Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) vs Intel Core i9-10900K

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CPU comparison with benchmarks


Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) CPU1 vs CPU2 Intel Core i9-10900K
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Intel Core i9-10900K

CPU comparison

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) or Intel Core i9-10900K - which processor is faster? In this comparison we look at the differences and analyze which of these two CPUs is better. We compare the technical data and benchmark results.

The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) has 11 cores with 11 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 4.06 GHz. Up to 36 GB of memory is supported in 2 memory channels. The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) was released in Q4/2023.

The Intel Core i9-10900K has 10 cores with 20 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 5.30 GHz. The CPU supports up to 128 GB of memory in 2 memory channels. The Intel Core i9-10900K was released in Q2/2020.
Apple M series (25) Family Intel Core i9 (78)
Apple M3 (6) CPU group Intel Core i 10000 (43)
3 Generation 10
M3 Architecture Comet Lake S
Mobile Segment Desktop / Server
Apple M2 Pro (10-CPU 16-GPU) Predecessor Intel Core i9-9900K
-- Successor Intel Core i9-11900K

CPU Cores and Base Frequency

The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) has 11 CPU cores and can calculate 11 threads in parallel. The clock frequency of the Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) is 0.70 GHz (4.06 GHz) while the Intel Core i9-10900K has 10 CPU cores and 20 threads can calculate simultaneously. The clock frequency of the Intel Core i9-10900K is at 3.70 GHz (5.30 GHz).

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Characteristic Intel Core i9-10900K
11 Cores 10
11 Threads 20
hybrid (big.LITTLE) Core architecture normal
No Hyperthreading Yes
No Overclocking ? Yes
0.70 GHz (4.06 GHz)
5x P-Core
A-Core 3.70 GHz (5.30 GHz)
0.74 GHz (2.75 GHz)
6x E-Core
B-Core --

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. Algorithms for ML improve their performance the more data they have collected via software. ML tasks can be processed up to 10,000 times faster than with a classic processor.

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Characteristic Intel Core i9-10900K
Apple Neural Engine AI hardware --
16 Neural cores @ 35 TOPS AI specifications --

Internal Graphics

The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) or Intel Core i9-10900K has integrated graphics, called iGPU for short. The iGPU uses the system's main memory as graphics memory and sits on the processor's die.

Apple M3 Pro (14 Core) GPU Intel UHD Graphics 630
0.39 GHz GPU frequency 0.35 GHz
1.40 GHz GPU (Turbo) 1.20 GHz
-- GPU Generation 9.5
3 nm Technology 14 nm
3 Max. displays 3
224 Compute units 24
1792 Shader 192
Yes Hardware Raytracing No
No Frame Generation No
36 GB Max. GPU Memory 64 GB
-- DirectX Version 12

Hardware codec support

A photo or video codec that is accelerated in hardware can greatly accelerate the working speed of a processor and extend the battery life of notebooks or smartphones when playing videos.

Apple M3 Pro (14 Core) GPU Intel UHD Graphics 630
Decode / Encode Codec h265 / HEVC (8 bit) Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec h265 / HEVC (10 bit) Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec h264 Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec VP9 Decode / Encode
Decode Codec VP8 Decode / Encode
Decode Codec AV1 No
Decode Codec AVC Decode / Encode
Decode Codec VC-1 Decode
Decode / Encode Codec JPEG Decode / Encode

Memory & PCIe

The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) can use up to 36 GB of memory in 2 memory channels. The maximum memory bandwidth is 153.6 GB/s. The Intel Core i9-10900K supports up to 128 GB of memory in 2 memory channels and achieves a memory bandwidth of up to 46.9 GB/s.

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Characteristic Intel Core i9-10900K
LPDDR5-6400 Memory DDR4-2933
36 GB Max. Memory 128 GB
2 (Dual Channel) Memory channels 2 (Dual Channel)
153.6 GB/s Max. Bandwidth 46.9 GB/s
No ECC No
36.00 MB L2 Cache --
-- L3 Cache 20.00 MB
4.0 PCIe version 3.0
-- PCIe lanes 16
-- PCIe Bandwidth 15.8 GB/s

Thermal Management

The thermal design power (TDP for short) of the Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) is 35 W, while the Intel Core i9-10900K has a TDP of 125 W. The TDP specifies the necessary cooling solution that is required to cool the processor sufficiently.

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Characteristic Intel Core i9-10900K
35 W TDP (PL1 / PBP) 125 W
-- TDP (PL2) --
-- TDP up --
-- TDP down 95 W
100 °C Tjunction max. 100 °C

Technical details

The Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) is manufactured in 3 nm and has 36.00 MB cache. The Intel Core i9-10900K is manufactured in 14 nm and has a 20.00 MB cache.

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Characteristic Intel Core i9-10900K
3 nm Technology 14 nm
Chiplet Chip design Monolithic
Armv8-A (64 bit) Instruction set (ISA) x86-64 (64 bit)
Rosetta 2 x86-Emulation ISA extensions SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX2
-- Socket LGA 1200
Apple Virtualization Framework Virtualization VT-x, VT-x EPT, VT-d
Yes AES-NI Yes
macOS, iPadOS Operating systems Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux
Q4/2023 Release date Q2/2020
-- Release price 490 $
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Average performance in benchmarks

⌀ Single core performance in 4 CPU benchmarks
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K (62%)
⌀ Multi core performance in 4 CPU benchmarks
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) (93%)
Intel Core i9-10900K (88%)

Cinebench 2024 (Single-Core)

The Cinebench 2024 benchmark is based on the Redshift rendering engine, which is also used in Maxon's 3D program Cinema 4D. The benchmark runs are each 10 minutes long to test whether the processor is limited by its heat generation.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
139 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
80 (58%)

Cinebench 2024 (Multi-Core)

The Multi-Core test of the Cinebench 2024 benchmark uses all cpu cores to render using the Redshift rendering engine, which is also used in Maxons Cinema 4D. The benchmark run is 10 minutes long to test whether the processor is limited by its heat generation.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
847 (90%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
936 (100%)

Cinebench R23 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
1889 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
1382 (73%)

Cinebench R23 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
13289 (83%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
15945 (100%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Single-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
2305 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
1417 (61%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
13255 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
11344 (86%)

Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The single-core benchmark only evaluates the performance of the fastest CPU core, the number of CPU cores in a processor is irrelevant here.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
3125 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
1743 (56%)

Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The multi-core benchmark evaluates the performance of all of the processor's CPU cores. Virtual thread improvements such as AMD SMT or Intel's Hyper-Threading have a positive impact on the benchmark result.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
13755 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
8990 (65%)

iGPU - FP32 Performance (Single-precision GFLOPS)

The theoretical computing performance of the internal graphics unit of the processor with simple accuracy (32 bit) in GFLOPS. GFLOPS indicates how many billion floating point operations the iGPU can perform per second.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
Apple M3 Pro (14 Core) @ 1.40 GHz
4970 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
Intel UHD Graphics 630 @ 1.20 GHz
461 (9%)

Cinebench R20 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R20 is the successor of Cinebench R15 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
645 (100%)

Cinebench R20 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R20 is the successor of Cinebench R15 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
6419 (100%)

Blender 3.1 Benchmark

In the Blender Benchmark 3.1, the scenes "monster", "junkshop" and "classroom" are rendered and the time required by the system is measured. In our benchmark we test the CPU and not the graphics card. Blender 3.1 was presented as a standalone version in March 2022.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
240 (100%)

Estimated results for PassMark CPU Mark

Some of the CPUs listed below have been benchmarked by CPU-monkey. However the majority of CPUs have not been tested and the results have been estimated by a CPU-monkey’s secret proprietary formula. As such they do not accurately reflect the actual Passmark CPU mark values and are not endorsed by PassMark Software Pty Ltd.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
23706 (100%)

Blender 2.81 (bmw27)

Blender is a free 3D graphics software for rendering (creating) 3D bodies, which can also be textured and animated in the software. The Blender benchmark creates predefined scenes and measures the time (s) required for the entire scene. The shorter the time required, the better. We selected bmw27 as the benchmark scene.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
126 (100%)

CPU-Z Benchmark 17 (Single-Core)

The CPU-Z benchmark measures a processor's performance by measuring the time it takes the system to complete all benchmark calculations. The faster the benchmark is completed, the higher the score.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
580 (100%)

CPU-Z Benchmark 17 (Multi-Core)

The CPU-Z benchmark measures a processor's performance by measuring the time it takes the system to complete all benchmark calculations. The faster the benchmark is completed, the higher the score.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 0.70 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 3.70 GHz
7347 (100%)

Cinebench R15 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R15 is the successor of Cinebench 11.5 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 4.06 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 5.30 GHz
232 (100%)

Cinebench R15 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R15 is the successor of Cinebench 11.5 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 3.80 GHz
0 (0%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 4.90 GHz
2668 (100%)

Performance for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. The performance is given in the number (trillions) of arithmetic operations per second (TOPS).
Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU)
11C 11T @ 0.70 GHz
35 (100%)
Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i9-10900K
10C 20T @ 3.70 GHz
0 (0%)

Devices using this processor

Apple M3 Pro (11-CPU 14-GPU) Intel Core i9-10900K
Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2023)
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2023)
Unknown

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