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