- Apple’s M5 has appeared in a record leak with Geekbench
- It recorded an impressive single-core score for CPU performance, besting Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC.
- The M5 also appears to outperform some powerful desktop CPUs, but we need to tread carefully here
If you’re wondering how fast Apple’s new M5 chip is, the answer is actually pretty easy.
like Tom Hardware reportsthe M5, the engine of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro (and the updated iPad Pro as well as the Vision Pro), is actually faster of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme for single-core performance, based on a leaked Geekbench score highlighted by Tech Info on the X.
iPad Pro M5 (10c) vs Macbook Pro M5iPad Pro M5 4.43GHzMacBook Pro M5 4.61GHz P Core ClockiPad Pro: 4.1K ST, 16.3K MTMacBook Pro: 4.2K ST, 17.8K MTWaiting Take a look at the power consumption graph….. pic.twitter.com/UQT2HpPhmuOctober 17, 2025
Sprinkle on some spice, but as you can see in the post above, the comparison on the The M5 in the MacBook Pro is shown running at 4.61GHz compared to 4.43GHz in the iPad Pro.
However, what’s more interesting is taking the 14-inch MacBook Pro M5’s results — 4,263 points in the single-core CPU test, 17,862 points in the multi-core test — and comparing them to other chips.
That’s exactly what Tom’s Hardware did, noting that the Snapdragon
Tom’s Hardware has also compared the M5’s scores to some powerful desktop processors, based on averages for those chips from the Geekbench database (calculated by our sister site), with the following results.
|
CPU |
Single-core result |
Multi-core result |
|
Apple M5 |
4,263 |
17862 |
|
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D |
3,399 |
22,093 |
|
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X |
3,385 |
21,431 |
|
Intel Core i9-14900KS |
3,239 |
23,187 |
|
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K |
3,217 |
22,739 |
As you can see, the single-core results are impressive to say the least, with Apple M5 leaves desktop giants in the dust.
However, multi-core performance is quite different, and before we get too carried away, let’s dig a little deeper into these comparisons.
Analysis: Beats Elite Extreme – sort of
First, we should be careful about any leaked benchmark, and also remember that this is just one benchmark and, moreover, just a benchmark bachelor The M5’s score – so not an analog average like the results of the desktop CPUs that Tom compares to Apple’s new SoC.
For example, if we look at the fastest result in the Geekbench single-core test for The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (as opposed to the average), is 4306 – so just a touch faster than the M5. However, it’s very impressive that the M5 is almost identical to this flagship Intel processor; There is no doubt about that.
As for multi-core processors, the M5 lags behind the larger desktop players by 20% to 30%, but these processors have much larger core counts than 10 cores, of course. The Snapdragon
However, overall, there’s no denying that based on this glimpse of the M5’s performance – which is just a fleeting glimpse, and just a leak – it looks like Apple has scored a win again with its SoCs.
Of course, the larger M5 models still come with more cores and better multi-core performance – there will be some excitement around the M5 Pro and Max reveals.