Which Intel CPU Is Equivalent To Apple's M5?

The Apple M5 going against Intel's top offering doesn't just stop at equating the baseline chip to that of Team Blue's latest laptop-focused fare. As with each line of the M-series chips from Cupertino, Apple has released, in a cascading and frankly confusing method, the Pro, Max, and Ultra variations of the M5 chip, while the M6 is launching hot on some of those heels. In fact, even just the lowest-powered M5 differs between versions of MacBook Airs, but only in terms of graphical performance.

Off the bat, the regular M5 going up against Intel lands us on the Ultra X9 388H and X7 358H, as these are all trying to aim for the same level of laptop. That means the sliders have been set to be reliable and snappy enough for productivity, but not a slouch when it comes to entertainment or gaming — of course, without going overboard. Using Geekbench results, the X9 388H provides 2,660 in single-threaded performance and 15,784 in multi-core performance. The X7 lands on 2,585 and 17,261, respectively.

By comparison, the regular M5 trounces both in terms of single-core performance, but things are neck-and-neck in the multi-core department, producing scores ranging from 3,573 (both 13-inch models) to 3,584 (15-inch model) in single-core, and from 17,048 (13-inch) to 17,172 (15-inch). Additionally, the early M5 MacBook Pro models came without Pro chips, but with a slightly beefier output of 3,643 and 17,959, respectively. The baseline M5 chip even beats Intel's top-performing desktop chip, the Ultra 7 270K Plus, when it comes to single-core performance (2,933).

Between the M5 Pro's launch and this writing, the Ultra 7 270K Plus is probably the only decent option for an Intel equivalent. As its score lands on 2,933 and 27,402 in synthetic benchmarks, it's actually Intel's top-performing chip according to Geekbench and other benchmarks. The M5 Pro has a variety of scores, depending on the machine it's in. Single-core performance blows Intel out of the water across the board. Here, it's 3,679 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch scores a few points higher at 3,692.

In multi-core performance, once again, Intel lags behind. Against the 27,402 score from the 270K Plus, the M5 Pro reaches up to 33,598 with the 16-inch MacBook Pro and 33,433 with the 14-inch model with 18 CPU cores. Meanwhile the 15-core version reaches 29,568, which is pretty much in line with Intel's score. It should be noted that to get similar performance out of an x86 chip, you would have to hop the aisle to AMD Ryzen with the Threadripper Pro 9965WX, its workstation offering, which scores 32,222 in multi-core.

That's where the equivalency ends for now. Intel's Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake chips are currently only aimed at the mobile or laptop sectors, providing huge gains in gaming performance for handheld PCs. Its next major desktop-level chips are still on the horizon. Even Apple has only just managed to overcome its own chip, the M3 Ultra, as early tests on the M5 Ultra chip land a score of 3,774 and 52,516, one of the highest recorded on the site.

As for the M5 Max MacBook Pro? It has a score of 35,120 for multi-core and 3,731 for single-core. This does drop when using the weaker variation of the chip, or the 14-inch model, as it'll throttle to keep things cool. These scored 3,731 and 35,120, respectively, on the 16-inch model, and 3,691 and 34,535 on the 14-inch version. The M6 looks to trounce that again by offering, at the baseline, early scores of 4,071 and 22,783, respectively.