Apple introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips
Apple has introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max processors for the new MacBook Pro, featuring more cores and support for up to 128 GB of memory. The company claims a significant boost in performance, especially for tasks involving ray tracing.
Crius
Apple has introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max processors alongside new MacBook Pro models. Both chips feature an increased number of CPU cores, and the M5 Max supports more RAM compared to the previous generation.
Technical Specifications
The M5 Pro is available with up to 18 CPU cores (12 performance and 6 efficiency cores) and a 20-core GPU. There is also a version with 15 CPU cores and a 16-core GPU. The M5 Max always comes with 18 CPU cores, while the GPU can have either 32 or 40 cores. Overall, the number of CPU cores has increased, while the GPU specifications remain largely unchanged at the hardware level.
Both processors are manufactured using TSMC's N3P process. The M5 Pro and M5 Max combine two N3P chiplets into a single chip, a design previously used only in Apple’s Ultra chips. This approach could pave the way for a future M5 Ultra model.
Performance and Memory
According to Apple, GPU performance in ray tracing tasks has increased by up to 35% compared to the M4 Pro and M4 Max. In general-purpose tasks, the M5 Max GPU is up to 20% faster than the M4 Max. The M5 Max supports up to 128 GB of unified memory with bandwidth up to 614 GB/s.
Additional Features
The M5 Pro and M5 Max support Thunderbolt 5.0 ports, hardware acceleration for H.264/HEVC, AV1, and ProRes codecs for both decoding and encoding. Both chips feature a 16-core Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI-related tasks.
Notes
All specifications and performance figures are based on information provided by Apple. Independent testing is awaited to confirm these claims.