Early Geekbench Metal results: M5 Ultra up to ~59% above M3 Ultra, M6 jumps ~34%

Early Geekbench 7 Metal results for Apple’s new M5 Ultra and M6 chips have started to appear ahead of Mac Studio (M5 Max / M5 Ultra) and Mac mini (M6) shipping on Tuesday, September 22, MacRumors’ Joe Rossignol reports.

These are early, unverified database entries — not Apple-confirmed scores — and real-world graphics performance will vary. Treat the numbers as directional, not a guarantee of game or pro-app FPS.

Reported Metal scores (Geekbench 7)

Per MacRumors’ roundup of early results:

• M5 Ultra: Metal up to 366,744 — about 59% above the M3 Ultra average of 230,420
• M6: Metal up to 93,217 — about 34% above the M5 average of 69,563
• OpenCL (M5 Ultra): MacRumors says the early OpenCL score is roughly in line with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 — a synthetic cross-vendor comparison, not a like-for-like gaming test

For context in the same Metal table MacRumors published (averages / highs mixed as reported), nearby Apple Silicon points include M5 Max ~225,606, M2 Ultra ~201,144, M4 Max ~189,301, and M5 Pro ~130,896.

Why it matters for next week’s Mac launch

Apple’s August Newsroom materials positioned M5 Ultra as the high-end Mac Studio chip and M6 as the new Mac mini silicon. Early GPU benches are one of the first public peeks at how that graphics story might land — especially for Metal-heavy creative apps — but they are not substitutes for independent review benches after devices ship.

MacRumors also notes it covered CPU results earlier in the week; this update is the GPU / Metal follow-up.

Bottom line: If the early Geekbench Metal samples hold, M5 Ultra looks like a large generational GPU jump vs M3 Ultra on paper, and M6 looks meaningfully ahead of last year’s M5 — with the usual caveat that synthetic scores ≠ shipping software performance.

Sources: MacRumors — Joe Rossignol (Friday, September 18, 2026, 12:55 p.m. PDT).