Apple recently announced its all-new M5 Ultra-powered Macs, and the claimed performance numbers were astonishing. Now, the early benchmark numbers of the M5 Ultra are out. And surprisingly, the results put its graphics performance within reach of high-end desktop cards such as Nvidia’s RTX 5080. Early Geekbench results also reveal huge improvement compared to the M3 Ultra.
Early benchmark results reveal huge GPU performance gain for Apple’s new M5 Ultra
Geekbench 7 results for Apple’s new Mac Studio show the M5 Ultra scores somewhere around 350,000 to 360,000 in the Metal test. For reference, the previous Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra and 80 GPU cores scored 249,564 in the same test. The numbers reveal a clear jump in graphics performance. However, do keep in mind that the direct comparisons between Apple’s Metal results and other graphics cards are not straightforward because they use different testing APIs.
The M5 Ultra’s early performance numbers are also listed on OpenCL. The new chipset manages to score around 220,00 points on the benchmark. The Nvidia RTX 5080, which is a dedicated GPU, scores about 260,000 on Geekbench’s OpenCL platform. Yeah, sure, the M5 Ultra did not beat the RTX 5080, but the performance gap has been reduced significantly. The M3 Ultra scored only about 140,821 in OpenCL. The M5 Ultra performed about 57% better than its predecessor.
M5 Ultra becomes a strong choice for AI and power usage
At the launch event, Apple emphasized the performance and AI power aspects of the new M5 Ultra. And the early benchmark results reflect exactly that. The stronger GPU results could matter for AI researchers and developers. The M5 Ultra also includes a dedicated Dual Neural Engine Neural Accelerator to help with AI workloads and processing.
Power usage is another highlighted part of the chip. The RTX 5080, under normal to heavy usage, draws more than 600W. The M5 Ultra is expected to consume much less power, though we do not have a definite number yet. If we look at the predecessor, the M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studios consumed closer to 100W and generally below 200W. Even if the M5 Ultra consumes more power, it should remain much lower than that of a dedicated GPU like the RTX 5080.
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