The single-core story belongs to the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple's A19 Pro chip posts a Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3,781 — a commanding lead over the Xiaomi's 3,234 — which reflects Apple's continued dominance in per-core CPU efficiency. For tasks that rely on a single fast core, such as app launches, UI responsiveness, and many everyday operations, this translates to a noticeably snappier feel. The iPhone also carries a larger 16 MB L2 cache versus 12 MB, which helps keep frequently accessed data closer to the processor and reduces latency in sustained workloads.
Zoom out to broader performance, however, and the Xiaomi 17 Pro asserts itself decisively. Its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip scores 3,691,009 on AnTuTu — nearly a million points ahead of the iPhone's 2,707,681 — and edges ahead in multi-core Geekbench as well. The most striking gap is in GPU compute: the Xiaomi's Adreno 830 packs 1,536 shading units against the Apple GPU's 128, a gulf that points to a substantial raw graphics throughput advantage for GPU-heavy workloads like 3D gaming and compute tasks. The Xiaomi also offers more RAM (16 GB vs 12 GB) at a faster speed (5,300 MHz vs 4,800 MHz), higher memory bandwidth (85.1 GB/s vs 78.8 GB/s), and a lower TDP (8.2W vs 10W), suggesting it achieves its higher throughput more efficiently.
The verdict depends on the workload. For raw single-threaded speed, the iPhone 17 Pro retains a real edge that matters in day-to-day use. But on virtually every other performance dimension — overall benchmark scores, graphics power, memory capacity, and efficiency — the Xiaomi 17 Pro holds a clear and measurable advantage, making it the stronger performer for demanding, multi-threaded, and GPU-intensive tasks.