At the hardware level, these two phones are virtually identical: same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset built on a 3 nm process, same Adreno 830 GPU, same 16 GB of DDR5 RAM at 5300 MHz, and matching 1 TB of internal storage. Every architectural detail — cache configuration, memory bandwidth, TDP, shading units — mirrors the other. In theory, these are the same phone under the hood.
The benchmark results, however, tell a nuanced story. The OnePlus 15 scores notably higher in Geekbench 6, both single-core (3726 vs 3234) and multi-core (11199 vs 10059), suggesting its CPU is tuned more aggressively for peak computational throughput — relevant for tasks like image processing, app launches, and sustained CPU-bound workloads. Conversely, the Redmi K90 Pro Max posts a substantially higher AnTuTu score of 4,350,000 versus 3,434,000, a composite metric that weights GPU, memory, and UX performance heavily. This implies the Redmi may be optimized for broader system-level and graphics tasks rather than raw CPU bursts.
Declaring a clear winner here is genuinely difficult because the advantage depends on the workload. For CPU-intensive tasks, the OnePlus 15 leads; for overall system and GPU-oriented performance as captured by AnTuTu, the Redmi K90 Pro Max has the edge. For the vast majority of users, both phones will feel indistinguishable in daily use — this is a contest at the very top of the performance spectrum where real-world differences are marginal.