwan overclocking team put the Apple M4 processor to the test under extreme conditions, cooling it with liquid nitrogen. The Apple M4, powering the new iPad Pro, produced remarkable single-core performance results in the Geekbench v6 benchmark, outperforming the M3 Max in MacBook Pro by 28% and outshining the M2 Ultra in Mac Studio by 44%.
Apple’s M4 processor, packing more than 28 billion transistors and manufactured using TSMC’s second-gen 3nm process, is employed in the new iPad Pro tablets. It comes in two configurations based on the number of performance cores. The more powerful variant, which includes 10 CPU cores (four performance and six energy-efficient), is embedded in the 16GB RAM model, while the version with one less performance core (3+6) powers the 8GB RAM variant.
The Geekerwan team placed the Kingpin Cooling T-Rex Rev 4 CPU LN2 liquid nitrogen container directly on the iPad Pro, at the location of the M4 processor, overclocking the chip to a frequency of 4.41 GHz. Detailed video documentation of the overclocking process and tests is expected to be published on May,18.
The iPad Pro M4 scored 4001 points in single-core mode, which is a 28% uplift over the M3 Max in the 16-inch MacBook Pro. It also outperformed the M2 Ultra in Mac Studio by a massive 44%. The impressive single-core performance of the M4, scoring 3767 points in Geekbench v6, deserves mention even without the use of liquid nitrogen.
However, the multi-core performance of the M4 isn’t as impressive. It lagged 54% behind the 16-core M3 Max and fell behind the 24-core M2 Ultra by nearly 57%. Geekerwan’s highest score from multiple trials on the Geekbench v6 multi-core test was 14,785 points. It’s noteworthy that the processor was tested in a configuration of three performance cores and six energy-efficient cores. The team has promised to test the more powerful version in the coming days.
