M3 upgrade vs. M4 base benchmarks

[volkwagen1300]

OK, I just picked up a refurb base M4 iMac with 1 TB storage. Definitely an upgrade from my 2017 21.5". Looking at the benchmarks for the upgrade M3 iMac with 8/10 CPU/GPU cores vs the base M4 with 8/8 cores on geekbench, they look about the same, actually a little higher for the M4 CPU scores:

M3 8/10 cores: 3043 Single-Core Score, 11688 Multi-Core Score. GPU: 30594 OpenCL, 47599 Metal GPU Score
M4 8/8 cores: 3695 Single-Core Score, 13590 Multi-Core Score. GPU: 30516 OpenCL GPU Score, 47914 Metal GPU Score

With the caveat that this is a geekbench benchmark, not a real-world experience in an app with photo/video editing etc., am I to understand that the base M4 is generally on par with the upgrade M3 in most cases? Just trying to understand how these benchmarks translate to real life.

thanks,

 

[gilby101]

Single core: The M4 has a higher CPU speed (4.4 GHz compared with 4.1 GHz) for the performance cores as well as other unknown improvements. So expect M4 single core to be faster.
Multicore: Both have 4 performance cores so reasonable that the multicore (using the performance cores) shows an improvement similar to single core.
OpenCL: Not sure this is of much relevance on a Mac.
Metal: The M3 has 10 GPU cores, the M4 has 8. So similar scores indicate that the M4 8 core has improved to nearly same score as M3 10 core.

The difference between similar (numbers of performance and CPU cores) M3 and M4 is significant in benchmark scores, but most of the time wouldn't be noticed.

The difference between 8 and 10 core cpu is in the number of efficiency cores, not performance cores - more can be done at low power (Watts).

Differences in ports between M3 and M4 and between 8 or 10 core CPU models may be more important - TB3 or TB4 and number of ports. Look into that if you are considering purchase.