- Apple shifts chip power from CPUs toward GPUs and memory for better balance
- Efficiency gains plateau for CPUs while GPU and neural engine performance soar
- MacBook Pros redefine performance around sustained workloads not raw CPU speed
Apple’s custom silicon has evolved rapidly since the launch of its first M1 processor back in 2020 - the first chip which marked Apple’s transition away from Intel and focused heavily on CPU efficiency.
The power balance began to shift with the arrival of the M1 Pro and M1 Max in 2021, where the GPU consumed a far greater chunk of total chip power.
The M2 generation largely followed that trend, but the M3 Max raised CPU clocks and power limits, nudging more budget to the CPU in mobile systems, before the balance shifted back toward GPU and memory.
This article is the final one in a five-part series delving deep into Apple’s M-class processors, from the early M1 through to the newly announced M5 and our projected M5 Ultra. Each piece explores how Apple’s silicon has evolved in architecture, performance, and design philosophy, and what those changes might mean for the company’s future hardware.
M4 goes to the Max
When the M4 Max arrived in 2024, adding Thunderbolt 5 to the Mac for the first time, the CPU was no longer the principal consumer of thermal headroom.
Early M1 designs dedicated roughly 18W to 25W of their power budgets to the CPU. The rest went to graphics and memory bandwidth.
The M1 Max drew about 115W in total, but only 25W for its CPU cores. Estimates suggest the M4 Max CPU draws about 48W within a roughly 70W chip envelope, with Apple allocating substantial power to graphics and memory bandwidth.
The new M5 generation, which rolled out a week ago and powers the new 14-inch MacBook Pro and new iPad Pro, has the CPU drawing a maximum of 15W from 25W.
While there’s no word on when an M5 Max might see the light of day – there was an almost six month gap between the M4 and the M4 Pro and Max – that version is likely to raise total chip power, but without a large hike in CPU consumption.
Data estimates generated by Google Gemini, based on past Apple chip trends, suggest that CPU will use about 50W from a 95W overall design, nearly identical to the M4 Max’s proportion.
Apple’s power scaling looks to have reached a point where the CPU cores are efficient enough that adding wattage to the mix brings minimal benefit.
Multi-core CPU benchmark scores have risen relatively modestly from the M1 Max’s 13,188 to up to 25,000 in the M4 Max.
GPU performance, meanwhile, has climbed from about 112,000 in the M1 Max to an estimate of more than 200,000 for the projected M5 Max.
The neural engine has jumped from 11 TOPS in the first M1 to an estimated 133 TOPS in the new M5, supporting Apple Intelligence on-device, with Gemini's projections suggesting around 400 TOPS for the future M5 Max.
Instead of chasing peak CPU output, Apple is optimizing for sustained mixed workloads that combine CPU, GPU, and AI processing, ultimately reshaping what we think of as a professional MacBook.
For creative and machine-learning tasks, the payoff comes from how efficiently the chip moves data and balances power, rather than how fast a single core runs.
In Apple’s base M5, the CPU has reached a mature efficiency point, and the true cost of performance now lies with the GPU and memory system.
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