Early benchmark results reveal the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip can be as powerful as one of Apple’s best processors — the M1 Ultra. The M1 Ultra was the company’s first Ultra chip, introduced in 2022 with the Mac Studio. While it’s only natural that base versions of chips eventually catch up with older, more powerful processors, not only was Apple able to achieve that in only three years, but it also means the company could bring the equivalent power of a $4,000 computer to one that costs just $1,599.
The M5 chip matches the M1 Ultra in multi-core performance in Geekbench benchmarks. More interestingly, this new processor is on par with the binned M3 Max chip, another powerful Apple processor. Besides that, the M5 chip has the highest single-core scores for a Mac or PC processor in the Geekbench 6 database, with a score of 4,263. Previously, the best single-core score belonged to the M4 Max chip on the 16-inch MacBook Pro — 3,914.
The M5 generation is only getting better
So far, Apple has only introduced the M5 chip with next-gen AI graphics. Early next year, the company is expected to release the M5 Pro and M5 Max variations of this processor, greatly improving the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine capabilities. While an M5 Ultra might take longer to arrive, Apple has been doing a terrific job with its M-series processors. With the M5 generation, Apple is focusing on GPU enhancements, delivering 30% faster performance than the M4. This improvement comes from a new 10-core GPU, each core equipped with a dedicated Neural Accelerator — offering more than 4x the peak GPU compute of the previous model.
Besides that, Apple offers the third generation of its ray-tracing engine, a new 16-core Neural Engine that is optimized for AI workloads, and a new 153GB/s unified memory bandwidth, which provides a nearly 30% increase over the M4. This makes it better for running large language models locally. The latest MacBook Pro with the M5 chip is going on sale on Wednesday, October 22, alongside the M5 iPad Pro and the latest M5 Apple Vision Pro.
