Nvidia N1 (20SM) vs Apple M5 Pro GPU (20-core)

We performed a head-to-head comparison of the Nvidia N1 (20SM) with 20 pipelines and 2560 shaders against the 3 months older Apple M5 Pro GPU (20-core) that utilizes 320 pipelines and 2560 shaders. Here you will find complete details about specs, efficiency, performance tests, and more.

Please note that the tests on the Nvidia N1 (20SM) are done on an engineering sample provided by our insiders. The data will be more accurate after the final version of this GPU is available.

Key differences

Key distinctions and advantages of M5 Pro GPU (20-core) over N1 (20SM)
Reasons to consider the Nvidia N1 (20SM)
  • 49% higher maximum theoretical performance (12.4 vs 8.3 TFLOPS)
Reasons to consider the Apple M5 Pro GPU (20-core)
  • Manufactured using a more efficient 3 nm process technology

Benchmarks

Graphics cards’ performance in recent benchmarking apps

3D Mark

Multiplatform graphics benchmark suite that directly correlates with performance in modern games
Steel Nomad Lite Score
Solar Bay - 46856
Wild Life Extreme - 23747
Sources: 3DMark [1]

GeekBench 6 GPU Compute

GPU test for computational tasks (image processing, photography, computer vision, and ML)
GB6 Compute Score
Background Blur - 177.6 img/sec
Face Detection - 114.5 img/sec
Horizon Detection - 3.19 Gpixels/sec
Edge Detection - 4.45 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian Blur - 4.59 Gpixels/sec
Feature Matching - 0.96 Gpixels/sec
Stereo Matching - 250.4 Gpixels/sec
Particle Physics - 12529.9 FPS
API - OpenCL
Sources: Geekbench [3]

Cinebench 2024 GPU

Hardware benchmark using Maxon's Cinema 4D rendering engine
Cinebench 2024 GPU

Blender

Rendering performance test for 3D modeling
Blender GPU
Sources: Blender [9] – 113 samples

Artificial Intelligence Tests

Performance in machine learning and artificial intelligence tasks

GeekBench 6 ML

Tests throughput of AI operations in single, half, and quantized precision
GB6 ML Single Precision
GB6 ML Half Precision
GB6 ML Quantized
Image Classification (SP) - 8870
Image Segmentation (HP) - 28795
Image Super Resolution (Q) - 34820
Face Detection (HP) - 55699
Pose Estimation (Q) - 212347
Text Classification (SP) - 3018
Machine Translation (HP) - 9102
Object Detection (SP) - 8163
Depth Estimation (Q) - 70908
Style Transfer (SP) - 152297
Framework - Core ML
Backend - GPU
Sources: Geekbench [9]

Specifications

Technical specifications of Nvidia N1 (20SM) and Apple M5 Pro GPU (20-core)

General

Vendor Nvidia Apple
Build Discrete Integrated
Released June 1, 2026 March 3, 2026
Case Laptop Laptop
Purpose Professional Professional
Segment Entry-level Mid-range
Architecture Blackwell (N1x) Apple M GPU
GPU Codename GB20B Custom
Recommended CPU - - Apple M5 Pro (18-Core) or above
Used in CPUs - - Apple M5 Pro (18-Core)
Laptop GPU ranking (#22nd place)

Graphics Processing Unit

Base Clock 1665 MHz -
Boost Clock 2418 MHz 1620 MHz
Shading Units 2560 2560
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) 160 160
Render Output Units (ROPs) 24 80
Compute Units (Pipelines) 20 320
Tensor Cores 80 -
Ray-tracing Cores 20 -
L1 Cache 128KB per cluster -
L2 Cache 50MB shared -
Instructions Per Cycle 2 IPC 2 IPC

Raw Performance

Pixel Fill Rate 58 GPixel/s 130 GPixel/s
Texture Fill Rate 387 GTexel/s 259 GTexel/s
FLOPS (FP32)
N1 (20SM) +49%
12.4 TFLOPS

Physical

Interface PCIe 5.0 x16 Custom
TGP - 28 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC
Fabrication Process 5 nm 3 nm
Transistor Count - 28 billion
Max. Temperature - 100°C

Memory

Memory Type System Shared System Shared
Memory Clock - 9600 MHz
Bus 256-bit 256-bit
ECC No No
Memory Bandwidth
273.2 GB/s
307 GB/s

API

OpenCL 3.0 -
CUDA 12.1 -
Ray Tracing Yes Yes
DLSS - No

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