Anyone feeling underwhelmed by Apple’s promise that its new M5 CPU runs up to 15% faster than its predecessor needs to check out the first benchmark score for the M5-powered MacBook Pro. The upcoming notebook CPU’s multithreaded performance actually comes in more than 20% faster than last year’s model. And it blows older models away.
That said, the improvement in single-core CPU performance isn’t as strong, but still respectable.
M5 MacBook Pro benchmarks show a whopping 21% CPU performance increase
The wraps came off the Apple M5 processor on Wednesday, with the new chip going into a fresh version of the MacBook Pro. In its announcement, Apple promised that the M5 will “deliver up to 15 percent faster multithreaded performance over M4.”
Turns out that was a significant underestimate. A Geekbench 6 benchmarking test for the M5 MacBook Pro posted on Friday shows a Multi-Core Score of 17,862. That’s a 21.3% jump over the M4 MacBook Pro on the same test.
For those using older versions of the MacBook, the new M5 version’s multithreading performance is 55% faster than the M3 model, 85% faster than the M2 model, and 119% faster than an M1.
The 2025 MacBook Pro in the test runs an Apple M5 with ten CPU cores: four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It includes 16GB of RAM.
Respectable boost in single-core performance
Apple didn’t brag about the single-core performance of the M5, but it could have. According to the leaked Geekbench 6 test, it earned a 4,263 Single-Core Score. That’s a 14% increase over the M4.
Single-core results matter because they strip aside differences in the number of CPU cores built into the various models and variants of each processor. Thus, they show how much Apple has improved the M series over the years.
According to Geekbench 6 Single-Core Scores, an M5 CPU core is 39% faster than the one in an M3, it’s 64% faster than an M2, and is 84% faster than an M1.
Benchmark scores are base-model M5 only
At this point, the only M5 processor variant that can be benchmarked is the base model. That’s the one going in the upgraded MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro models announced Wednesday.
Apple has yet to even mention the M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra variants. These aren‘t expected until 2026.
