With the new year underway, focus is steadily shifting toward Apple’s next wave of silicon, expected to include the M5 Pro, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra in the first half of the year. Interest around the M5 family has increased after reports suggested the base M5 chip delivered a large jump in gaming performance over the M4, particularly in Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled. While Apple has not shared official figures yet, early estimates are beginning to surface, offering a preview of what the higher-end M5 Max could bring.
A recent estimated benchmark comparison shared on Reddit outlines how the M5 Max may perform against the M4 Max and several NVIDIA GPUs across two modern titles: Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The post, shared by a user known as Cheap-Ability9453, compiles performance data sourced from Notebookcheck and combines it with historical generational gains seen across Apple Silicon releases. The results are not based on direct testing of the M5 Max, but instead on extrapolated data, making them an early reference rather than confirmed performance numbers.
| Hardware | Average FPS | Performance Difference |
|---|---|---|
| Apple M5 Max | 125 FPS | Baseline |
| Apple M4 Max | 85 FPS | M5 Max is ~47% faster |
| RTX 5070 Ti (Laptop) | 120 FPS | M5 Max is ~4% faster |
| RTX 5060 (Desktop) | 111 FPS | M5 Max is ~12.6% faster |
| RTX 4070 (Desktop) | 126 FPS | M5 Max is ~0.8% slower |
According to the comparison, both games were tested at 1080p using the ultra settings preset. In Cyberpunk 2077, the M5 Max is listed at 125 frames per second. This places it well ahead of the M4 Max, which is shown at 85FPS, representing a 47 percent increase. The same chart lists NVIDIA’s laptop RTX 5070 Ti at 120FPS, allowing the M5 Max to edge past it by a small margin. The desktop RTX 5060 appears further behind at 111FPS, while the desktop RTX 4070 slightly leads the M5 Max with a reported 126FPS.
| Hardware | Average FPS | Performance Difference |
|---|---|---|
| Apple M5 Max | 51 FPS | Baseline |
| Apple M4 Max | 33 FPS | M5 Max is ~54.5% faster |
| RTX 5070 Ti (Laptop) | 53 FPS | M5 Max is ~3.8% slower |
| RTX 5060 (Desktop) | 43 FPS | M5 Max is ~18.6% faster |
| RTX 4070 (Desktop) | 55 FPS | M5 Max is ~7.3% slower |
Assassin’s Creed Shadows presents a similar pattern, though the margins shift slightly. The M5 Max is estimated to deliver 51FPS, compared to 33FPS on the M4 Max. This results in a 54.5 percent improvement from one generation to the next. In this title, the laptop RTX 5070 Ti holds a narrow advantage at 53FPS, while the desktop RTX 4070 extends its lead to 55FPS. Even so, the M5 Max is shown to outperform the desktop RTX 5060, which is listed at 43FPS.
If these estimates are close to real-world results, they suggest that Apple’s M5 Max could narrow the gap between integrated SoCs and dedicated GPUs, at least in certain gaming workloads. This is notable given Apple’s continued focus on power efficiency and unified memory rather than traditional discrete graphics solutions. Even without a major increase in core counts, architectural changes alone could explain much of the reported uplift.
There is speculation that Apple may retain a similar CPU and GPU core configuration to the M4 Max, which featured up to a 40-core GPU. A revised architecture, higher clock speeds, or improved memory performance could allow the M5 Max to scale further, especially in graphics-heavy tasks. However, without confirmed specifications, these details remain uncertain.
Several important factors are missing from the estimated comparison. The post does not clarify whether features such as MetalFX upscaling or frame generation were enabled. It also does not confirm if ray tracing was active in both titles during testing. These details matter, as Apple has previously demonstrated Cyberpunk 2077 running at high framerates on Apple Silicon, but such performance would not be achievable with path tracing alone without assistance from upscaling or frame generation techniques.
Apple’s earlier demos showed Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition running at up to 120FPS on the M4 Max, which led to questions about the exact settings used. Similar uncertainties apply to the M5 Max estimates. Without knowing the rendering pipeline, it is difficult to directly compare these numbers to native performance figures from NVIDIA GPUs.
Until Apple officially unveils the M5 Max and independent testing becomes available, these results should be viewed as preliminary. They do, however, suggest that Apple is continuing to push its silicon further into performance territory once dominated by dedicated graphics hardware. If confirmed, the M5 Max could offer a notable upgrade for users interested in gaming and GPU-heavy workloads on macOS, but a clearer picture will only emerge closer to launch.
