Apple’s next-generation M5 Max is already turning heads after a strong showing on Geekbench, and the early numbers suggest this chip isn’t just an incremental upgrade. In both CPU and GPU testing, the M5 Max appears to punch well above its weight, posting results that place it among the fastest consumer computing platforms available right now.
On the CPU side, the M5 Max reportedly benefits from redesigned “Super” and “Middle” cores, along with a higher core count. That combination helps it surge past many competing processors from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm in these early benchmark appearances, reinforcing Apple’s momentum in premium laptop and desktop performance.
The GPU performance is just as attention-grabbing. The benchmarked configuration is a fully specced M5 Max with a 20-core GPU, and it delivers a Geekbench Metal score of 232,718. That’s an eye-opening result because it lands surprisingly close to the much larger M3 Ultra—even though the M3 Ultra can be configured with roughly double the GPU cores. In simple terms: this suggests Apple’s architecture and efficiency gains are doing a lot of heavy lifting, not just raw core count.
It’s worth noting that comparing Metal scores directly against Nvidia or AMD graphics cards isn’t a clean, one-to-one match, since those GPUs aren’t primarily tuned for Apple’s Metal workloads. To get a broader view, the M5 Max also appears in Geekbench’s OpenCL testing, where it scores 145,412. That OpenCL number puts the M5 Max in the neighborhood of an RTX 5070 laptop-class GPU—an especially notable comparison given that discrete laptop GPUs typically draw significantly more power and rely on far larger cooling solutions.
Beyond synthetic benchmarks, the most interesting implication could be gaming performance. With reported improvements to ray tracing, the M5 Max may be better positioned to challenge competing laptop GPUs in modern titles—particularly in scenarios where efficiency, thermals, and sustained performance matter as much as peak frame rates.
While real-world testing will ultimately decide how these numbers translate into creative workloads, pro apps, and games, the early Geekbench results paint a clear picture: the Apple M5 Max looks like a major leap, with GPU performance that edges closer to high-end territory than many would expect from a 20-core integrated design.
