Apple's M5 Pro & M5 Max easily beat the RTX 5090 in PugetBench creator benchmarks
Apple's MacBook Pro models are very good multimedia laptops and they are also very popular amongst content creators. In addition to our regular benchmarks in our reviews of the MacBook Pro 14 with the M5 Max as well as the MacBook Pro 16 with the M5 Pro, we also performed additional benchmarks for creative apps for these two models as well as the large MacBook Pro 16 M5 Max. We used the latest PugetBench benchmarks for the Adobe apps Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Lightroom Classic as well as DaVinci Resolve and compared the results with other modern multimedia devices. All test devices used the same versions of the apps and the benchmarks, which means the results are comparable.
| Laptop | Photoshop 1.0.6 (PS Version 27.4) | Premiere Pro STANDARD 2.0.1 (Premiere Version 26) | Premiere Pro EXTENDED 2.0.1 (Premiere Version 26) | Lightroom Class STANDARD 1.0.0 (LR Version 15.2) | Lightroom Class EXTENDED 1.0.0 (LR Version 15.2) | Resolve STANDARD 2.0.0 (Resolve Version 20.3-Studio) | Resolve EXTENDED 2.0.0 (Resolve Version 20.3-Studio) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M5 Max 40-core GPU) | 15875 | 157049 | 139339 | 10662 | 12310 | 127090 | 88696 |
| Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5 Max 40-core GPU | 15775 | 149151 | 117719 | 9496 | 12558 | 115172 | 82713 |
| Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M5 Pro 20-core GPU) | 15271 | 105296 | 89026 | 12739 | 12418 | 83560 | 58878 |
| Asus ProArt P16 (Ryzen 9 HX370 + RTX5090) | 10096 | 107130 | 82933 | 6709 | 8667 | 85114 | 63907 |
| Asus ROG Z13-KJP (AMD Ryzen Max+ 8060S) | 11932 | 57481 | 48777 | 10013 | 9480 | 53737 | 36070 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (Ryzen 9 7940HS + RTX 4090) | 8205 | 77019 | 61578 | 5713 | 68314 | 50936 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra (Core Ultra 7 365H + RTX 5070) | 8070 | 87446 | Did not run | 9290 | 9141 | 70531 | 50519 |
The results for the new Apple chips are impressive and the M5 Pro is already either much faster or just slightly slower than the mobile GeForce RTX 5090 in the Asus ProArt P16, one of the fastest 16-inch Windows multimedia laptops. The two M5 Max models are, especially when you need the GPU, significantly faster. Here we can also see the advantage of the larger MacBook Pro 16, which once again confirms that the smaller 14-inch model cannot utilize the full potential of the M5 Max (we reported).
Even though the performance of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is a bit lower, but it is still significantly better compared to all the other Windows rivals with similar display sizes. If we talk about compact Windows models, the Asus ProArt PX13 with AMD Strix Halo is currently one of the best options, but the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with the Radeon 8060S can only keep up in Lightroom, but the Strix Halo chip does not stand a chance in Photoshop, Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve against the M5 chips. The combination of Intel's Panther Lake and the mobile RTX 5070 cannot keep up, either. Please see our analysis articles for the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for more information:
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