Apple M5 Pro gets thrashed by Nvidia RTX 5060 Laptop in OpenCL benchmark despite impressive generational improvements

Apple's M5 Max appeared on Geekbench a short while ago, demolishing its competitors in CPU performance. The 40-core GPU did not pull back its punches either, nearly matching the RTX 5070 Laptop in OpenCL (deprecated on macOS) and managing 88% of the M3 Ultra's performance in the Metal test.

M5 Pro crushes M4 Pro, but mid-range GeForce RTX cards still ahead in Geekbench OpenCL

Now, the M5 Pro has popped up in the same benchmark as well, scoring an impressive 141,000 points in the Metal test. In OpenCL, which was depreciated on macOS over 6 years ago, the M5 Pro managed to rake in roughly 87,155 points. Considering that the SoC packs half the number of GPU cores as the M5 Max, the results are in line with what one might expect.

Moreover, the vanilla Apple M5 with a 10-core GPU found in the entry-level MacBook Pro (currently $1,449 on Amazon) scores around 48,000 points in the OpenCL test, which puts the M5 Pro with the 20-core GPU around 81% ahead.

Compared to its predecessor, the M4 Pro, the M5 Pro achieves an impressive 24.3% improvement in the OpenCL benchmark, and an equally admirable 26% improvement in the Metal benchmark. Needless to say, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop has a clear upper hand in the OpenCL test, where the GeForce GPU manages a roughly 13% lead over the M5 Pro.

Of course, real-world performance will vary greatly depending on the specific workload. Comparing an Apple GPU with an Nvidia part in OpenCL performance is hardly fair, considering that the API has long been abandoned on the Mac platform. Similar, it would not be fair to compare Metal scores either, since it is strictly an Apple-only graphics API.

We do not have any 3DMark or GFXBench numbers yet, which should be available soon enough. As of right now, one thing is pretty clear - Apple's M5 Pro is all set to arrive with impressive performance gains compared to the previous generation.