Last week, Apple unveiled three new products featuring its new M5 chip, manufactured on the third-generation 3nm process. Currently available only in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, this chip has delivered incredibly promising results in initial performance tests.

The Apple M5 Debuts with Unexpected Performance

While the most powerful M5 Pro, Max, or Ultra versions of the series haven’t yet been released, the performance offered by the base M5 chip is already attracting attention. Equipped with four performance cores and six efficiency cores like the M4, the M5 rivals the top-tier models of previous generations.

The M5 nearly matches the M1 Ultra chip, released in 2022 and requiring a $4,000 Mac Studio, in multi-core performance. In Geekbench 6 benchmarks, the M5 was found to be only 6% behind the M1 Ultra.

The new base chip achieves similar scores with the binned M3 Max chip. The fact that it’s only 5% behind the M3 Max, which achieved a multi-core performance score of 18,933, clearly demonstrates the M5’s power.

This year-over-year performance increase achieved by Apple’s own chips solidifies its dominance in the industry. Performance levels that were only achievable in multi-thousand-dollar Macs just a year or two ago are now being achieved with the base chip.

The M5 chip is currently available in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, starting at $1,599. However, this powerful chip is expected to eventually make its way to more affordable devices like the $999 MacBook Air and the $599 Mac mini. This demonstrates that high-end processing power is becoming increasingly accessible to a wider range of users and further demonstrates Apple’s success in processor architecture.