Apple M5 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple M5 chip

#951

Post by hedgehog » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #723

runjake wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see if I can turn this into an ASCII table and have it survive HN's reformatting. +------+------------------+--------------+----------+----------------+-------------------+-------------------+---------------------------+ | Chip | Process | CPU Cores | GPU | Neural Engine | Memory Bandwidth | Unified Memory | Geekbench6 (Single/Multi) | +------+------------------+--------------+----------+----------------+------…

Or to fit in a narrower window: Chip | Process | CPU | GPU | Neural | Memory | Unified | Geekbench6 | | Cores | | Engine | Bandwidth | Memory | Single / Multi -----|---------|-----------|------|---------|-------------|---------|---------------------- M1 | 5 nm G1 | 8: 4P+4E | 7–8 | 16-core | 68.25 GB/s | 16 GB | 2346 / 8346 M2 | 5 nm G2 | 8: 4P+4E | 8–10 | 16-core | 100 GB/s | 24 GB | 2586 / 9672 M3 | 3 nm G1 | 8: 4P…

Adding the other CPU options currently available in the 14 Pro:

   Chip   | Process  |      CPU    |   GPU   | Neural  |  Memory    | Unified | Geekbench6
          |          |   Cores     |         | Engine  | Bandwidth  | Memory  | Single / Multi 
 ---------|----------|-------------|---------|---------|------------|---------|----------------------
   M1     | 5 nm G1  |  8: 4P+4E   |  7–8    | 16-core | 68.25 GB/s | 16 GB   | 2346 / 8346          
   M2     | 5 nm G2  |  8: 4P+4E   |  8–10   | 16-core | 100 GB/s   | 24 GB   | 2586 / 9672          
   M3     | 3 nm G1  |  8: 4P+4E   |  8–10   | 16-core | 100 GB/s   | 24 GB   | 2965 / 11565         
   M4     | 3 nm G2  | 10: 4P+6E   |  8–10   | 16-core | 120 GB/s   | 32 GB   | 3822 / 15031         
   M5     | 3 nm G3  | 10: 4P+6E   |   10    | 16-core | 153 GB/s   | ≤32 GB  | 4133 / 15437 (9 core)
   M4 Pro | 3 nm G2  | 14: 10P+4E  | 16–20   | 16-core | 273 GB/s   | 64 GB   | 3925 / 22669       
   M4 Max | 3 nm G2  | 16: 12P+4E  | 32–40   | 16-core | 546 GB/s   | 128 GB  | 4060 / 26675

Re: Apple M5 chip

#952

Post by erickhill » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

mumber_typhoon wrote: post #44

The M5 MacBook Pro still gets the Broadcom WiFi chip but the M5 iPad Pros get the N1 and C1X (Sweet). All in all, apple is doing some incredible things with hardware. Software teams at apple really need to get their act together. The M1 itself is so powerful that nobody really needs to upgrade that for most things most people do on their computers. Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same task…

The fix is to disable Glass. In a terminal: defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

This gets rid of the slow animations, inconsistent window cornering, and other annoyances.

Then (so menus aren't transparent and unreadable): System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency

If you do those two things your machine should look and feel normal again. I've been running an M1 Max since 2021 and Tahoe was simply a disaster. Removing the glass layer made everything feel good again.

If for some reason you ever want the bad performance and glass back, you change the YES to NO in the Terminal command. Maybe someday it won't suck.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#953

Post by SkyPuncher » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

okrad wrote: post #845

SkyPuncher wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many software related things that drive me absolutely loony with Apple right now. * My iPhone as a remote for my Apple TV has randomly stopped deciding it can control the volume - despite the "Now Playing" UI offering an audio control that works. There auth screens drive me crazy: * Why cannot I not punch in a password while Face ID is working? If I'm skiing, I know Face ID isn't gong to work, stop makin…

The volume on iPhone when being used as remote seems to work of you use the hardware buttons. It’s not intuitive at all but it works

Yes, I'm aware. That feature breaks - despite volume control still working on the "Now Playing" screen.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#954

Post by isolli » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 3:52 PM UTC

cdaven wrote: post #906

bean469 wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't use most of the 'smart' features anyway - I'm mostly using the fitness features - so I'll probably switch to a Garmin at some point. If that's your use case, I can absolutely recommend getting one. I have a Forerunner 745 and it works great for workouts alongside some smart functions like NFC payments, quick-replies to texts, etc. The battery lasts for days as well, which you can't really beat.

> The battery lasts for days as well, which you can't really beat. The Garmin Instinct 2X's (and 3) battery lasts for 40 days in smartwatch mode, not counting the solar charging. The Instinct is an "outdoor watch" with a monochrome display, but it has most features the Forerunners have.

For the sake of completeness, I would also mention:

- Suunto (20 to 30 days in smartwatch mode for the Verticals, optional solar charging, flashlight on the Vertical 2)

- Coros (2 to 3 weeks depending on the model), no flashlight

- Withings (30 days, looks like a regular watch)

Coros is good for how long they support their watches, and the fact that they don't restrict features in lesser models. Suunto is great for route planning. Polar is renowned for its training metrics (sleep, recovery etc.) but only fetches a week in smartwatch mode.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#955

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

jdiff wrote: post #820

eth0ws wrote: post #791

"When compared to Intel-based systems, it delivers up to 86x faster AI performance" I'm imagining the engineers responsible for running the tests finely tuning the test suite for days and days so they could get that number into the press release, lol. There's no way that's a coincidence and someone definitely advocated for that line being the way it is. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...

I'm quite upset I have nobody I know in real life who will appreciate this line.

[deleted]

Re: Apple M5 chip

#956

Post by 827a » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #856

alberth wrote: post #217

Apple is binning the iPad Pro chips: Storage CPU ≤ 512GB 3 P-cores (and 6 E-cores) 1TB+ 4 P-cores (and 6 E-cores) https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

The sales volumes of the 1TB+ models has got to be fairly low, which makes this fascinating. Since they are being somewhat quiet about it (rather than trumpeting "the 1TB+ models are even faster!") it suggests the P-cores don't yield well enough to support 4 P-cores in the 256GB and 512GB SKUs.

I actually wonder if the 1TB+ models of the iPad Pro represent a higher portion of all models sold than that storage capacity would in other product lines. The iPad Pro is such a niche, weird device; it feels like if you're buying it, you're buying it for something, probably media production related. Its not a Netflix machine.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#957

Post by bigyabai » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #930

bigyabai wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've come a long ways from insidious-but-clear "I'm a Mac" ads, to groanworthy-and-confusing "86x faster performance" promotional metrics.

To be fair: They have the internal metrics on how many people are still on Intel-based Macs, and its very possible that this influences the types of comparisons they choose to make. There's still so many Intel macs out there.

The targeted snark isn't the issue. The issue is that even well-informed techies ignore Apple's metrics until they can read the fine-print. And the average Intel Mac owner probably doesn't even know what "x86" means. The target audience is almost nobody.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#958

Post by 827a » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

Noaidi wrote: post #51

I am wondering if Apple's focus is off lately with this drive for AI. So far all they are showing in that presentation is that I can have "the ability to transform 2D photos into spatial scenes in the Photos app, or generating a Persona — operate with greater speed and efficiency." And by making Apple AI (which is something I do not use for many reasons, but mainly because of Climate Change) their focus, I am afraid…

At the end of the day, they're building silicon that can do this to be ready for when the software side of the house actually figures this stuff out. Of course, it doesn't seem like the software side is close to this, and a very real risk for Apple is a world where the local AI use-cases don't really grow to justify this level of silicon investment. More specifically: Personal context is a big thing that Apple is uniquely positioned to capitalize on; but will a mobile-sized LLM and mobile-sized memory ever be able to coherently handle the volume of contextual data that might be necessary to be truly great? I have 400gb in iCloud, I don't want to get into the weeds of most of that being images and such; you don't need to in order to recognize that modern data center-scale LLMs can handle, like, less than a megabyte of context.

There will always be local-first use-cases, but its also possible that, you know, we're already near the global maxima of those use-cases, and the local AI coprocessors we've had can do it fine. This would be a severe shock to my perceived value of Apple right now, because my view is: their hardware division is firing on all cylinders and totally killing it. But when you're putting supercomputers into the iPad... maybe that doesn't actually matter. Meanwhile, their software is getting worse every year that goes by.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#959

Post by bigyabai » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

nielsbot wrote: post #859

bapak wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check all the comparisons on their website. They're not comparing their products to the previous gen, they're comparing them to years-old system. They could sell you a downgrade and still stay 2x M1 Pro performance (it was 4x from last year) Apple is a marketing company made to sell stuff.

> Apple is a marketing company made to sell stuff. That's like... every company? Are you saying they don't have good tech?

> Are you saying they don't have good tech?

I will, yes. If macOS supported Vulkan, then those Intel Macs would have GPU acceleration too, and thus it would be a fair fight comparing it to MPS. Apple's tech stack is so miserly and poor that they never supported the common GPGPU libraries that literally every single OEM is and was shipping.

Apple's tech is appalling. Are you saying they exercise good judgement on behalf of their users?

Re: Apple M5 chip

#960

Post by hoppp » Thu, Oct 16, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

mumber_typhoon wrote: post #44

The M5 MacBook Pro still gets the Broadcom WiFi chip but the M5 iPad Pros get the N1 and C1X (Sweet). All in all, apple is doing some incredible things with hardware. Software teams at apple really need to get their act together. The M1 itself is so powerful that nobody really needs to upgrade that for most things most people do on their computers. Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same task…

They are known to slow down devices on purpose. For them its simply to bring the most out of their new models but it ends up deprecating the old ones.