Home > CPU Comparison > Core i9 9900K or Apple M1: what's better?

Intel Core i9 9900K vs Apple M1

41 out of 100
Intel Core i9 9900K
VS
51 out of 100
Apple M1
Intel Core i9 9900K
Apple M1

We compared two 8-core CPUs: the 3.6 GHz Intel Core i9 9900K (desktop) against the 3.2 GHz Apple M1 (laptop). On this page, you'll find out which processor has better performance in benchmarks, games and other useful information.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Performance
  4. Specs
  5. Comments (1)

Review

General overview and comparison of the processors
Single-Core Performance
Performance in single-threaded apps and benchmarks
Multi-Core Performance
Measure performance when all cores are involved
Power Efficiency
The efficiency score of power consumption
Integrated Graphics
iGPU capabilities for gaming and 3D-intensive tasks
The "iGPU" and "Power Efficiency" have a minor impact on the NanoReview Score for desktop CPU.
NanoReview Final Score
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Value for money (Beta)

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Key Differences

What are the key differences between M1 and 9900K
Advantages of Intel Core i9 9900K
  • Supports up to 128 GB DDR4-2666 RAM
  • Unlocked multiplier
Advantages of Apple M1
  • More powerful Apple M1 GPU integrated graphics: 2.6 vs 0.5 TFLOPS
  • More modern manufacturing process – 5 versus 14 nanometers
  • Around 26.65 GB/s (64%) higher theoretical memory bandwidth
  • 49% faster in a single-core Geekbench v6 test - 2410 vs 1621 points
  • Newer - released 2 years and 2 months later
  • Newer PCI Express version – 4.0

Test in Benchmarks

Comparing the performance of CPUs across various tasks
CPU:
Core i9 9900K
vs
Apple M1

Cinebench

Reputable cross-platform benchmark for high-performance processors
Cinebench 2024 (Single)
Core i9 9900K
79
Apple M1 +39%
110
Cinebench 2024 (Multi)
Core i9 9900K +34%
706
Apple M1
525
Submit your benchmark results

GeekBench v6

The new version of this benchmark emulates common operations often used in real-world apps
Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)
Core i9 9900K
1621
Apple M1 +49%
2410
Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)
Core i9 9900K
8151
Apple M1 +5%
8547
File compression 545.7 MB/sec 941 MB/sec
Clang compilation 67.7 Klines/sec 68.2 Klines/sec
HTML 5 Browser 175.1 pages/sec 192.4 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 275.6 Mpixels/sec 211.9 Mpixels/sec
Text processing 159 pages/sec 250.8 pages/sec
Background blur 40.4 images/sec 34.1 images/sec
Photo processing 68.6 images/sec 60.9 images/sec
Ray tracing 14.5 Mpixels/sec 9.74 Mpixels/sec
Sources: GeekBench [1], [2] – 610 & 760 samples

PassMark

Synthetic test that focuses on raw computational performance for low-level functions
Passmark CPU (Single-Core)
Core i9 9900K
2911
Apple M1 +26%
3673
Passmark CPU (Multi-Core)
Core i9 9900K +28%
18059
Apple M1
14123
Integer math 66.1 GOps/sec 33.2 GOps/sec
Floating point math 41 GOps/sec 35.5 GOps/sec
Find prime numbers 46M Primes/sec 141M Primes/sec
Random string sorting 36.1M Strings/sec 21M Strings/sec
Data encryption 6.3 GBytes/sec 8.5 GBytes/sec
Data compression 282.6 MBytes/sec 168 MBytes/sec
Physics 929 Frames/sec 1359 Frames/sec
Extended instructions 19B Matrices/sec 7B Matrices/sec
Sources: PassMark [3], [4] – 17571 & 10702 samples

Blender

3D rendering test that measures CPU performance in 3D modeling tasks (uses all cores)
Blender CPU
Core i9 9900K +87%
178.22
Apple M1
95.27

Performance Per Watt

Shows the score you get per each watt of PL1 TDP
Cinebench 2024 / Watt 7.4 PPW 37.5 PPW
Geekbench 6 Multi / Watt 85.8 PPW 610.5 PPW
Passmark CPU Mark / Watt 190.1 PPW 1008.8 PPW
Blender / Watt 1.88 PPW 6.81 PPW
These are rough calculations, as most CPUs surpass PL1 TDP wattage even in multicore workloads.

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Intel Core i9 9900K
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-01-01 (Mr Scare)Cinebench 202479 / 662
πŸ“˜ 2025-08-09 (EndOfTheWorld77)Cinebench 202478 / 591
πŸ“˜ 2024-03-28 (Gribbstar)Cinebench 202479 / 706
Add View all (3)
Apple M1
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-24 -> op1GeekBench2420 / 8793
πŸ“˜ 2026-03-06 (gaR)GeekBench2396 / 8763
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)GeekBench2395 / 8820
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)Cinebench 2024110 / 465
πŸ“˜ 2025-01-17 (Qianhe)Cinebench 2024110 / 525
Add View all (7)

Specifications

Full technical specification of Intel Core i9 9900K and Apple M1

General

Vendor Intel Apple
Released October 8, 2018 November 20, 2020
Type Desktop Laptop
Instruction Set x86-64 ARMv8
Codename Coffee Lake Apple M1
Model number i9-9900K -
Integrated GPU UHD Graphics 630 Apple M1 GPU
Rival Equivalent - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X -
Successor - Intel Core Ultra 9 285K - Apple M5 (10-Core)

CPU

Performance Cores
P-Cores 8 4
P-Threads 16 4
Base Frequency (P) 3.6 GHz 3.2 GHz
Turbo Boost Frequency (P) 5 GHz -
Efficient Cores
E-Cores - 4
E-Threads - 4
Base Frequency (E) - 2.1 GHz
Total
Total Cores 8 8
Total Threads 16 8
Bus Frequency 100 MHz -
Multiplier 36x -
Bus Bandwidth 8 GT/s -
L1 Cache 64K (per core) 192K (per core)
L2 Cache 256K (per core) 12MB (shared)
L3 Cache 16MB (shared) -
Unlocked Multiplier Yes No

Package

Transistors - 16 billions
Fabrication Process 14 nm 5 nm
TDP (PL1) 95 W 14 W
Socket LGA-1151 Apple M-Socket
Peak Temperature 100Β°C -
Desktop CPU ranking (#145th place)

iGPU

Integrated Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630 Apple M1 GPU
GPU Base Clock 350 MHz 450 MHz
GPU Boost Clock 1200 MHz 1278 MHz
Shading Units 192 1024
TMUs 24 64
ROPs 3 32
Execution Units 24 128
TGP 15 W 15 W
iGPU FLOPS
Core i9 9900K
0.5 TFLOPS
Apple M1 +420%
2.6 TFLOPS
More info: Apple M1 GPU (8-core) compared to UHD Graphics 630

Memory Support

Memory Types - DDR4-2666 - LPDDR4X-4266
Max. Memory Size 128 GB 16 GB
Memory Channels 2 8
Max. Memory Bandwidth 41.6 GB/s 68.25 GB/s
ECC Support No No

Misc

Official Site Intel Core i9 9900K official page -
PCI Express Version 3.0 4.0
PCI Express Lanes 16 -

Cast your vote

Choose between two processors
115 (24.6%)
353 (75.4%)
Total votes: 468

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8. Intel Core i9 9900K vs Intel Core i9 14900K
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10. Intel Core i9 9900K vs Intel Core i7 14700K
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Comments

So which CPU will you choose: Apple M1 or Intel Core i9 9900K?
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Theo April 30, 2022 at 06:24 PM
M1 because of its raw GPU performance and power efficiency. It's crazy to think that Apple went from nothing to INSANE in-house CPUs. Great on them.
+8 Reply
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