Skip to Content

Developer Transition Kit Benchmarks

Despite the restriction on publishing benchmarks, the the first Xbench benchmarks are trickling in.

Here is one XBench screenshot showing the developer 3.6GHz Pentium 4 PowerMac running Xbench under the Rosetta emulation. Screenshot

On the left is the Xbench under emulation and on the right is Xbench running on a Dual 2.7GHz PowerMac G5. This simply shows that Rosetta certainly works, but is hard to give us real performance comparisons until the final shipping machines come.

ThinkSecret notes that the Intel Mac scored well in both the Quartz graphics and OpenGL graphics tests "almost matching or exceeding dual-2.5GHz G5 score".

Readers should note, that while all PowerPC native instructions are translated/emulated, since the underlying Mac OS X is running natively on the Intel processor, system tools calls/APIs should enjoy native (not emulated) speeds.

Popular Stories

MacBook Neo Feature Pastel 1

First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In: Here's How It Compares to the M1 MacBook Air

Thursday March 5, 2026 4:07 pm PST by
Benchmarks for the new MacBook Neo surfaced today, and unsurprisingly, CPU performance is almost identical to the iPhone 16 Pro. The MacBook Neo uses the same 6-core A18 Pro chip that was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro, but it has one fewer GPU core. The MacBook Neo earned a single-core score of 3461 and a multi-core score of 8668, along with a Metal score of 31286. Here's how the...
MacBook Neo Feature Pastel 1

Apple Announces $599 'MacBook Neo' With A18 Pro Chip

Wednesday March 4, 2026 6:15 am PST by
Apple today announced the "MacBook Neo," an all-new kind of low-cost Mac featuring the A18 Pro chip for $599. The MacBook Neo is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip; the A18 Pro debuted in 2024's iPhone 16 Pro models. Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, up to 3x faster for on-device AI workloads,...
Multicolored Low Cost A18 Pro MacBook Feature

Apple Accidentally Leaks 'MacBook Neo'

Tuesday March 3, 2026 7:00 am PST by
Apple appears to have prematurely revealed the name of its rumored lower-cost MacBook model, which is expected to be announced this Wednesday. A regulatory document for a "MacBook Neo" (Model A3404) has appeared on Apple's website. Unfortunately, there are no further details or images available yet. While the PDF file does not contain the "MacBook Neo" name, it briefly appeared in a link...