Apple’s M5 Max in the MacBook Pro 16 is around 15 % faster compared to the MacBook Pro 14

The Cinebench 2024 multi-core test shows an advantage of 18 % over the M5 Max in the MacBook Pro 14 and also the old M4 Max in the MacBook Pro 16. The MBP 16 also manages this result in the Automatic mode, which is also much quieter. The High Performance mode does not increase the performance in a single run, but we will still test if it affects the sustained performance. During one benchmark run, the CPU cores consumed 78/65 Watts and therefore much more compared to the MBP 14.

The graphics performance is better as well, and the current 3DMark Steel Nomad test shows an advantage of 12 % for the M5 Max in the MBP 16 compared to the M5 Max in the MBP 14 and 21 % over the old M4 Max in the MBP 16. We can also already say that the GPU performance is completely stable under sustained workloads, which was not the case for the smaller model (-7.4 % in High Performance mode, -25 % in Automatic mode).

We will obviously perform additional tests, but our initial benchmark results already show that the M5 Max is a much better fit for the larger MacBook Pro 16 and the performance difference compared to the MacBook Pro 14 is significant.