4217 for Apple A11 @ 2.4Ghz vs 5683 for Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz
Of course, microbenchmarks don't mean much. But the margins are thin enough for users to notice already. Add in more power, more cores, more Ghz, better optimized instruction set, more vertically integrated system, and who knows.
geekbench scores look impressive because they are very very short bursts to prevent power/thermal throttling on iphones, iphones are able to scale up/down preformance wise very quickly, x86 CPUs less so, so what is really being tested is how fast can a cpu jump from idle to full speed.
Geekbench is not at all a reliable benchmark that tells you anything about real preformance.
Its a total farce to suggest that a CPU with a power budget that is 10x to 20x larger, on a modern process, with modern archtecture is somehow just as fast or slower.
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
> iMac (27-inch Retina Mid 2017) | Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2 GHz (4 cores) | 5683
https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks
> iPhone 8 | Apple A11 Bionic @ 2.4 GHz | 4217
4217 for Apple A11 @ 2.4Ghz vs 5683 for Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz
Of course, microbenchmarks don't mean much. But the margins are thin enough for users to notice already. Add in more power, more cores, more Ghz, better optimized instruction set, more vertically integrated system, and who knows.