Apple recently released the new M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro series, and Notebookcheck conducted a comprehensive actual test of their GPU performance.The results show that the overall performance of the 40-core M5 Max GPU is equivalent to that of the RTX 5070 mobile version, and both have a 20-30% performance improvement over the previous generation.

M5 Pro and M5 Max are manufactured using TSMC's third-generation 3nm process, but the design concept has been adjusted. It adopts a dual-core tile (Tile) architecture, which packages the CPU and GPU separately and then integrates them. M5 Pro offers 16-core or 20-core GPU versions, while M5 Max has 32-core and 40-core options.

The peak power consumption of the 20-core M5 Pro GPU tested by Notebookcheck is 38W, and the 40-core M5 Max GPU is 72W. However, due to heat dissipation limitations of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the M5 Max can only maintain 72W power consumption briefly in high-performance mode, and then quickly drops to 44W (automatic mode is 60/32W).

In the 3DMark Steel Nomad test, the 40-core M5 Max GPU is only 8% better than the M4 Max, but it is clearly ahead of the RTX 5070 mobile version.

The 20-core M5 Pro GPU was 41% slower than the M5 Max in this test, with performance between the RTX 5050 and RTX 5060 mobile versions, and about 15% ahead of AMD Strix Halo's Radeon 8060S.

In Geekbench Metal and OpenCL tests, the new GPU’s advantage over the previous generation expanded to 20-26%.

In terms of OpenCL performance, the M5 Max is slightly ahead of the RTX 5070 mobile version, while the M5 Pro is suppressed by the Nvidia Blackwell series and only slightly better than the Radeon 8060S.

In the Cinebench 2024 GPU test, the new GPU is about 40% better than the previous generation.

However, Blender's rendering performance is surprising, and the M5 Max score is even slightly worse than the M4 Max. Notebookcheck speculates that the 16-inch model can improve this situation.

In terms of gaming performance, although Mac devices are not designed for gaming,However, in natively adapted masterpieces such as "Cyberpunk 2077" and "Assassin's Creed: Shadow", the M5 Max is 8-24% higher than the M4 Max, competing with the RTX 5070 mobile version.

The M5 Pro performed slightly worse. Although it was ahead of the Radeon 8060S in the benchmark test, it was overtaken by AMD's powerful integrated graphics in actual games, and it also lagged behind the entire series of Blackwell mobile graphics cards.

In terms of energy efficiency ratio, taking "Cyberpunk 2077" as an example, the new M5 Max has a huge improvement compared to the old M4 Max; the M5 Pro is comparable to the M4 Max and Radeon 8060S, and is more efficient than most NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.

Taking all test data together, the 20-core M5 Pro and 40-core M5 Max GPUs are about 20-30% better than the previous generation, in line with Apple's typical iteration rhythm.

However, it should be noted that due to thermal throttling issues in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the current test results of the M5 Max may not reflect its true potential. The performance release of the 16-inch version is worth looking forward to.