First Benchmarks For Apple's ARM-Based Developer Transition Kit Surfaced Online

Despite the fact that it's forbidden, the first benchmarks for Apple's ARM-based Developer Transition Kit have surfaced online. ...

Despite the fact that it's forbidden, the first benchmarks for Apple's ARM-based Developer Transition Kit have surfaced online.

Geekbench results have shown that the Developer Transition Kit, which is a Mac mini with Apple's custom-designed ARM processor, seems to be achieving average single-core and multi-core scores of 811 and 2,871, respectively.

While it appears that the results were rather underwhelming, however, bear in mind that Geekbench is running under virtualization, using Apple’s Rosetta technology, so an impact on performance is to be expected. Besides, Apple also underclocked the A12Z chip in the Mac mini slightly to 2.4GHz versus nearly 2.5GHz in the latest iPad Pro models.

Another thing that caught our attention is that the Developer Transition Kit is a four-core machine. The A12Z chip actually has eight cores, four high performance, and four low-power efficiency cores.

In comparison, the A12Z chip in the ‌Mac mini‌ outperforms Microsoft's Surface Pro X in single-core (726) testing and is on par or slightly better in multi-core performance (2,831), allow it to run x86_64 code in emulation faster than the Surface Pro X can run an Arm version natively.

The upcoming ARM-based Mac that will available to consumers, according to reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, is a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, will feature much higher levels of performance.