Kirin 9030 Pro Benchmarks: How Close Has Huawei Come to Modern Flagship Chips?

The Kirin 9030 Pro is Huawei’s most powerful mobile chip. Its nine-core CPU performs well in multi-threaded workloads, while the Maleoon 935 GPU is significantly faster than the previous generation. However, the platform still trails leading Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple solutions in single-core speed, gaming performance, and power efficiency.

Performance can vary by hundreds of points between devices. A single Geekbench result therefore does not represent every Kirin 9030 Pro model.

Kirin 9030 Pro Results in Different Devices

The MatePad Pro Max delivers the highest multi-core score. At 6,504 points, it is roughly 25% faster than the Mate 80 Pro Max and Mate X7. Its larger chassis likely allows the tablet to sustain higher power consumption and maintain peak clock speeds for longer.

The Mate 80 Pro Max and Mate X7 are almost identical under full multi-core load, but the foldable model falls behind by more than 400 points in the single-core test. This difference suggests stricter power and thermal limits in the Mate X7, although firmware may also affect the result.

Huawei’s high-end smartphones score around 2.1 million points in AnTuTu 11. The Mate 80 Pro configuration matters: the Kirin 9030 Pro is used only in the 16 GB version. The 12 GB model is equipped with the standard Kirin 9030.

Why Does the Kirin 9030 Pro Have Nine Cores and 14 Threads?

The CPU is divided into three clusters:

• one prime core clocked at up to 2.75 GHz;

• four performance cores clocked at up to 2.27 GHz;

• four efficiency cores clocked at up to 1.72 GHz.

The chip contains nine physical cores in total. Some of the faster cores can process two threads simultaneously, allowing the system to use up to 14 threads.

Compared with the Kirin 9020, Huawei has raised the clock speeds and added another physical core. The largest gains appear in applications that can distribute work across many processing units.

The Kirin 9030 Pro is manufactured by SMIC using its N+3 process, a further development of China’s 7 nm-class production technology. These manufacturing nodes lag behind the latest TSMC and Samsung processes, making it harder for the chip to maintain high frequencies, moderate power consumption, and low temperatures at the same time.

What Do the Geekbench Results Mean?

In Geekbench 6, devices score between 1,297 and 1,818 points in the single-core test. A result of around 1,800 points significantly narrows Huawei’s gap with its competitors, but still falls short of the fastest current mobile platforms.

The wide range also confirms how strongly performance depends on the device. The same processor scores around 1,800 points in a tablet but less than 1,300 points in a foldable smartphone.

The Kirin 9030 Pro performs best when all CPU cores are under load. Multi-core results of between 5,200 and 6,500 points confirm that the chip is better suited to sustained, heavily threaded workloads.

The platform is less competitive in applications that mainly depend on one or two fast cores. A strong multi-core score therefore does not guarantee equally high performance in every workload.

Maleoon 935 and Gaming Performance

The Maleoon 935 GPU replaces the Maleoon 920. Some tests show a generational improvement of around 60%, but even after this increase, Huawei’s graphics architecture remains slower than the GPUs used in flagship Snapdragon and Dimensity platforms.

An overall AnTuTu 11 score of around 2.1 million can create an exaggerated impression of gaming performance. The GPU section contributes approximately 345,000 points, while the rest comes from the CPU, memory, and UX tests.

Less demanding games can run at high graphics settings, but more intensive titles will require reduced visual quality. These limitations become particularly noticeable in thin foldable devices, where the cooling system has less space to dissipate heat during sustained workloads.

Which Device Makes the Best Use of the Kirin 9030 Pro?

The MatePad Pro Max delivers the best multi-core result, while the Mate 80 Pro Max produces the most consistent smartphone scores. The Mate X7 nearly matches it under full multi-core load but performs significantly worse in the single-core test.

In the Mate 80 Pro, the higher-end Kirin 9030 Pro is available only with 16 GB of memory. The 12 GB version uses the standard Kirin 9030, so results from the two configurations should not be combined.

Conclusion

The Kirin 9030 Pro has narrowed Huawei’s gap in CPU benchmarks, but it has not eliminated the company’s disadvantage in graphics performance or power efficiency. The chip is particularly strong when all CPU cores are active, reaching more than 6,500 points in Geekbench 6 inside the MatePad Pro Max.

Single-core performance still varies considerably between devices, while the overall AnTuTu score overstates the chip’s gaming capabilities. The Kirin 9030 Pro performs best in heavily threaded workloads, but it has not become an all-round flagship leader.