Apple Silicon

M5 Pro Is Just A Hairline Slower Than The M5 Max & M3 Ultra In New Multi-Core Comparison, Beats M4 Max To Become Apple’s ‘Price To Performance’ SoC

wccftech | March 6, 2026, 11:30 a.m. | Original

Apple’s M5 Max delivered some decent performance gains over the M4 Max in Geekbench 6’s single-core and multi-core results, with the most impressive feat for the 18-core CPU configuration being that it beat the top-end M3 Ultra in both tests . Now, it is time to look at the technology giant’s ‘middle of the pack’ SoC, the M5 Pro , and according to the latest single-threaded and multi-threaded benchmarks, it nearly matches its powerful brother while trading blows with Apple’s current-generation workstation-class SoC. In short, the company has made an M4 Pro on steroids.

A new MacBook Pro sporting the unique identifier Mac17,9 was spotted on Geekbench 6, with the 18-core CPU and 48GB unified RAM configuration obtaining a single-core and multi-core score of 4,242 and 28,111, respectively. Based on the latest results, the M5 Max is barely faster in both categories, meaning that customers who don’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of money getting the top-tier MacBook Pro can opt for the M5 Pro and get a ton of savings.

We’ve also included the M4 Max and M3 Ultra results from the previous benchmark comparison, with the M5 Pro comfortably beating the M4 Max in both single-core and multi-core tests, though the M3 Ultra managed to surpass the SoC by the skin of its teeth in a single result. Looking at the results below, competing chips, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, are going to have a field day because Apple has brought forward some truly impressive chipsets.

  • Single-core score - 4,242
  • Multi-core score - 28,111
  • Single-core score - 4,268 (M5 Max is 0.6 percent faster)
  • Multi-core score - 29,233 (M5 Max is 4 percent faster)
  • Single-core score - 4,049
  • Multi-core score - 26,509
  • Single-core score - 3,247
  • Multi-core score - 28,169

With Amazon taking pre-orders for the M5 Pro MacBook Pro models, these machines , giving you a 15-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 24GB of unified memory, and a 1TB SSD. If you want the 18-core CPU variant, the configuration is , which might be on the expensive side, but it is much more affordable than the base M5 Max MacBook Pro’s $3,899 price.

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