Leaked Geekbench results highlight the M5 Ultra’s dominance in professional desktop performance, signalling a significant boost from previous Apple chips and raising questions about performance premiums and supply constraints.
Apple’s latest benchmark leak suggests the M5 Ultra has opened a fresh gap at the top end of its chip line-up, even as Apple also moves ahead with the M6. A Geekbench result for a Mac Studio fitted with the M5 Ultra and 256GB of memory recorded 3,774 in single-core testing and 52,516 in multi-core work, placing the chip well ahead of Apple’s previous desktop-class parts on aggregate workloads. According to the benchmark, the system appears aimed squarely at professionals who need sustained throughput rather than headline frequency alone.
The numbers also underline how far the company’s silicon programme has moved since the first M1 machines. Apple’s original MacBook Air with M1 delivered 2,150 in single-core and 8,434 in multi-core testing, making the M5 Ultra roughly six times faster in multi-core performance by this comparison. MacRumors reported that the M5 Ultra also outpaces the M3 Ultra by as much as 30% in single-core work and 35% in multi-core tests, although Geekbench remains only a rough proxy for real-world use.
Apple said in its August announcement that the M5 Ultra is its most powerful chip to date, built from two M5 Max dies joined with UltraFusion. The company put the chip at 36 CPU cores, up to 80 GPU cores and 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth, positioning it for demanding tasks such as 3D rendering and AI inference. The same announcement set the starting price of the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra at $5,499, while the reviewed configuration in the benchmark was listed at $10,799.
The result arrives as questions persist around Apple’s ability to keep its chip team intact, but the latest data still points to a business that has turned Apple Silicon into a core advantage. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is reportedly in short supply, with availability stretching from 9 November into January depending on configuration. For buyers weighing Apple’s top desktop systems, the main issue is now less whether the company can build a fast chip than how much performance premium it can justify.
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