Apple’s M6-powered Mac mini and M5 Ultra-powered Mac Studio will hit the stores next week, on September 22. Ahead of the launch, the first Geekbench scores of the chips have surfaced online, giving us a glimpse of their expected performance.
From the scores, Apple’s new high-end and entry-level Apple silicon chips will set new standards in their respective categories.
M5 Ultra should be Apple’s most powerful chip ever
The M3 Ultra is currently Apple’s most powerful Mac chip. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio will take the crown when it launches later this month. Featuring updated CPU and GPU cores, it scores 3,774 and 52,516 in Geekbench 7’s single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.
For comparison, the M5 Max scores 3769 and 35656 in the same tests. Those figures are also higher than any other Intel or AMD x86-based CPU.
Compared with the M3 Ultra, the M5 Ultra is significantly faster in both tests. The former scores 2,920 and 39,059 in Geekbench 7.
Based on these scores, the M5 Ultra should deliver 30% faster single-core performance and 35% faster multi-core performance than Apple’s last Ultra chip.
M6 chip is another big leap forward
Leaked Geekbench scores of the M6 chip inside the Mac mini show even more impressive performance gains. Apple’s new base Apple silicon chip for Mac scores 4,071 and 22,783 in Geekbench 7’s single-core and multi-core benchmarks, respectively.
For comparison, M5-equipped Macs score around 3,600 and 17,900 in the same tests. That makes the M6 about 12% faster in single-core and 26% faster in multi-core workloads.
The M6’s single-core performance is faster than even the M5 Ultra. That’s because it uses a newer CPU core architecture, enabling it to deliver better single-threaded performance.
The multi-core performance is better than the M2 Max and in line with the M1 Ultra. That’s impressive given that the M6 features a 12-core CPU vs. a 20-core CPU on the M1 Ultra.
Apple’s M6 Mac mini and Mac Studio models equipped with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips hit stores next week. We should get a better idea of their performance improvements then.
