yeah, those wondering about game settings apparently forgot to check the footnotes.
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M5 gaming
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Yeah those are potato graphics settings. Even a portable Windows handheld does those settings well.
Here Apple is comparing the basic M5 general-use chip to the basic M4 chip. Using higher settings to play a AAA game wouldn’t make any sense.
Very true. My experience is obviously anecdotal but having been gaming with the M4 MBP since about Decenber of '24 it's been a gaming powerhouse. A few caveats but I don't play fps's as I'm 💩 at them and perhaps the game I play most - WoW - isn't the most graphically intensive of games but for the first time I was able to play without dropping my settings to negative numbers. I was pretty impressed with how it handled the heat that so plagued my gaming sessions on my old Intel Macs.
I'd love to see Apple put these in the hands of some gamers for all chip levels - base, Pro, Max, Ultra etc before they get released to the general public to get some real world tests.
Yes. Playing Hitman on an Intel MBP was literally painful.
I can tell you which games won't - Genshin Impact for one will still lag and still be unplayable at 120 FPS. They first came out with that setting during M1 and I've owned every iPad Pro since the 2018 version hoping the game would be playable at a higher frame rate and chronicled with rigorous testing and charts all of them.
M4 finally let it be played at maxed graphics without lag at 60 FPS, but it just barely does it consistently; and 120 is nowhere close. So I figure at least until M6 if not longer before Genshin is actually playable at 120 FPS with metal upscaling and high res (despite what clickbaity YouTubers lie about, while playing it for 20 mins in non-stressing environments).
I think M6 might come with a vapor chamber, too, so I have much higher hopes for that one than this.
Yeah on iPad Pros as far as I can tell, 120 FPS is only achievable in the domains. Wish Apple paid Mihoyo to make a native Mac version, preferably without their invasive anticheat
The changes to the GPU in M5 are in fact quite substantial:
- A second FP16 pipe for doubled FP16 compute (used for lighting calculations, but the game needs to be optimized for it)
- Doubled the integer multiplication performance (can be occasionally useful)
- Doubled the special function performance (exp/log — useful for advanced shading)
- Yet unknown changes to shader memory management, will likely improve occupancy
- More memory bandwidth, larger caches
- Maybe: a second FP32 add pipe for improved mixed FP32 calculations (haven't properly investigated this yet)
- Maybe: additional stuff like improved memory compression etc...
They've come a long way since M1 — this is a state of the art GPU core, and industry leading in some key areas. All these improvements will certainly translate to gaming, and the improvement will be likely larger for games that utilize complex shading. We already see a 40% increase in performance on non-RT benchmarks such as Steel Nomad for A19.
- A second FP16 pipe for doubled FP16 compute (used for lighting calculations, but the game needs to be optimized for it)
- Doubled the integer multiplication performance (can be occasionally useful)
- Doubled the special function performance (exp/log — useful for advanced shading)
- Yet unknown changes to shader memory management, will likely improve occupancy
- More memory bandwidth, larger caches
- Maybe: a second FP32 add pipe for improved mixed FP32 calculations (haven't properly investigated this yet)
- Maybe: additional stuff like improved memory compression etc...
They've come a long way since M1 — this is a state of the art GPU core, and industry leading in some key areas. All these improvements will certainly translate to gaming, and the improvement will be likely larger for games that utilize complex shading. We already see a 40% increase in performance on non-RT benchmarks such as Steel Nomad for A19.
It is by today standards...not to mention the overall package...i was just talking about bandwidth alone and thats big. Not to talk about gpu core itself...nobody had reach this level in 4-5 years
M1 - 70 GB/s
M1 Pro - 200
M1 Max - 400
M1 Ultra - 800
M2 - 100
M2 Pro - 200
M2 Max - 400
M2 Ultra - 800
M3 - 100
M3 Pro - 150
M3 Max - 14/30 - 300
M3 Max - 16/40 - 400
M3 Ultra - 819
M4 - 120
M4 Pro - 273
M4 Max 14/32 - 410
M4 Max 16/40 - 546
M5 - 153
Projected by Gemini:
M5 Pro - 330-350
M5 Max - 650
Got all of these from Gemini with a few sources audited (Apple configuration pages). I did not audit all of them.
That's the M1 Pro.
The M1's memory bandwidth is 68 GB/s, the M1 Pro's 200 GB/s.
we are talking about bandwidth...thats the M1 Pro...can you read the Chip name?
So as posted above the M1 had 70 GB/s so the M5 has more than double
Max Verstappen has more knowledge in F1 for sure, maybe who knows WDC 2025
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I know. I am comparing MBP laptops here.
In 2021 MacBook Pro with M1 chip had 200GB/s memory bandwidth. Whereas in 2025 MacBoom Pro comes with slower memory bandwidth. Both are supposed to be PRO laptops. You get my point?!
we are talking about bandwidth...thats the M1 Pro...can you read the Chip name?
So as posted above the M1 had 70 GB/s so the M5 has more than double
Max Verstappen has more knowledge in F1 for sure, maybe who knows WDC 2025
I’m talking about the Pro models here specifically.
MacBook Pro with M5 is slower than the entry level 2021 MacBoom Pro with M1 Pro. Apple shouldn’t be using the slow M5 chip with Pro laptops. It should be using the M5 Pro. The slower memory bandwidth is embarrassing.