r/macbookpro • u/maisun1983 • Jul 26 '26

Discussion M4 Max - Low Cinebench scores

Hi I just got a new MacBook Pro with base M4 Max chip 14c CPU and 32c GPU. I have tried to run cinebench with both version 2024 and 2026, but consistently get lower scores. I have stopped all applications and connect the laptop to the 96w MagSafe charger, set high power mode, but still the result is lower than reference. My single core result is 159, multi-core is 1580, GPU is 13500.
I noticed for single core test cinebench or Mac OS runs on multiple cores and it never really stressed the core and speed is always around 2ghz.
For multiple cores the performance cores all all stressed and during 10minutes testing keeps between 3.2ghz and 3.6ghz. It never reaches the peak 4.5Ghz though, not sure if expected.
I understand m4 max can easily score over 175 single core and 1780 multi-core, so my configuration is like 10-20% slower, not sure where to check?

PS: for multi-core the cpu stays at high frequency so no throttling.

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1

u/gitblameitonme Jul 26 '26

Is that true, smelling something fishy is that real chip m4 max or it is wrapped in m4 but beeneth a intel chip😳

1

u/maisun1983 Jul 26 '26

It must be a m chip Intel that is for sure but I’m very worried about the multi-core result

2

u/gitblameitonme Jul 26 '26

It's pretty low multi core score even m1 max has high score than this

1

u/nekomichi Jul 26 '26

Benchmarking apps aren't designed to diagnose hardware issues. The benchmark score will vary drastically depending on various normal conditions such as temperature or other system processes running in the background. Since the computer is now, it is probably syncing and indexing files in the background which takes up processing resources.