Apple introduced its new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips on Tuesday, which power the latest MacBook Pro. These chips feature Apple’s Fusion Architecture, combining two dies into a single high-performance system on a chip, incorporating a robust CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
Both chips have an 18-core CPU, an improvement over the 14-core in the M4 Pro and the 16-core in the M4 Max. The CPU includes six “super cores” and 12 new performance cores, boosting performance by up to 30% for professional workloads.
The GPU, with its next-generation architecture, offers up to 40 cores. It includes a Neural Accelerator and increased unified memory bandwidth, providing over 4x peak GPU compute power for AI compared to previous versions. Graphics performance is up to 20% faster overall, with a 35% improvement in ray-tracing tasks.
The M5 Pro can support up to 64GB of unified memory, with bandwidth at 307GB/s, while the M5 Max supports up to 128GB of unified memory and a bandwidth of 614GB/s.
According to Apple, the M5 Pro targets professional users like data modelers, sound designers, and STEM students requiring strong CPU and GPU performance and extensive unified memory for complex tasks. The M5 Max is aimed at users such as 3D animators, app developers, and AI researchers who need maximum GPU compute and high memory bandwidth.
The new MacBook Pro models can be pre-ordered starting tomorrow, with availability beginning March 11.