Apple didn't keep us waiting long after announcing its new M5 chips to find out what they're capable of.
We got our hands on both the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro 14 powered by the new M5 chips. It's clear just what kind of gap Apple made between its new generation of M5 chips and its older M4 chips.
What's changed from the M4 to the M5
On paper, there are some obvious similarities. Both the M4 and M5 chips are available in 10-core configurations, which combine four higher-performance cores with six lower-power cores. The chips also come with 10-core GPUs, but the new M5 GPU cores include Neural Accelerators to boost AI and ray-tracing performance.
Apple also has some binned-down versions of these chips that have fewer CPU or GPU cores. However, regardless of those altered counts, Apple still uses the same naming scheme (buyer beware).
Therefore, without altering CPU or GPU core counts, the performance differences you can expect are due to architectural shifts. One of these also provides a higher memory bandwidth, with the M5 offering up to 153GBps compared to the M4's 120GBps peak.
Lori Grunin/CNET
How much faster is the M5?
Having had the opportunity to test the M5 chips in both a laptop and a tablet, we have a clear understanding of how much faster they are compared to the M4 in similar hardware.
Across the board in our benchmarking, the M5-powered MacBook Pro shows performance gains when compared to the M4 model. Single-core performance gets a nice boost with the M5, leading by 13.7% in Cinebench R24 and 18.8% in Geekbench 6. And to put that in perspective, that's a boost on top of what was already some of the strongest consumer CPU single-core performance available. Whether against AMD, Intel, or even Qualcomm, Apple still holds the lead in single-core performance.
Apple's multicore performance upgrades don't appear to be quite as substantial. In Geekbench 6, the M5 has an 18.5% bump over the M4, but Cinebench R24 shows only an 11.9% uptick. We observed a similarly narrow gap in the iPad Pro face-off, where the M5 model outperformed the M4 model's multicore performance by just under 10% in Geekbench 6.
Cinebench 2024 CPU (multicore) Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 8C/10C) 710 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C), low-power mode 779 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M4, 10C/10C) 999 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M2 Pro, 12C/19C) 1,043 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C) 1,118 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max, 16C/40C) 1,672 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Pro, 14C/20C) 1,744 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
The GPU is where Apple's upgrades really shine, though. In Geekbench 6, Apple's new GPU cores in the M5 provided a 31% performance boost over the M4-powered MacBook Pro 14, and this increase rises to 45% in Cinebench R24's GPU test.
Is the M5 better for gaming?
Video game graphics benchmarks showed a similar lead with the M5 leading the M4 by 35% in Steel Nomad, 45% in Steel Nomad Light and 46% in Solar Bay Extreme. This performance was enough to even see the M5 MacBook Pro run Shadow of the Tomb Raider at an average of 56fps with in-game settings at their Highest and a 1080p resolution.
Cinebench 2024 GPU Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 8C/10C) 3,327 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M4, 10C/10C) 3,970 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C), low-power mode 5,265 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C) 5,768 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Pro, 14C/20C) 9,037 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max, 16C/40C) 12,795 Apple Mac Studio (M4 Max, 16C/40C) 17,062 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Does the M5 improve AI performance?
AI performance is also substantially upgraded by the new Neural Accelerators. In Geekbench AI, the M5 MacBook Pro led not only the M4 MacBook Pro but even the M4 Pro-powered model, and did it by 12%. The M5 model also significantly improved image generation performance, nearly doubling what the M4 MacBook Pro could achieve in Procyon Stable Diffusion 1.5.
Geekbench AI (Neural engine quantized score) Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C), low-power mode 35,593 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, late 2023) 36,992 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M4, 10C/10C) 51,002 Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Pro, 14C/20C) 51,356 Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, 10C/10C) 57,528 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Even with all that extra performance on tap, the M5 proves efficient. Our battery test for the M5 MacBook Pro revealed that the new model increased runtime by a full hour, extending it to nearly 23 hours, compared to the M4 MacBook Pro's almost 22-hour battery life.
The missing upgrade options
While the new M5 chip is certainly a step up from the M4 and earlier base-tier chips, it won't be an instant upgrade for everyone running Apple silicon. On the individual core level, the M5 chips are a nice upgrade, but for now, there's only the one version.
Earlier Apple chips have received Pro and Max versions that significantly increase the CPU and GPU core counts. In some cases, more cores can still outperform fewer, higher-performance cores.
If you want a 16-inch MacBook Pro right now, it'll have to be an M4 model. Lori Grunin/CNET
Next to the M4 Pro chip in a MacBook Pro 16, which combines 10 higher-performance cores with 4 efficient cores, the M5's multicore performance actually lags behind by 21% in Geekbench 6 and 36% in Cinebench R24. The M4 Pro also features a 20-core GPU, which outperforms the M5's 10-core GPU by an average of over 30% in our Cinebench, Geekbench and 3DMark testing.
For now, the M5 lineup may serve as a considerable upgrade for those coming from earlier base M-series chips, but we'll have to wait for the M5 Pro or M5 Max chips to see how the new silicon fully competes against the old.