Testing Apple’s 2026 16-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Max, and its new “performance” cores

M5 Pro Max's "performance" CPU cores definitely aren't just rebranded E-cores.

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[Dano40]

Great, thorough review of the CPU/GPU aspect. Thanks! I loved that it focused on video encoding.
My users generally fall into two categories. "Anything since the M2 Pro is plenty fast", and "need moar speed!!!!". For the latter, we've been keeping tabs on Apple's GPU performance and whether they could/would ever catch up with nVidia's flagship RTX of the month.

I wish the Mac Pro was a very different machine — in its current form it is indeed quite useless. But the lack of advancement in the Ultra chips (relative to the new M generations they reliability ship out every year), is rather disappointing.

Having the GPU semi-separated from the CPU using the same "Ultra" technology makes a lot of sense; it remains to be seen if and whether new Ultra options come out and how many dies they'll link. I know I'd be interested in a 80-core or 160-core M GPU option.

And there's also the downside that Apple's newest processor requires Apple's newest OS — those of us living in the real world of creative apps / media / entertainment often can't be on the latest version. A 15% speed increase ain't worth it if the app your livelihood relies on crashes every day.

If you are working on Adobe or Autodesk family of programs. You won’t have to worry it will take those companies five years to make any sort of improvement to their programs, if past history is any indication. Speaking from experience….

 

[Dano40]

I'm not interested in Apple products for a variety of reasons (not dissing them, just don't want them), but I would be interested in a "deep dive" into how the new fleet of ARM-based Windows machines fit into the existing Windows hierarchy. Any chance of seeing something like this as an Ars article?

Microsoft is currently all in with Copilot AI on Windows it is their last chance to recover from missing the mobile Revolution in addition, Microsoft is trying to sort out the Xbox and their failing gaming empire that wasn’t enough, they are also still trying to get to Rosetta one level ala Apple computer

I remember when Windows users loved, and Mac users hated, Geekbench because it rated most Intel Windows PC’s performance significantly higher than PowerPC Macs.

Stop letting your bias drive your preferences, and recognize that all benchmarks are imperfect. Don’t cherry pick only the ones that prefer your platform.

Another performance benchmark most of the PC tech sites hate these days is the test where you test the performance of the laptop computer when unplugged from the wall. Which is very important if you need to go to a job site or conference room at someone else’s office and you need to bring your laptop.