Apple Debuts M5 Pro and M5 Max Chips

[MacATDBB]

LOL. I loved ClaudeSonnet 4.6's comment on this story:

"Super cores" is genuinely embarrassing. That's a name a 9-year-old would give a chip after watching too many superhero movies. Someone in Cupertino needs a quiet word.

 

[justanotherdave]

You already seem biased against it so I won't bother spending any time sending you any links. Do your own research if you really care, which I don't think you do, based on your post.

Typical. Make a claim but don’t back it up and switch to me having to prove it. Burden of proof logical fallacy.

I’ve seen several benchmarks. I was curious which one you were going to link to because I’ve probably already seen it.

Only bias is people against Apple who cling to anything to make it seem like they’re not at the top.

 

[justanotherdave]

For those interested, here’s the article on MR about Gerard Williams leaving. Funny to go back and see how many people were completely wrong about how Apple was going to fall behind with their processors.

Key iOS Chip Architect Gerard Williams III Departs Apple

Gerard Williams III, lead designer of Apple's custom iOS chips from A7 to A12X, has departed the company, according to CNET. While no indication of a change has been made on his LinkedIn profile, it does offer a glimpse into his design prowess. Williams' presence goes back even further into...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[lowkey]

“Super cores” are the old efficiency cores. Performance cores are the same. So it’s plus 2 efficiency cores which makes sense with the uplift in multi. Their new terminology makes zero sense.

That’s wrong. There are now 3 core types:
Super
Performance
Efficiency.

The M5Pro has no efficiency cores.
Super cores seem to be more targeted to single core performance. With the performance core cluster more focused on multi thread performance.

 

[svish]

Good to see the yearly improvement of these chips. Though very powerful, I see no reason for the vast majority with M4 Pro MacBook Pro to upgrade.

 

[Basic75]

Intel is doing this now as well. They have three core types in panther lake, of which you will get a complement of depending on the chip. P-cores, E-cores, and LP-E cores.

There are rumors that Intel now wants to do something Zen 5 / 5c like in the future, look for 'Intel unified core' on the web.

 

[richinaus]

Seeing this M5 chips, I am so looking forward to upgrading this M1max to an M6max at the end of the year !

 

[Basic75]

There are now 3 core types:
Super
Performance
Efficiency.

And just what we needed, a new terminology for something that already existed. Intel calls the three tiers P for performance, E for (area) efficiency, and LP-E. for low-power efficiency. In this case I like Intel's naming better.

 

[Boil]

Still waiting on the Mx Extreme in the all-new Mac Pro Cube...! ;^p

 

[DownUnderDan]

on the regular M5 they list super and efficiency cores.
i think efficiency cores are gone entirely on Pro/Max and all is left are either performance cores and "even more performance" cores.
basically everyone bitching apple sold mobile chips for their desktop lineup got their mouth shut.

Amazing what a change in marketing name can do to some peoples confidence in themselves.

 

[leman]

LOL. I loved ClaudeSonnet 4.6's comment on this story:

"Super cores" is genuinely embarrassing. That's a name a 9-year-old would give a chip after watching too many superhero movies. Someone in Cupertino needs a quiet word.

I think they should have used max and pro cores to reinforce existing branding 🙂

 

[Basic75]

I think they should have used max and pro cores to reinforce existing branding 🙂

You're saying the MacBook Pro with lower-binned M5 Pro has 5 5th gen Max cores and 10 5th gen Pro cores while the MacBook Pro with M5 Max has 6 5th gen Max cores and 12 5th gen Pro cores?

 

[RashyIsBack2]

The new 'super' naming is silly and confusing at the same time. Why not just stick with p-cores and e-cores? Also, the CPU already saw a significant boost for the M4 series, there was no need to increase it again to now 18 cores, while the GPUs remain stuck at 20 and 40 cores, sadly.

Anyway, seems that nobody here noticed that the memory bandwidth increase is only half than we got with the vanilla M5.

• M5: 120 -> 153 GB/s (+27.5%)
• Pro: 273 -> 307 GB/s (+13.5%)
• Max: 546 -> 614 GB/s (+12.5%)

Though this makes sense - the vanilla M4 LPDDR5X clocks 7500Mhz, while the M4 Pro/Max already have 8533Mhz. All new models now run at 9600Mhz. The M5 Ultra though could see a much larger boost compared to the M3 Ultra, which is still based on LPDDR5 @6400Mhz.

 

[cocoua]

acording to this youtuber, not too much improvement over M4 Max

 

[unphased]

It was all about the 4x of tensor compute to give the extra prompt processing speed for LLMs, I imagine it will also make these much more viable for image/video generation, and video generation is kind of a big deal with how ram hungry it is.

I'm annoyed by no Mac Studio update this week. On the MBP side I can't upgrade in good conscience until M6 drops but M5 should be very practical in a Studio.

 

[kinster]

It was all about the 4x of tensor compute to give the extra prompt processing speed for LLMs, I imagine it will also make these much more viable for image/video generation, and video generation is kind of a big deal with how ram hungry it is.

I'm annoyed by no Mac Studio update this week. On the MBP side I can't upgrade in good conscience until M6 drops but M5 should be very practical in a Studio.

I couldn't wait so bought a Mac Studio M3 Ultra for a decent price today.

 

[BorisDG]

That’s wrong. There are now 3 core types:
Super
Performance
Efficiency.

The M5Pro has no efficiency cores.
Super cores seem to be more targeted to single core performance. With the performance core cluster more focused on multi thread performance.

That’s not true. It's already been confirmed by Apple and people in the datamining community. Apple themselves said the "Super cores" are actually the old performance cores. They are creating a "new" core which is just a cut-down variant of that same performance core (7 wide decode vs 10) and placing it in the middle. Then, you have the old efficiency cores.

I can provide you sources of course.

 

[grammatica]

I'm glad 64GB of RAM is not limited to the Mac chip.

 

[lowkey]

That’s not true. It's already been confirmed by Apple and people in the datamining community. Apple themselves said the "Super cores" are actually the old performance cores. They are creating a "new" core which is just a cut-down variant of that same performance core (7 wide decode vs 10) and placing it in the middle. Then, you have the old efficiency cores.

I can provide you sources of course.

What I wrote is true. There are now 3 types or codes. They are called Super Performance and Efficiency. Pro chip has no efficiency cores.
What you wrote is also true.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

What I wrote is true. There are now 3 types or codes. They are called Super Performance and Efficiency. Pro chip has no efficiency cores.
What you wrote is also true.

Where does that leave developers, as mentioned above, who want to know how many parallel threads to run and how to run them, since the performance cores will be two different speeds now? How will fully multi-threaded apps to work across these two different types of "performance" and "Super"-(performance) cores with the same capabilities but different speeds?

 

[lowkey]

Where does that leave developers, as mentioned above, who want to know how many parallel threads to run and how to run them, since the performance cores will be two different speeds now? How will fully multi-threaded apps to work across these two different types of "performance" and "Super"-(performance) cores with the same capabilities but different speeds?

I have no idea. I’m not a developer. But given that Logic doesn’t run on efficiency cores, I’d say having no efficiency cores on the M5Pro chip will leave pro users better off.

 

[lowkey]

And just what we needed, a new terminology for something that already existed. Intel calls the three tiers P for performance, E for (area) efficiency, and LP-E. for low-power efficiency. In this case I like Intel's naming better.

I’m happy that you found words you’re happy with :lol:

 

[mikerahl]

One thing I'm curious about is, would the M5 max in a 14" macbook pro be too much power for the chassis and thus experience significant thermal throttling. I'm debating between an M5 pro and an M5 max MB Pro 14 at the moment

 

[Boil]

One thing I'm curious about is, would the M5 max in a 14" macbook pro be too much power for the chassis and thus experience significant thermal throttling. I'm debating between an M5 pro and an M5 max MB Pro 14 at the moment

I feel the best bet for the Pro & Max chips is 14" for the Pro and 16" for the Max...

What would be pretty sweet would be if Apple offered an 18" MacBook Pro with a Mx Ultra chip; and I am STILL waiting for the all-new Mac Pro Cube featuring the all-new Mx Extreme chip...! ;^p

 

[innerproduct]

I feel the best bet for the Pro & Max chips is 14" for the Pro and 16" for the Max...

What would be pretty sweet would be if Apple offered an 18" MacBook Pro with a Mx Ultra chip; and I am STILL waiting for the all-new Mac Pro Cube with featuring the all-new Mx Extreme chip...! ;^p

You an me Boil! I want the modern take on the NeXT cube with at least one PCI slot and 4x type of Max chip.