The first M5 Max benchmarks surfaced online, again showing Apple silicon’s superiority. Early results show the new chip outperforms every other CPU currently on the market.
The Geekbench listing reportedly comes from a 16-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M5 Max.
M5 Max raises the performance bar again
Since the switch to Apple silicon in late 2020, Apple has set new performance records with every new M-series chip. So there were big expectations for the M5 Pro and M5 Max that debuted Tuesday in upgraded MacBook Pros.
The M5 Max met those expectations, scoring almost 30,000 in Geekbench’s multi-core benchmark. For comparison, the M3 Ultra with its 32-core CPU achieves a score of 27,700 in the same benchmark. That means the M5 Pro beats what had been Apple’s fastest available processor.
The M5 Max scores about 5% higher despite featuring an 18-core CPU. Compared to the M4 Max and its 16-core CPU, the improvement looks even more impressive. The older chip typically scores around 26,000 in Geekbench’s multi-core test.
As for the single-core score, the M5 Max inside the 16-inch MacBook Pro benchmarked 4268. That’s in line with how much the regular M5 chip inside the 14-inch MacBook Pro scores. These scores make the M5 Max the fastest chip in Geekbench’s database, even when you consider the top CPUs from Intel and AMD.
Unlike previous M-series chips, the M5 Max sports six “super cores” and 12 performance cores. Apple claims up to 30% faster performance in pro workloads over its previous chip.
The 40-core GPU impresses as well
GPU scores are even more impressive, with the M5 Max’s 40-core GPU benching over 232,000 in Geekbench’s Metal benchmark. By comparison, the M3 Ultra, with its massive 80-core GPU, scores upwards of 245,000 in the benchmark. That means the M5 Max trails the M3 Ultra by only about 5% despite packing 50% fewer GPU cores.
Even more impressively, the M5 Max’s GPU outpaces Nvidia’s RTX 5080 in the same Metal benchmark.
Besides the world’s fastest CPU cores and impressive GPU gains, the M5 Max should also deliver significant speed boosts in AI workloads. Each of its 40 GPU cores includes a dedicated Neural Accelerator to accelerate LLM processing and other AI tasks.
The M5 Max should comfortably hold onto its crown of the world’s fastest CPU until the M5 Ultra debuts later this year inside the Mac Studio.
Via Max Tech
Rajesh has been writing about consumer technology for over a decade, with a strong focus on iPhones, Macs and Apple’s ecosystem. He enjoys digging into Apple software updates, hardware changes, and discovering new Mac apps that make work faster and more enjoyable.
