Dina Bader: Apple's new M1 iMac is 56% faster than the high-end 21.5-inch Intel iMac

The results are basically what everyone was expecting.

What you need to know

Benchmarks for the new M1 iMac have hit Geekbench.
The results show a big performance boost over the previous generation.

Apple's new M1 iMac is, as anyone would have expected, wicked fast.

As reported by MacRumors, the first benchmarks from Apple's new desktop are beginning to show up on Geekbench. As expected, performance on the M1 iMac is comparable to other M1-powered Macs like the M1 MacBook Air, M1 MacBook Pro, and M1 Mac mini.

According to the benchmarks, the new iMac is 56% faster than the previous high-end 21.5-inch iMac.

Benchmarks are for the iMac21,1, which is likely the entry-level option with an 8-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, and two Thunderbolt ports. The M1 iMac benchmarks list 8 CPU cores and a base frequency of 3.2GHz, and they're running macOS 11.3.

The 24-inch M1 iMac significantly outperforms the 2019 21.5-inch iMac with an Intel chip that it's replacing, and it's going to be a solid upgrade over all older 21.5-inch machines.

The previous-generation high-end 21.5-inch iMac earned a single-core score of 1109 and a multi-core score of 6014, so the M1 iMac is 56 percent faster when it comes to single-core performance and 24 percent faster when it comes to multi-core performance.

While the new M1 iMac smokes all configurations of the 21.5-inch iMac with an Intel chip, the high-end 27-inch iMac does still outperform the M1 iMac when it comes to multi-core performance.

Compared to the current high-end 27-inch iMac, the M1 Mac outperforms in single-core performance, but it is lagging behind the 10th-generation Comet Lake Intel chip in multi-core performance. The high-end 27-inch iMac earned a single-core score of 1247 and a multi-core score of 9002.

The M1 iMac's single-core performance is 38 percent faster, but the Intel iMac's multi-core performance is 25 percent faster. The M1 iMac does outperform lower-end 27-inch iMac models with Intel chips, beating the 6-core Intel models in both single and multi-core performance.

While the new M1 iMac doesn't beat out the high-end 27-inch iMac, it really isn't supposed to. The 24-inch M1 iMac is meant as a replacement for the 21.5-inch iMac and Apple is surely working on a different model to replace the current 27-inch model that will most likely pack an even faster Apple silicon chip.

If you're trying to figure out which Mac is best for you, check out our list of the Best Mac in 2021.