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Apple's M5 Max Chip Achieves a New Record in First Benchmark Result

Honestly I'm more interested in the M5 Pro specs, especially since it can be configured up to 64GB. They've been pumping that up lately and the M4 Pro for CPU multicore was barely slower than the lower end M4 Max.

I'm not upgrading anytime soon, but in a few more years, I'm thinking I can save some money with the Pro since it has become so ridiculously fast. But then again, if my business keeps growing, I might just splurge for the M6 Max OLED later this year or early next year and write it off to lower my taxable income, and hope that it can run three Studio Display XDR's at 120Hz at once, which I can also write off.
 
macduke said:
Honestly I'm more interested in the M5 Pro specs, especially since it can be configured up to 64GB. They've been pumping that up lately and the M4 Pro for CPU multicore was barely slower than the lower end M4 Max.
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M5 Pro benchmarks should be virtually identical. The M5 Max is basically an M5 Pro with added GPU cores, kind of a return to the M1 Pro/Max approach.

 
It’s great to see the progress of the chips and will play around with these at Apple soon, but for me it’s still M6 Pro or M7 Pro until I upgrade next.
 
I’m glad Apple is pushing the envelope. But the performance uplifts seem a bit meh to me. I’m curious about temps and power draw and fan noise when the m5 max is under load. Personally, I’m waiting on the m6 generation with 2nm lithography technology.
 
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I think the GPU improvements are pretty decent - once the deals start coming around, I'm thinking of picking up a 20 core Pro to replace my M4 Air.

Can't blame anyone for waiting for the M6, though.
 
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mysticalos said:
well, that's likely due to fact of them deciding to use less performance cores and achieve a small gain over a larger one to improve battery instead. that's theory anyways. remember an m3 max is 12 performance and only 4 effiicency, this thing is basically 6 performance and 12 "balanced" cores which is to say they're supposedly better than efficiency but not as good as performance cores.

could you imagine if they actually did have 12 performance (ie super cores now) and 6 balanced? but i imagine with how delayed M5 was too they gotta save some oomf for M6 too.
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I wonder if they had problems with heat trying that many cores.

Meanwhile the Mac Pro is crying in the corner.
 
CrysisDeu said:
The improvement over M4 max is only 14%? That’s not a lot. In the worst intel days the improvements are around 5%
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Caveat: the intel claims were when using magic new instructions for specific tasks.

I don’t believe apple are doing that with these claims; from what i’ve seen over the years i trust Apple’s claims far more than intels which have always been significantly detached from reality.
 
M5 Max for the win. This in an Ultra would be pretty outrageous. All in the same power envelope. Don't need to plug it in. I want it!!!
 
novagamer said:
Going from 12 performance cores to 6 (yes, SIX "super cores" which ARE equivalent to the old performance cores) is quite an enormous drop.

I expect the architecutre will allow them to stretch their legs with the Mac Studio assuming it will last for 2 generations.

Otherwise, I think it's artifically limited for heat/power and... to sell more M6 Macbook Pros with OLED. And higher prices by then, likely.

It also may have been a financial decision to cut costs so they didn't have to jack up RAM and SSD prices due to the market quite yet.
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As I posted in another thread, I think the drop is for two reasons:

(1) the M5 is the limit of the M1 architecture, and 12 p-cores had become unwieldy to manage in a laptop's thermal and noise envelope (the M4 Max, which I own, can get quite noisy when fully pushed, although thankfully it is silent 97% of the time);

Even if they could swing 12 p-cores somewhat acceptably, they probably see the writing on the wall as the 2nm shrink will provide ever-diminishing returns.

(2) the new chiplet architecture, surely inspired by AMD and Intel, will allow them to finally take better advantage of the traditional power and thermal advantages of the desktop. In other words, expect the Mac Studio to have more super cores. They might give us 12 super cores, 6 p-cores, etc. There will be a real distinction again b/t desktop and laptop.

And whether it's the M5 Studio, or M6, or the next Ultra, I'm also expecting the GPU to be unleashed with higher power draw and more cores. That's my prediction.

The M4->M5 GPU gain was 40% or so (raster performance), yet only 20% for the M4 Max to M5 Max. I suspect it's due to power draw limitations of the laptop architecture. Going forward, Apple may now have the flexibility to create its own quasi-GPU cards, and my sense is they are positioning to challenge Nvidia on both the graphics and AI front.
 
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Well played, Apple. Truly well played. With all the buzz about touchscreen MacBook Pros arriving with the M6 generation, and with the base M5 feeling a bit modest, a lot of us were ready to skip this cycle. But the M5 Pro and M5 Max pivot toward AI and LLM performance is absolutely grabbing attention.


Now the real suspense begins. Let’s see what they bring to the Mac Mini and Mac Studio next!
 
Like it was going to be worse. It’s like when they say “Our most powerful iPhone yet.” No crap. You’re not gonna say it’s not as good as last years.
 
mozumder said:
Really hope they come out with a M5 Ultra with 1TB+ memory Studio.. literally everyone wants to run local LLMs. Come on Apple!
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Is that sarcasm, or you made this conclusion from watching apple-tech youtubers? Why would everyone want to run local LLMs?
 
It'll be interesting to see if they (Apple) even release an 'Ultra' chip variant in the future, given the chiplet design is essentially just multiplying the tiles. They could simply offer more BTO's for the Max.
 
I have to wonder how many cores a 42U Apple Silicon blade system would have, and the total computing power?
 
lurkkr said:
M5 Max vs M4 Max (MacBook Pro)
  • Per-core improvement is ~1.1%. (not taking into account changing amount of 'super' and 'less super' cores.)
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Considering the small cores now outnumber the large cores, that’s a lot to not take into account
 
chucker23n1 said:
Hard to say. Seems the M5 generation focuses on GPU and NPU, not CPU. M4 did give a significant boost over M3.
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M3 to M4 also added the “neural accelerators” to the CPU cores. This time they got added to the GPU cores. Whatever those do is probably responsible for the big uptick those cores saw, and not just for AI stuff.
 
I don't pay much attention to PC chips, but the Ryzen that beats Apple's top chip in multi-core by 5% or so is selling for $9,400. You can build a whole decked out 16" M5 Max for a lot less than that.
 
lostfezil said:
I don't pay much attention to PC chips, but the Ryzen that beats Apple's top chip in multi-core by 5% or so is selling for $9,400. You can build a whole decked out 16" M5 Max for a lot less than that.
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Apple Silicon has excellent cpus and incredible for efficiency but GeekBench is just one benchmark.

At the end of the day all benchmarks exist within a vacuum not reflecting real world scenarios thus you cannot make any absolute conclusions when you compare different OS/architecture with just a couple of simple number sets. If it was that much faster in real world Apple probably wouldn't be able to keep their highest end computers in stock with the demand.

Pull some other benchmarks and the AMD destroys it(just an example as to why there could be niche situations of someone wanting to spend $$$ more on an AMD chip).


Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core CPU benchmark list

Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core list with performance comparison of all CPUs in this benchmark
www.cpu-monkey.com www.cpu-monkey.com
 
fathergll said:
Pull some other benchmarks and the AMD destroys it(just an example as to why there could be niche situations of someone wanting to spend $$$ more on an AMD chip).


Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core CPU benchmark list

Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core list with performance comparison of all CPUs in this benchmark
www.cpu-monkey.com www.cpu-monkey.com
Click to expand...

I think you'd have a hard time coming up with a real-world scenario where a Threadripper PRO 9995WX is actually 4.18 times as fast as an M3 Ultra.
 
Geekbenches for the pro are in

M5 Pro (18-core CPU)​

  • Single-core score - 4,242
  • Multi-core score - 28,111

M5 Max (18-core CPU)​

  • Single-core score - 4,268 (M5 Max is 0.6 percent faster)
  • Multi-core score - 29,233 (M5 Max is 4 percent faster)

M4 Max (16-core CPU)​

  • Single-core score - 4,049
  • Multi-core score - 26,509

M3 Ultra (32-core CPU)​

  • Single-core score - 3,247
  • Multi-core score - 28,169
 
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