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Five Years of Apple Silicon: M1 to M5 Performance Comparison

MacRumors said:


Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Apple silicon chip that replaced Intel chips in Apple's Mac lineup. The first Apple silicon chip, the M1, was unveiled on November 10, 2020. The M1 debuted in the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

m1-chip-slide.jpg

The M1 chip was impressive when it launched, featuring the "world's fastest CPU core" and industry-leading performance per watt, and it's only improved since then. We've had five total generations of Apple silicon chips, with the M5 unveiled in the 14-inch MacBook Pro just last month.

Here's how the M5 measures up to the M1, per Apple's M5 specs:
  • 6× faster CPU/GPU performance
  • 6× faster AI performance
  • 7.7× faster AI video processing
  • 6.8× faster 3D rendering
  • 2.6× faster gaming performance
  • 2.1× faster code compiling
Geekbench comparison scores:
  • M1 single-core - 2,320
  • M5 single-core - 4,263
  • M1 multi-core - 8,175
  • M5 multi-core - 17,862
  • M1 Metal - 33,041
  • M5 Metal - 75,637
Both CPU and GPU performance have increased significantly over the past five years, and Apple has boosted AI and gaming performance too with add-ons like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and an ever-improving Neural Engine.

M1 ChipM5 Chip
Made with TSMC's 5nm process (N5)Made TSMC's third-generation 3nm process (N3P)
Based on A14 Bionic Pro chip from iPhone 12Based on A19 Pro chip from iPhone 17 Pro
8-core CPU, 8-core GPU10-core CPU, 10-core GPU
3.2 GHz CPU clock speed4.61 GHz CPU clock speed
No integrated Neural AcceleratorsIntegrated Neural Accelerator in every GPU core
No ray tracing engineThird-generation ray tracing engine
No dynamic cachingSecond-generation dynamic caching
Support for up to 16GB unified memorySupport for up to 32GB unified memory
68.25 GB/s unified memory bandwidth153 GB/s unified memory bandwidth


Apple sold Apple silicon Macs alongside Intel Macs for three years, but phased out the final Intel Mac in June 2023 when the 2019 Mac Pro was discontinued. Now all of Apple's devices have Apple chips, and we're even hitting the end of the road for Intel Mac software support. Intel Macs won't get software updates after macOS Tahoe.

Over the next five years, Apple silicon chip technology will continue to evolve. Apple supplier TSMC is already working on 2nm chips that could make an appearance as soon as 2026, offering a 10 to 15 percent speed improvement and a 25 to 30 percent power reduction. 1.4nm chips could follow as soon as 2028 for even more power and efficiency.

Article Link: Five Years of Apple Silicon: M1 to M5 Performance Comparison
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Apple Silicon was the best thing to ever happen to the Mac.
 
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Reactions: navaira
If Apple don't support the M1 based Mac's for 10 years with macOS releases (or longer) they need to seriously be called out anytime they try to wave the green flag. They are extremely capable machines even 5 years on and it would be bad to see the M1 become landfill because Apple decide at say 7 years you need an M2 or newer for no reason.
 
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sniffies said:
I'm still waiting for M-whatever Pro to outperform M1 Max.

Will it be M5 Pro or M6 Pro?
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The M4 Pro already beats the M1 Max with 24 GPU cores by a healthy margin in all metrics and is within 1% of the unbinned 32 GPU-core version in Metal. The base M5 is already quite close in GPU power to the 24 GPU-core M1 Max, and CPU is getting close to being twice as fast.
 
Cobbler82 said:
M1 Pro still works incredibly well. No stuttering or issues for office work, zooms, and some occasional game.
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Only worth upgrading if you are a professional video editor or programming at the bleeding edge where shaving 10-20min off a task 3-4 times per day adds up. Like exporting or running heavy scripts or compiling code.
 
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snow755 said:
Indeed same here with the M5 iPad Unless there something I can’t live without on the next iPad I probably wait tell the M7 or M9 to upgrade the M5 is pointed at people that don’t have or thinking on getting there 1st iPad but if the M1 still work great for you then I probably hold out tell the M7 or M9 iPad Pro buy that time people with the M1 and M2 iPads will be in for a big upgrade
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I'm still rocking my 2018 11in iPad Pro! iPadOS 26 has brought it new life 😆 I feel like I'm still in a pretty good place for a little while. I hope..
 
I think those first numbers are misleading, why CPU is chained with GPU? I think the geek-bench results are the most representative so we are talking around ~2.2x performance gain in general for CPU and GPU, very far from the 6x CPU/GPU that is claimed initially.
 
tongxinshe said:
During the same time period, all other competitors, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and MediaTek, have achieved a MUCH MUCH larger performance jump than Apple.
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Because Apple pushed them to try and catch up instead of resting on their laurels. Apple is still significantly in the lead and no one takes AMD or Intel or Qualcomm seriously anymore.
 
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Icelus said:
;)
Code: 
MBP 2012   550   1100
M1        2350   8600
M5        4300  18000
M4 Max    4000  26100
M3 Ultra  3200  27700
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sooo barely any faster...jk 😄. Upgraded the wifi to AC, replaced the battery 2x, replaced the thermal compound and installed macOS Sequoia via OpenCore. She still works great. Holding out for a MBP M6 Max.
 
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Thisismattwade said:
The (base) M1 MBA is amazing. The M5's numbers are impressive, but aside from "using" the CPU and GPU I don't do any of the other things listed. That's why I'm typing this from my (base) M1 MBA with no plans to upgrade. (I can wait till the MBA gets an OLED display. 🤤 )
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I agree. My M1 MBA with only 8GB ram is still more than adequate for the light duty "sofa" laptop that I use it for. The battery is showing its age which will eventually be the reason I end up replacing it.
 
Instead of synthetic benchmarks, it would have been interesting to see the difference in terms of real life operations with common apps.
Most of the times “6X CPU performance” doesn’t mean 6 time faster in real life operations.
 
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