Apple's processors are notorious for their high performance when running in their native environments: macOS and iOS. However, an experiment conducted by NPacific, a Chinese enthusiast (via HXL), shows that Apple's latest M5 processor can destroy high-end CPUs from AMD and Intel while running Windows 11 in virtualization mode. There is a catch, though: So far, the enthusiast has only benchmarked the M5 processor in CPU-Z, a synthetic benchmark.
Staying true to Apple's goal of developing processors with the maximum possible single-thread performance, the M5 system-on-a-chip (SoC) scores 1600.2 points in single-thread CPU-Z version 1.04.arm64 benchmark, assuming the results from an unknown enthusiast are to be believed. This is the highest single-thread score ever registered on a non-overclocked CPU in the CPU-Z database. To put it into context, Intel's Core i9-14900KS scores 952 points in this benchmark, whereas AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D achieves 867 points.
