TECH – In the latest benchmark revelations, Apple’s A19 chip, which powers the upcoming iPhone 17 lineup, has claimed the top spot in PassMark’s single-core performance ranking, outperforming leading desktop and mobile processors. Despite passive cooling and operating within the constraints of a smartphone, the A19 recorded a PassMark single-thread score of 5,149, edging out its sibling A19 Pro (5,088) and surpassing stalwarts such as the M3 Ultra, Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K, and AMD’s EPYC 4585PX.
What makes this feat even more impressive is its reported efficiency: the A19 is estimated to draw only ~4 watts under single-thread load, far less than the 44W consumed by the Intel 285K or 56W by the EPYC, according to PassMark’s estimates. The comparison becomes dramatic when one considers that those competing CPUs rely on active cooling solutions, while the A19 operates passively.
While the A19 leads in single-core workloads, it naturally lags behind in multi-core performance due to its limited number of cores. In multi-threaded benchmarks, desktops and server chips with higher core counts remain dominant. Still, the A19’s performance in the single-core domain underscores how far mobile SoC (system-on-a-chip) engineering has evolved—and how aggressively Apple is pushing boundaries.
Read More: Snapdragon X2 Elite Series Unveiled with 80 TOPS NPU
The architecture of the A19 was announced alongside the iPhone 17 series, with the A19 and A19 Pro built on TSMC’s N3P (3nm class) process. The chip uses a 6-core configuration, divided into 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, with differences in caching and clock speeds distinguishing the regular and Pro variants. The A19 Pro is also reported to have enhancements in microarchitectural front-end bandwidth, branch-prediction logic, and increased last-level cache on the efficiency cores.
These gains not only propel Apple’s mobile chips ahead of many desktop alternatives but also reflect a paradigm shift in expectations for handheld devices. As SoCs become more powerful, the line between high-end mobile experience and desktop responsiveness narrows. The A19’s record suggests that future smartphones may handle tasks once reserved for PCs with increasing ease—and with substantially better energy efficiency.
That said, benchmarks such as PassMark measure specific workloads and should be interpreted carefully. Real-world performance depends on software, system integration, thermal limits, and sustained loads. Yet the A19’s achievement in single-thread performance is a milestone in silicon design—highlighting both Apple’s engineering ambition and broader shifts in how we think about computing power.
Sources: Tom Hardware
