iPhone 16 Pro A18 Pro Chip Full Review: Performance, AI, and Gaming Benchmarks Compared

Apple iPhone 16 Pro A18 Pro Chipset Full Review: Performance, Gaming & AI Upgrades
The Apple iPhone 16 Pro comes with Apple's newest flagship processor — the Apple A18 Pro. This next-generation chipset has been specially designed with a strong focus on Apple Intelligence, ensuring its features operate at peak efficiency. Built on second-generation 3nm architecture technology and manufactured by TSMC, the A18 Pro brings significant enhancements while retaining the core foundation of last year’s A17 Pro chip, which debuted in the iPhone 15 Pro.

A18 Pro vs A17 Pro: What’s New in the iPhone 16 Pro?
Last year, Apple introduced 3nm architecture in the A17 Pro, making it the most power-efficient chip of its time. Now, the new Apple 16 Pro chipset — A18 Pro — improves on that efficiency by an additional 20% and delivers a 15% performance boost. While not a massive leap forward, this upgrade provides a noticeable difference, especially in gaming performance and intensive tasks on the iPhone 16pro.
We’ll delve deeper into the details and compare the A18 Pro chip with both the A17 Pro and the regular A18 chip, used in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus.

Apple A18 Pro Specifications (iPhone 16 Pro)
The iPhone 16 pro Apple chipset is fully optimized for Apple Intelligence, setting a new benchmark in AI performance. Key upgrades include:

1. 16-Core Neural Engine
  • Capable of 35 trillion operations per second.
  • Drives all Apple Intelligence features significantly faster than the previous generation.
  • Apple claims 15% faster AI performance than the A17 Pro.
Although both chips have the same neural engine, the iPhone 16 pro apple outperforms due to a 17% increase in memory bandwidth, thanks to the upgrade from 8GB LPDDR5 to 8GB LPDDR5X RAM. This enhancement delivers faster and smoother multitasking and AI performance.

2. New 6-Core CPU
  • 2 Performance Cores upgraded from 3.78GHz to 4.05GHz.
  • 4 Efficiency Cores upgraded from 2.11GHz to 2.42GHz.
These improvements contribute to:
  • 15% increased overall performance
  • 20% lower power consumption compared to the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro.
3. Upgraded 6-Core GPU
  • GPU frequency boosted from 1398MHz to 1490MHz.
  • FLOPS increased from 2147.2 Gigaflops to 2289 Gigaflops.
In simple terms, this translates to:
  • 20% faster GPU performance compared to the A17 Pro.
Additional upgrades:
  • New video encoder
  • New image signal processor — encodes images and videos 2X faster
  • Advanced display engine for better screen optimization
A18 Pro vs A18 Chip: What's the Difference?
The A18 chip, found in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, shares most of the architecture with the A18 Pro chip in the 16 Pro iPhone. However, it has one less GPU core, totaling 5 GPU cores instead of six.
This single-core reduction results in:
  • 17% lower GPU performance
  • Slight impact on graphics and multimedia tasks
Performance Comparison: A17 Pro vs A18 vs A18 Pro
Let’s compare the benchmark scores across the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Plus.

1. A17 Pro – iPhone 15 Pro
  • Single-Core Score: 2920
  • Multi-Core Score: 7447
  • AnTuTu Score: 1,532,369
  • 3DMark Wildlife Extreme: 3712
  • 3DMark Solar Bay: 6525
  • NPU Score (Geekbench AI): 32,100

2. A18 Pro – iPhone 16 Pro / iPhone Pro 16
  • Single-Core Score: 3558
  • Multi-Core Score: 8958
  • AnTuTu Score: 1,804,414
  • 3DMark Wildlife Extreme: 4898
  • 3DMark Solar Bay: 7858
  • NPU Score: 44,969
This shows the iPhone16 pro outperforms all previous models, especially in AI-related tasks and gaming.

3. A18 – iPhone 16 Plus
  • Single-Core Score: 3256
  • Multi-Core Score: 8096
  • AnTuTu Score: 1,605,038
  • 3DMark Wildlife Extreme: 4324
  • 3DMark Solar Bay: 6691
  • NPU Score: 44,704
Even with slightly lower GPU performance, the iPhone 16 Plus still beats the iPhone 15 Pro in AI and CPU benchmarks.

Gaming & Thermal Performance: iPhone 16 Pro
The gaming performance on the i 16 pro has improved significantly. Thanks to the upgraded 6 GPU cores and higher GPU frequencies, graphics rendering is smoother, and frame rates are more stable.
Improved Thermal Management
Apple has redesigned the internal structure of the iphone16pro to handle heat better. This ensures more stable performance during long gaming sessions, video editing, or heavy multitasking.

So, whether you're gaming or using Apple Intelligence features, the iPhone 16 pro Apple delivers a noticeably better experience.

Final Verdict: Is iPhone 16 Pro Worth the Upgrade?
While the Apple 16 pro may not look like a massive jump on paper compared to the A17 Pro, the real-world improvements are evident — especially in AI performance, gaming, thermal efficiency, and graphics rendering.
If you're coming from an iPhone 15 Pro, the jump is incremental but meaningful. For those on older models, the iPhone16 Pro is undoubtedly a solid upgrade with forward-looking features tailored for Apple Intelligence and next-gen performance needs.
Apart from this, if you want to read about other things of iPhone 16 Pro, then the link is given below, you can read easily by clicking.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is the processor of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. The iPhone 16 Pro is powered by Apple’s latest flagship chip, the A18 Pro, built on second-generation 3nm architecture for enhanced performance and efficiency.

2. What is the single core score of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. The iPhone 16 Pro scores 3,558 in single-core performance, which is about 22% higher than the iPhone 15 Pro’s score.

3. What is the multi core score of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. The iPhone 16 Pro achieves a multi-core score of 8,958—approximately 20% higher than the iPhone 15 Pro’s multi-core performance.

4. What is the antutu score of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. The iPhone 16 Pro scores an impressive 1,804,144 on the AnTuTu benchmark.

5. What is the RAM type of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. Apple uses LPDDR5X RAM in the iPhone 16 Pro, offering faster memory speeds and improved efficiency.

6. How is the performance of iPhone 16 Pro?
Ans. The iPhone 16 Pro delivers noticeably faster performance. Compared to the iPhone 15 Pro with the A17 Pro chip, it offers up to a 15% performance boost.