New MacBooks could demolish Windows laptops — Here's what we know

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The first alleged A14X benchmarks show staggering performance

MacBook Air 2020
(Image credit: Future)

Apple is poised to reveal new MacBooks at its "One more thing" event on November 10 next week. We suspect there will be at least one laptop running on the company's new ARM-based processors, and there could be as many as three devices using those chips. 

The question is, how does Apple Silicon fare against Intel and AMD processors, and will these laptops lose or gain performance going from Intel chips to custom silicon? If we take the latest benchmarks as fact, then it's good news for Apple fans. 

The first alleged benchmarks (via Apple Insider) for the Apple A14X Bionic SoC have reportedly leaked, revealing exceptional performance. If these scores are legit, the A14X topped the Intel Core i9-9880H CPU (6869 multi-core) in the 16-inch MacBook Pro with a resounding 1634 for single-core and 7220 for multi-core. 

The supposed listing shows the A14X Bionic as a 1.80Ghz processor with a max turbo of 3.10Ghz. If these numbers are accurate, it would be the first Apple processor clocking above 3Ghz. The 14X is supposedly an 8-core chip that will be accompanied by 8GB of RAM. 

These figures are very promising, but before you get too excited, a word of caution: these benchmarks might not be the real deal. The listing doesn't give a product name and we haven't seen any compelling evidence that the benchmarks are actually for an Apple product. 

If we disregard my warning for a brief second and take these results as accurate, then the new MacBooks could be more powerful than even the best-performing Windows 10 laptops on the market. We should find out if that's true next week at Apple's event.

Phillip Tracy
Phillip Tracy

Phillip Tracy is the assistant managing editor at Laptop Mag where he reviews laptops, phones and other gadgets while covering the latest industry news. After graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Phillip became a tech reporter at the Daily Dot. There, he wrote reviews for a range of gadgets and covered everything from social media trends to cybersecurity. Prior to that, he wrote for RCR Wireless News covering 5G and IoT. When he's not tinkering with devices, you can find Phillip playing video games, reading, traveling or watching soccer.