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Macbook pro: M5 Pro 24 GB vs M5 32GB Ram?

C

ccalip

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi all,

I am hesitating between the Macbook Pro 14 inch M5 Pro 24 GB and the M5 32 GB Ram both with 1 TB. They are both the same price. I know I don’t need the extra CPU that the M5 pro chip offers but am wondering if it is worth it for future proofing or generally better even with less ram. (Jumping to 48 GB is too steep since the M5 Pro is not available in 32)


I intend to use it for Final Cut, Logic, Photoshop, and Clip Studio Paint (and maybe Blender).


I also want to note that I do tend to keep dozens of tabs open and don’t like having to close them before I’m done.

I currently have the last intel with 8gb, so it’ll be a major upgrade regardless, but I really want to make sure I get the right one
 
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I can't really speak to the apps you use but I have the M4. I find it more than sufficient. I would go for the M5 with extra ram, personally.
 
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with the M5 Pro you'll get:

significantly quicker export times
higher track count in Logic along with quieter dual fans under sustained load
better GPU

24GB of RAM shouldn't be limiting unless you're going for memory-heavy virtual instruments like string orchestra stuff, or VMs / local LLMs.

Regular M5 will a bit more battery life, but M5 Pro is already stellar. If I had to choose, I'd rather have the more powerful CPU + GPU
 
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Another difference is that the M5 Pro machines have Thunderbolt 5, versus TB4 on the base M5. TB5 has 2-3x the bandwidth (80G bidirectional or 120G downstream/40G upstream). That's a big plus if you want to use the fastest external SSDs, or multiple 4K external monitors.

For the apps you mention (final cut, logic, photoshop), you'll probably benefit from the additional GPUs of the M5 Pro.
 
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jabbr said:
with the M5 Pro you'll get:

significantly quicker export times
higher track count in Logic along with quieter dual fans under sustained load
better GPU

24GB of RAM shouldn't be limiting unless you're going for memory-heavy virtual instruments like string orchestra stuff, or VMs / local LLMs.

Regular M5 will a bit more battery life, but M5 Pro is already stellar. If I had to choose, I'd rather have the more powerful CPU + GPU
Click to expand...
And even when looking at VMs, unless you run a bunch at the same time, or they need a ton of RAM, you may not need more than 24gb RAM
 
I would wait to confirm whether the new “Performance” cores on the M5 Pro can be utilised by Logic or not.

Logic cannot use efficiency cores. So on the M5 you will only be using your 4 Super Cores, with 6 efficiency cores unused for Logic.

An M5Pro will have 5 or 6 Super cores operating and POTENTIALLY another 10 or 12 Performance cores operating as well.

My guess is that Logic will use the new Performance cores and the M5Pro will run on all 15/18 cores, rather than just 4 on the M5.

But we will need to wait to see if that’s confirmed.

Edit: Logic can use 6 Super Cores and 6 Performance cores, leaving the other 6 Performance cores spare for other apps/OS.

So that’s 12 active cores on the M5 Pro, vs only 4 on the M5.

Definitely buy the M5 Pro.

 
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M5 Pro, I agree. Upgrading the vanilla with such much RAM is not worth it. Getting expensive, and if you need much RAM, more performance is usally also what you desire. And the M5 Pro comes with 1TB, 24GB and the dual fans standard, for a pretty good price, which already sees first discounts on the market, that probably will improve over the next weeks.
 
I agree with the 32gb ram. That will future proof much more!
The extra power for the m5 pro may speed “some” apps that use multicore ( sometimes 20-30% faster ) the single core is exactly same speed.
It will not dramatically change your experience unless you are a professional and do the same high multicore cpu task many times a day, which saves you real time and money.

As a casual user if your task that you do once a day or week runs 1 minute vs 1.2 minutes you won’t notice or care.

However more ram can run more apps, bigger apps, tons of browser tabs, vms, local llm, and speed the system up from caching.

I had the M1 Pro with 16gb and do photography, development, vms, general stuff and tons of browser tabs, (tried local llm but not enough ram). I did memory and cpu analytics when things were starting to slow down and I was NEVER hitting a cpu limit. (Not even close). It was always ram in yellow or even red !
 
I bought the MacBook Pro M5 Pro with 1TB HD and 24GB Ram with Nano Texture. I tried to future proof my next Mac. I am planning to retire next year and this will probably be my last Mac.
 
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Lots of good advice/observations in the comments. I went through a similar decision. Here are my benchmark results.

24GB v. 32GB won't really make a big difference for AI/LLM (not running very much useful models locally with less than 64GB). For all your other workloads, 24GB should be fine. I run a few VMs in Parallels (4 CPUs/8GB) along with Affinity, Adobe, and Microsoft Office apps, as well as email and Safari. Memory pressure never exceeded 50% with 24GB.

14-inch M5 Pro 15-core (24MB)​
14-Inch M5 10-core (32MB)​
M5 Pro vs. M5 Base​
Geekbench 6
(Single Core/Multi Core)
4252 / 25998​
4196 / 17872​
+45% (Multi)​
Geekbench 6
(OpenCL/Metal)
76103 / 121205​
48827 / 76609​
+58% (Metal)​
Geekbench AI CoreML (CPU/GPU) Quantized
7006 / 31756​
6929 / 24464​
+8%​
Blackmagic (Read/Write)
12167MB/s – 12493MB/s​
6551MB/s – 6262MB/s​
+86% / +100%​
Cinebench R23
(Single Core/Multi Core)
2551 / 24255​
2447 / 15382​
+40% (Multi)​
3DMark 25 (Solar Bay)
39714 (150fps)​
24536 (92fps)​
+19%​
3DMark 25 (Steel Nomad)
1951 (19fps)​
1127 (11fps)​
+20%​

I personally think the M5 Pro 15-core is probably the best bang for the buck. It's a substantial increase across most workloads vs the base M5 while trailing the M5 Pro 18-core by about 10% in most benchmarks. Said another way, the jump from M5 base to M5 Pro 15-core is more substantial than the M5 Pro 15-core to M5 Pro 18-core. So I think that makes it a pretty good deal.

I also agree that memory is usually the single most important thing to load up on to "future proof." But in this case, it's only 8GB difference, and more importantly, you get some worthy improvements with the M5 Pro. #1 - More CPU and GPU cores; #2 - Double the SSD speed with the M5 Pro vs. the M5 base - this makes the M5 Pro feel super snappy loading apps; #3 - Double the memory bandwidth from 307GB/s v. 153GB/s; #4 - Thunderbolt 5; #5 - Apple N1 (WiFi7 and BT6)

Either way, I don't think you can go wrong. But I'd lean to the M5 Pro as I feel it brings more to the table than the extra 8GB that the M5 base brings. Of course, I'll caveat that (like others in this thread), if you are doing really heavy memory intensive work, either get an M5 Pro with 48GB or get the M5 base with 32GB.
 
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The M5 has worse connectivity.

M5

  • Wi‑Fi 6E (802.11ax)
  • Bluetooth 5.3
M5 Pro og M5 Max

  • Apple N1-chip
  • Wi‑Fi 7
  • Bluetooth 6
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I appreciate everyone sharing their views! I’m now wondering if it’s worth paying the extra $770 CAD to get the 48 gb M5 Pro instead of 24 gb (and even 1,310 to get 2TB to last longer)
 
How much storage is in your current Intel Mac? How much have you currently used up? If you’re currently less than 512GB total storage (i.e. less than half a TB total files), I think the 1TB drive is fine. Apple charges ridiculous amounts for storage, so if your current needs are met with 512GB or less, then 1TB should be plenty. And you can always buy a fast external drive and benefit from Thunderbolt 5 that comes with the M5 Pro.
 
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conmee said:
How much storage is in your current Intel Mac? How much have you currently used up? If you’re currently less than 512GB total storage (i.e. less than half a TB total files), I think the 1TB drive is fine. Apple charges ridiculous amounts for storage, so if your current needs are met with 512GB or less, then 1TB should be plenty. And you can always buy a fast external drive and benefit from Thunderbolt 5 that comes with the M5 Pro.
Click to expand...
I agree 100% with everything in @conmee's post.

When I bought my M5 Pro MBP, I was upgrading from an M1 with 1TB internal SSD, and I never had that more than 80% full (I do photography, and I regularly move completed shoots to a big external HDD)

I also wanted the M5 Pro for Thunderbolt 5, specifically to enable blazing fast external SSDs (which I mentioned in post #4).

BUT... I went with the 2TB internal SSD. My reasoning was, yes, Apple's prices are ridiculous, but the memory/SSD market is undergoing a huge disruption right now, and I believe it's going to get worse before it gets better. Not to sound alarmist, but who knows what external SSDs will cost in another year, or if they will even be readily available.

I decided I'd rather pay the Apple tax now and shed a few tears when I saw the bill, but then be happy that I was set for a while, rather than scramble later to find something in a market where demand far exceeds supply.
 
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I chose the 2TB because I have a large music library that I want to keep on device and six virtual machines. I was getting close to 1TB in 2019 and that was the first time I jumped up to 2TB. With all the files I want locally, I'm at about 1.3TB on my new M5 Pro with 2TB storage. I also have an external OWC SSD. My storage needs actually decreased a little in moving to Apple Silicon because I had about six legacy VMs (Win7, WinXP, etc) that no longer work without an Intel CPU. So 2TB should be good for another 5+ years for me.
 
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mdcmdcmdc said:
BUT... I went with the 2TB internal SSD. My reasoning was, yes, Apple's prices are ridiculous, but the memory/SSD market is undergoing a huge disruption right now, and I believe it's going to get worse before it gets better. Not to sound alarmist, but who knows what external SSDs will cost in another year, or if they will even be readily available.

I decided I'd rather pay the Apple tax now and shed a few tears when I saw the bill, but then be happy that I was set for a while, rather than scramble later to find something in a market where demand far exceeds supply.
Click to expand...
This was also top of mind for me as well. I decided to lock in 64GB memory as well. I can get by fine with 32GB, but didn't want to find myself in a situation where I need the extra memory and I'm looking at upgrading to M6 or worse, prices continue to double and it's out of my price range. M5 Pro with 64GB + 2TB gives me a lot of headroom for my current use cases and gives me flexibility for whatever comes along with AI etc.
 
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ccalip said:
Hi all,

I am hesitating between the Macbook Pro 14 inch M5 Pro 24 GB and the M5 32 GB Ram both with 1 TB. They are both the same price. I know I don’t need the extra CPU that the M5 pro chip offers but am wondering if it is worth it for future proofing or generally better even with less ram. (Jumping to 48 GB is too steep since the M5 Pro is not available in 32)


I intend to use it for Final Cut, Logic, Photoshop, and Clip Studio Paint (and maybe Blender).


I also want to note that I do tend to keep dozens of tabs open and don’t like having to close them before I’m done.

I currently have the last intel with 8gb, so it’ll be a major upgrade regardless, but I really want to make sure I get the right one
Click to expand...

I was in the same boat and went for the M5 32 GB RAM with 1 TB. The alternative would have been M5 Pro with 48 GB (I felt 24 wasn't enough), but it wasn't worth the price difference to me.
 
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Dont waste your money. Go with the higher memory upgrade. It cost me alot when i started to run into higher memory utilization over the past year on my m3 pro with 18gb of memory. Always in the yellow and always swapping. I just upgraded to the m5 pro with 48gb and it runs flawlessly. Still debating on doing 64gb and nano texture, but that will be another 700 bucks.
 
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