The new iPad Pro unboxing video did not just reveal details of Apple’s larger flagship tablet, but also provided some specifications of the company’s new M5 chipset, which we have compared with the older M4. On paper, there are barely any changes, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, because there are a ton of details that Apple has mentioned in its official announcement of the M5.
M5 and M4 share the same number of performance and efficiency cores for the base configuration; clock speed also remains unchanged
The base M4 featured a ‘3 + 6’ configuration, where the SoC was equipped with three performance and six efficiency cores. The M5 does not share any differences in this regard because it features the same CPU cluster. What is more interesting about the new Apple Silicon is that the performance cores are running at the same 4.42GHz as the M4, with the only difference spotted in the L2 cache.
According to the recently tested M5 iPad Pro and M4 iPad Pro, the older-generation chipset is equipped with 4MB of L2 cache, while the newer version comes with a 50 percent bump to 6MB. Like the A19 and A19 Pro, we expect the M5 to be Apple’s third 3nm ‘N3P’ chip, meaning that the company managed to squeeze more performance from the SoC at roughly the same power consumption.
While the following is unconfirmed, we hope to see Apple implement the same architectural changes in the M5 as it did with the A19 Pro regarding the efficiency cores. In our previous analysis, the low-power cores received an upgrade that is nothing short of a magic trick, with Apple obtaining up to a 29 percent performance increase with zero power increments compared to the A18 Pro’s efficiency cores.
RAM count to see a 50 percent boost
The new 13-inch M5 iPad Pro that got unboxed was spotted with 12GB RAM, making it a sizable increase over the 8GB memory running in the previous-generation tablet. Given the new chipset’s 9-core CPU, we are looking at the base configuration, meaning that Apple may have increased the minimum RAM count. This hardware upgrade will introduce a bevy of advantages, such as improved multitasking, faster AI operations, and more memory to spare for AAA games.
Unfortunately, these are all the differences we have for you, but the information accumulated pretty much confirms that the M5 is simply a minor generational improvement over the M4, meaning that it is likely not worth upgrading to the newer hardware. As always, we will return with more updates, so stay tuned.
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