Apple has released what it claims are the world’s most advanced chips for pro laptops – the M5 Pro and M5 Max.
Both chips are built on a new Fusion Architecture, which essentially links two dies together into a single system on a chip. Within that structure are the CPU, GPU, unified memory controller, Media Engine, Neural Engine, and support for Thunderbolt 5.
Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max use a new 18-core CPU layout. This includes six redesigned “super cores”, which Apple says are its fastest single-threaded cores yet, along with 12 new performance cores that are meant to balance multithreaded performance with power efficiency. Apple’s figures suggest a performance gain of up to 30% for professional workloads compared to the previous generation.
The GPU also gets a significant update. It scales up to 40 cores on the M5 Max, and Apple has added a Neural Accelerator to each GPU core plus increased unified memory bandwidth. The result, according to the company, is more than four times the peak GPU compute for AI compared with the previous generation. Graphics-heavy tasks, including ray tracing, see claimed improvements of up to 35% on M5 Pro and 30% on M5 Max over their M4 equivalents.
“M5 Pro and M5 Max are a monumental leap forward for Apple silicon, leveraging our new Fusion Architecture to scale the capabilities of Apple silicon while preserving its core tenets of performance, power efficiency, and unified memory architecture,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies. “Both chips underscore our relentless pace of innovation, integrating the world’s fastest CPU cores, a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerators, a faster Neural Engine, and high-bandwidth, high-capacity memory – resulting in an unparalleled combination of performance, efficiency, and incredible on-device AI capabilities for MacBook Pro.”
M5 Pro
The M5 Pro is aimed at users who need strong CPU and GPU performance along with high memory capacity. It supports up to 64GB of unified memory and offers memory bandwidth up to 307GB/s. Apple claims over four times the GPU compute performance of the M4 Pro and more than six times the performance of the M1 Pro in AI-related tasks. It also includes upgraded graphics features such as hardware-accelerated mesh shading, second-generation dynamic caching, and improved ray tracing.
M5 Max
The M5 Max targets workloads that rely heavily on GPU performance or very large memory pools. It features the same 18-core CPU but doubles the GPU to up to 40 cores. Unified memory support goes up to 128GB, with bandwidth reaching 614GB/s. Apple states that the M5 Max offers more than four times the GPU compute performance of the previous generation and over six times that of the M1 Max for AI. Graphics performance also sees incremental gains compared with M4 Max, particularly in ray-traced applications.
Additional technologies
Both chips include AV1 decode support, hardware-accelerated ProRes, and the new Thunderbolt 5 implementation, where each port has its own controller integrated directly on the chip.
The chips are also part of Apple’s broader environmental targets; their efficiency contributes to the company’s 2030 carbon-neutral goals by reducing long-term energy consumption in devices.
