Apple’s A12Z Mac Mini Seemingly Outperforms Microsoft’s ARM-Based Surface Pro X

The concept of ARM-based computers isn’t new, and in fact, other companies have attempted this in the past. Microsoft is one of those companies where they launched the Surface Pro X back in 2019. However, it seems that despite it being a newer device, it appears that Geekbench listings have revealed that Apple’s Mac Mini powered by the A12Z Bionic chipset has managed to outperform it.

In case you’re wondering why this matters, it is because Apple has recently announced their plans to eventually transition to ARM-based chipsets for their Mac computers and move away from using Intel processors. Naturally this has resulted in many wondering why well these ARM-based Macs will perform, and these benchmarks are looking pretty promising.

According to the Geekbench results, the Mac Mini with the A12Z chipset scored 811 and 2,871 on the single-core and multi-core tests respectively, whereas the Surface Pro X managed 726 and 2,831 respectively. While not exactly blazing ahead, it should be noted that the A12Z is based on a 2-year old chipset, whereas the Microsoft Surface Pro X uses a newer chipset.

Also, given that the Mac Mini Developer Transition Kit is relying on Rosetta 2 to test their apps, it means that performance, in theory, should be much better once these apps have been optimized properly for the A12Z. While there are other factors to consider instead of performance, at the very least it seems that on paper, Apple’s plans to move away from Intel seems to hold a lot of promise.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Computers
Tags: mac mini, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Surface Pro