Happy New Year folks. I was having fun over the holidays trying to project the performance of the M5 Max and M5 Ultra based on the various past performance ratios we have seen from Apple. Except for the AI race, Apple seems to be managing performance improvements on a rather consistent geometric pace.
I based my projections on geekbench.com and geekbench.ai published numbers. Thank you to Geekbench and all the folks that have uploaded their system benchmarks. BTW, don't forget to benchmark your laptops when it is plugged into a power source and otherwise idle for consistency.
I have read that the M5's 16 neural processors are much faster (~4x) than the M4 in a variety of operations. So my logic was to use scale up the M5 performance for the M5 Max and M5 Ultra based on the M4 to Max & Ultra ratios.
My thinking is that Apple will maintain for (i) M5 to M5 Max and (ii) M5 Max to M5 Ultra:
Consistent baselines for all inputs:
Hope you find this interesting and potentially useful.
I based my projections on geekbench.com and geekbench.ai published numbers. Thank you to Geekbench and all the folks that have uploaded their system benchmarks. BTW, don't forget to benchmark your laptops when it is plugged into a power source and otherwise idle for consistency.
I have read that the M5's 16 neural processors are much faster (~4x) than the M4 in a variety of operations. So my logic was to use scale up the M5 performance for the M5 Max and M5 Ultra based on the M4 to Max & Ultra ratios.
My thinking is that Apple will maintain for (i) M5 to M5 Max and (ii) M5 Max to M5 Ultra:
- the memory bandwidth improvement ratios
- the increase in the number of CPU and GPU processors
CPU | CPU | CPU | GPU | GPU | GPU | Neural | Neural | Neural | |||||
Single CPU | Multi CPU | Metal | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized | ||
| Computation: | Projection: | ||||||||||||
| M5 x M4 Max / M4 | M5 Max | 4,551 | 27,375 | 245,912 | 6,496 | 10,448 | 8,015 | 36,142 | 63,798 | 58,160 | 6,432 | 42,280 | 56,610 |
| M5 x M4 Max / M4 x M3 Ultra / M3 Max | M5 Ultra | 4,636 | 37,431 | 394,211 | 7,460 | 11,831 | 9,101 | 38,939 | 68,456 | 62,522 | 7,202 | 43,048 | 57,094 |
Consistent baselines for all inputs:
- All AI benchmarks were using the Core ML
- All MacOS versions were 26.2 or 26.3.
CPU | CPU | CPU | CPU | CPU | GPU | GPU | GPU | Neural | Neural | Neural | |||||
Model | Model ID | CPU Model | O/S | Single CPU | Multi CPU | Metal | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized | Single Precision | Half Precision | Quantized |
| Mac Studio (2025) | Mac15,14 | M3 Ultra | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 3,250 | 28,359 | 230,364 | 5,389 | 8,641 | 6,782 | 21,401 | 23,835 | 22,262 | 5,258 | 30,181 | 32,784 |
| MacBook Air (13-inch, 2025) | Mac16,12 | M4 | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 3,749 | 15,288 | 54,891 | 4,912 | 7,911 | 6,294 | 8,914 | 10,480 | 10,305 | 4,943 | 36,186 | 50,716 |
| MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023) | Mac15,3 | M3 | MacOS 26.3 (Build 25D5087f) | 3,169 | 11,532 | 46,347 | 2,611 | 4,223 | 3,259 | 8,382 | 10,055 | 8,636 | 5,728 | 37,080 | 50,210 |
| MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2025) | Mac17,2 | M5 | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 4,319 | 17,871 | 75,243 | 5,328 | 8,699 | 6,905 | 13,619 | 25,484 | 24,415 | 5,350 | 41,599 | 57,122 |
| MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023) | Mac15,10 | M3 Max | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 3,190 | 20,740 | 143,703 | 4,693 | 7,631 | 5,973 | 19,864 | 22,213 | 20,709 | 4,696 | 29,642 | 32,506 |
| MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2024) | Mac16,6 | M4 Max | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 3,950 | 23,418 | 179,397 | 5,989 | 9,502 | 7,306 | 23,656 | 26,236 | 24,548 | 5,943 | 36,778 | 50,261 |
| Mac Studio (2025) | Mac16,9 | M4 Max | MacOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) | 4,089 | 26,652 | 179,397 | 6,028 | 9,606 | 7,449 | 21,428 | 24,038 | 22,365 | 6,017 | 36,469 | 49,202 |
Hope you find this interesting and potentially useful.
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