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| The Apple M5 Max has appeared on Geekbench 6 with unsurprisingly impressive scores. |
The silicon arms race just got a lot more interesting. Just when we thought Apple’s custom-chip engineering might plateau, the first benchmarks for the highly anticipated Apple M5 Max have surfaced online—and the numbers are nothing short of staggering.
According to a leaked Geekbench 6 listing spotted by MacRumors, the upcoming high-end SoC (System on a Chip) doesn’t just outperform its predecessor; it is currently trading blows with—and defeating—desktop-class x86 giants from Intel and AMD.
If these numbers hold up in the real world, the M5 Max could redefine what professionals expect from a laptop.
Breaking Down the Numbers: How Fast is the M5 Max?
The leaked listing, which you can view directly on the Geekbench browser here, reveals a prototype machine running what appears to be a fully unlocked 18-core Apple M5 Max.
The results are impressive:
- Single-Core Score: 4,260 points
- Multi-Core Score: 29,233 points
To put that into perspective, let's look at the generational leap. Compared to the base M5 chip (found in the new MacBook Pro), the multi-core performance essentially doubles thanks to the additional cores. However, the more telling comparison is against the previous king of the hill, the M4 Max.
The M5 Max shows a healthy 9% improvement in single-core tasks over the M4 Max—a significant year-over-year gain for single-threaded workloads. But the real story is in the multi-core test, where the M5 Max commands a 14% performance advantage over its predecessor.
Perhaps most surprisingly, this result also makes the M5 Max the fastest CPU Apple has ever fabricated. It currently holds a 5.4% lead over the top-tier M3 Ultra, a chip designed for desktop workstations. This suggests that Apple’s laptop lineup is about to offer compute power that, just a year ago, required a tower.
Apple M5 Max vs. The World: "x86? Never Heard of Her."
While beating Apple's own chips is expected, the real fireworks begin when you pit the M5 Max against the current offerings from Intel and AMD. In the x86 world, there is simply no consumer CPU that outpaces the M5 Max in the Geekbench 6 compute test.
Here is how the competition stacks up:
- vs. Intel Laptop King: The M5 Max absolutely crushes the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, outperforming it by a massive 34% in multicore workloads.
- vs. AMD's Heavy Hitter: Even AMD's powerful Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" is left in the dust, trailing the Apple silicon by around 25% .
Perhaps the most humiliating comparisons come from the desktop arena. The M5 Max—again, a chip designed to fit inside a silent, fan-cooled laptop—outpaces the flagship desktop Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X by roughly 23% .
Hilariously, even AMD's workstation-class Threadripper 9980X (a 64-core monster that requires massive cooling and power) can't escape the shadow of the M5 Max. While the Threadripper eventually pulls ahead in specialized rendering tasks, in this specific Geekbench test, the Apple silicon is actually faster, beating the 64-core chip by a 6.6% margin.
A Grain of Salt (and a Look Ahead)
Before we declare the war over, a necessary caveat: a single benchmark is far from representative of real-world performance.
Geekbench 6 is excellent at measuring specific CPU capabilities, but it doesn't always translate directly to real-world video encoding, 3D rendering, or software compilation times. However, the architecture here is undeniably promising. The fact that an 18-core laptop chip is even sniffing the performance of a 64-core desktop monster tells us that Apple's focus on memory bandwidth and core efficiency is paying massive dividends.
There is no doubt that when the M5 Max lands in actual shipping hardware—likely a new 16-inch MacBook Pro later this year—it will prove to be among the fastest silicon that money can buy.
For those who can't wait for the Max, the base M5 MacBook Pro is already available and offers a glimpse into this new era of efficiency. You can check current prices for the standard model on Amazon here.
For more details on the leak and what it means for the future of the Mac, check out the full report from MacRumors here.
What do you think of these numbers? Are you planning to upgrade to the M5 Max, or are you waiting for the Mac Pro? Let us know in the comments.
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| Geekbench listing details. |
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| Geekbench 6 results for the Apple M5 Max SoC. |