M5 MacBook Pro: Pro vs. Max Chip?

[cberg]

Has anybody looked at the specs for the new M5 MacBook Pro laptops? 

 

The M5 Pro Chips now max out with 64 GB of RAM and offer a fairly decent discount compared to the M5 Max chips. 

 

In its chip selection guide, Apple recommends the M5 Pro chip for 3D Design and Animation.  Whereas, the M5 Max chip seems geared toward AI training workflows, 3D animation, scientific analysis and simulation, and video editing.  Apple also stopped making a 96GB RAM module.  Switching to 128 GB of RAM gets super pricey.

 

With this in mind, would it be terrible to stick with 64GB and a Pro Chip?

 

 

Edited March 5 by cberg

[mjm]

2 hours ago, cberg said:

Has anybody looked at the specs for the new M5 MacBook Pro laptops? 

 

The M5 Pro Chips now max out with 64 GB of RAM and offer a fairly decent discount compared to the M5 Max chips. 

 

In its chip selection guide, Apple recommends the M5 Pro chip for 3D Design and Animation.  Whereas, the M5 Max chip seems geared toward AI training workflows, 3D animation, scientific analysis and simulation, and video editing.  Apple also stopped making a 96GB RAM module.  Switching to 128 GB of RAM gets super pricey.

 

With this in mind, would it be terrible to stick with 64GB and a Pro Chip?

 

 

Also eager to hear opinions

 

[Christiaan]

My intuition is that you'll get more out of the 128 GB vs 64 GB memory than you will out of the M5 Max vs M5 Pro when it comes to Vectorworks. But that's just me sticking my finger in the air.

 

The more memory you have the less often you'll find yourself in situations where you have to quit apps and restart Vectorworks. But these things will fly no matter what you get and 64GB is a good amount of memory. You'll just come up against its limitations more often. My M2 Max still flies, although I am glad to have 96 GB of memory.

 

Personally, I will probably stump up for the 128 memory. I also stumped up for a 4TB hard drive when I got my current machine, so I can sync all files to disk and backup directly from my MacBook. Having loads of memory and loads of HD space means that my MacBook just stays out of the way and lets me work, always. All I feel is affection for it, haha. But it comes with heavy price, the Apple tax. 

 

I always say, estimate how many paid hours of work you are going to get out of the machine over the next whatever number of years and then divide the price of the machine by that number. Compare the prices that way and go with whatever figure you find acceptable.

[cberg]

The 128 GB pushes the laptop's price from $3700 to $5400 (both include 2 TB storage), which I guess is a very future-proofed machine, but also a very expensive outlay of money (at least in the short term).  Once you get that much RAM, the upgraded chip comes with it.

 

I will do some math using your recommended payback analysis.  Appreciate the feedback!

 

 

Edited March 5 by cberg

[Pat Stanford]

My standing advice has (for a couple of decades now) to either buy the top of the line machine every 3 years or a midrange machine every 18 months.

 

I prefer the 3 year way as I feel I get more performance.

 

And at 3 years even if you only use VW 1/2 time, it still works out to about $2.00 per hour.  Time to do an inflation increase on your billing rate.

[Jeff Prince]

It is interesting when employees want a computer upgrade and the justifications they have for getting mind numbing fast computers.  When you say “no problem, we will get that for you right away, however, the expectation is you will produce the equivalent profitability in your work”, I’ve never had anyone go forward with their request.  It’s similar when you tie the request to bonuses or other financial compensation.

 

I find the software is the bottleneck more than the hardware.  Inexplicable memory leaks, broken workflows in new releases, old tools that get hung up and require restarting VWX… Those are hardware agnostic problems that bring both ancient and bleeding edge computers to their knees equally.  You can’t buy your way out of those problems, except maybe with lots of RAM in some cases.

 

[E|FA]

My M2 Macbook Air (2022) is working just fine almost 4 years in given the size of my projects and the limited rendering I do.  When I bought it I maxed out the available RAM (24GB) and included a 2TB SSD.  I'm still on Sequoia and VW 2024, so I suspect that when I move to Tahoe + VW 2026 I may need to upgrade (probably to a 32GB M5 MacBook Air after they show up on the Apple refurbished store).  

 

The best strategy for me has been to find the level of machine that handles my workload, and plan on upgrading every 3-4 years, if & when I feel things slowing down or Software/OS system requirements change.  If the computer isn't slowing me down, there's no need to upgrade.  

 

My previous Mac was a 2019 Intel iMac, which I probably would have kept another year or two if the switch to M chips hadn't happened.

[Christiaan]

3 hours ago, Jeff Prince said:

I find the software is the bottleneck more than the hardware.  Inexplicable memory leaks, broken workflows in new releases, old tools that get hung up and require restarting VWX… Those are hardware agnostic problems that bring both ancient and bleeding edge computers to their knees equally.  You can’t buy your way out of those problems, except maybe with lots of RAM in some cases.

Hardware can sweep many software bottlenecks under the carpet. I know this because I continued running Vectorworks on an intel iMac alongside my M2 MacBook for a long while and I experienced waayyyy less crashes, slow downs, etc on my Macbook. Now, instead, I prefer to use the iMac to extend my MacBook display and it works great.

[line-weight]

I think I might take the introduction of M5 chips as a good time to buy a second hand M3/M4 machine, as a bunch of people upgrade. It looks to me like I'll get the best performance improvement (per £ spent), as far as VW is concerned, by investing in something with a lot more RAM than my current M1 mini - rather than being focused on the chip version.

[Jeff Prince]

5 hours ago, Christiaan said:

Hardware can sweep many software bottlenecks under the carpet.

Not in the specific cases I mentioned plus many more when it comes to landscape workflows.  In fact, I have found that a mature Apple system running one OS and one VWX version behind to always be the optimum setup compared to the latest hard&softwares.
 

It’s a moot point though, those of us living in a Revit and Civil adjacent world will probably be forced back into Windows for real work if we hope to stay efficient.  I’m already using a top spec Thinkpad as of January so I can deal with the Autodesk offerings in addition to VWX.  I should put a sticker on it that says “Not My OS” 😉

[cberg]

Apple's website is terrible right now, and I think the company intentionally designs it (as it does) to thwart analysis.  I spend a fair bit of time looking at it.

 

Looking at the specs for these two chips, the big difference between the M5 Pro and Max is the number of GPU cores.  From everything I have read about VW,  graphics card performance is one of the most important considerations when selecting a machine for VW.  The M5 Max chip has 20 GPU cores.  And the Pro chip has 40 GPU cores.  The number of CPU cores is the same between the two chipsets.  

 

While the M5 machines haven't been released or tested, the performance difference will likely be similar to that of the M4 chips with the same configuration.  I have attached a screenshot for reference.  It looks like there is a 40% difference in Workstation performance (Rendering & Modeling), resulting in an overall graphics card performance gain of 28% between the two chips.  

 

As for RAM.  I personally have not had any issues with 64GB.  128 GB would be nice.  But a lot of that can be managed by closing applications when not in use.  Only on very rare occasions am I forced to restart.  

 

A lot to think about, but there does seem to be some reason to go with a higher performing chip. 

 

  Screenshot 2026-03-06 at 8.28.32 AM.pdf

Edited March 6 by cberg

[cberg]

30 minutes ago, Jeff Prince said:

It’s a moot point though, those of us living in a Revit and Civil adjacent world will probably be forced back into Windows for real work if we hope to stay efficient

 

At least you are not using Microstation...  

[cberg]

https://architosh.com/2026/03/apple-m5-pro-and-m5-max-introduce-new-fusion-architecture/

[Tom W.]

On 3/5/2026 at 3:57 AM, cberg said:

With this in mind, would it be terrible to stick with 64GB and a Pro Chip?

 

I wouldn't say terrible by any stretch but a Max chip is going to give you the best single core performance which is fairly important for most tasks in Vectorworks + you could argue that part of the reason for having loads of RAM is not that it necessarily improves VW performance per se but that it allows you to have more stuff going on at once + delay the frequency you need to restart VW due to memory leakage, especially if using one or more external monitors. That said, you are already on 64GB so seems a wasted opportunity not to consider increasing it.

 

Re single core performance, it's too soon for M5 Pro + M5 Max results but you get the picture:

 

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

[designedAF]

On 3/5/2026 at 10:19 PM, Jeff Prince said:

It is interesting when employees want a computer upgrade and the justifications they have for getting mind numbing fast computers.  When you say “no problem, we will get that for you right away, however, the expectation is you will produce the equivalent profitability in your work”, I’ve never had anyone go forward with their request.  It’s similar when you tie the request to bonuses or other financial compensation.

 

I find the software is the bottleneck more than the hardware.  Inexplicable memory leaks, broken workflows in new releases, old tools that get hung up and require restarting VWX… Those are hardware agnostic problems that bring both ancient and bleeding edge computers to their knees equally.  You can’t buy your way out of those problems, except maybe with lots of RAM in some cases.

 

But there’s the degrading performance of the existing machines performance that you have to factor in.  My M1 Max laptop performs slower on today’s release of software than it did 4 years ago on yesterday’s software.  The blazing fast performance on a new machine that  an employee wants is in my experience typically just a return to form that they are hoping for.  Or to take advantage of newer features (like redshift or more light sources).  
 

but, 100 percent agree on the software bottlenecks when it comes to broken workflows or tools.  But I’m the guinea pig in our group so I’m supposed to find those glitches 😂

 

as to the original topic, more ram equals better performance, and unfortunately you need the m5 max to get the highest available ram configuration, so the Max is the way to go regardless of Pro vs Max comparisons.  

[Andrew Pollock]

On 3/7/2026 at 8:22 AM, Tom W. said:

 

I wouldn't say terrible by any stretch but a Max chip is going to give you the best single core performance which is fairly important for most tasks in Vectorworks + you could argue that part of the reason for having loads of RAM is not that it necessarily improves VW performance per se but that it allows you to have more stuff going on at once + delay the frequency you need to restart VW due to memory leakage, especially if using one or more external monitors. That said, you are already on 64GB so seems a wasted opportunity not to consider increasing it.

 

Re single core performance, it's too soon for M5 Pro + M5 Max results but you get the picture:

 

https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks

Actually all of the m5 chips have similar single core performance. The difference is in multi core. That said my question is how much better will VW perform with a pro chip vs a max chip if the ram is 64 gb for both machines? I do a lot of shaded rendering very little rendtrworks.

[Kevin McAllister]

On 3/5/2026 at 11:37 PM, Christiaan said:

Now, instead, I prefer to use the iMac to extend my MacBook display and it works great.

 

How do you do that? I'm super curious. I'm still using a iMac Pro and thinking about a Mac M5 laptop.....

 

Kevin