Early benchmark results of Apple’s upcoming M5 Ultra processor for workstations show an impressive appearance in the Geekbench 7 database, with the 36-core chip outperforming AMD’s 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX in both single- and multi-core testing.
The results were found by Wccftech, which stated the results are notable because the M5 Ultra has fewer than half as many CPU cores as AMD’s workstation-class processor. The Threadripper is not a high-volume chip; It’s built for extreme use cases like workstations and developer work. It is built with very high-performance computing in mind.
The M5 Ultra is reportedly configured with 36 CPU cores, including 12 high-performance cores, while the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX features 96 Zen 5 cores and 192 threads and can reach boost speeds of up to 5.4GHz. The M5 Ultra system used for the benchmark was also listed with 256GB of unified memory.
The M5 Ultra reportedly posted a multi-core score of 52,516, compared with 47,413 for the Threadripper PRO 9995WX, giving Apple’s chip an advantage of approximately 10.8%. The single-core results show an even larger gap. The M5 Ultra scored 3,774 points, while AMD’s processor recorded 2,578, giving Apple a lead of roughly 46.4%.
It wasn’t a one-sided victory, however. Threadripper’s much larger core count gives it a substantial advantage in heavily parallelized workloads. In the Ray Tracer test, for example, the AMD processor reportedly led by about 58.8%, while it also held a significant advantage in the Clang compilation test.
A separate comparison of Geekbench submissions also shows a 64-core Threadripper PRO 9985WX scoring 56,118 points, higher than the M5 Ultra result, underscoring how much individual benchmark runs can vary.
Geekbench is a relatively short benchmark, and performance in sustained professional workloads can differ substantially depending on software optimization, memory requirements and the degree of parallelism involved.
Nevertheless, matching or surpassing a 96-core workstation processor with a 36-core design gives Apple serious bragging rights and makes the M5 Ultra very viable in whatever market Apple targets.
