Apple yesterday announced the M6, its first chip built using a 2nm process and the first Apple silicon design to use three different CPU core types, but how does it compare to the M5?

Compared to the M5 chip that Apple launched in October 2025, the M6 delivers: Up to 1.2x faster multithreaded CPU performance, nearly 30% higher peak GPU compute for AI, up to 2x peak Neural Engine compute, 50% higher geometry rates for complex graphics, and 10% higher unified memory bandwidth.

Apple did not publish real-world benchmarks comparing the M6 to the M5 directly, instead framing its Mac mini figures against the M4 and M1 models: Up to 13.5x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio versus M1, up to 4.8x faster versus the M4, up to 2.3x faster spreadsheet calculations in Microsoft Excel versus M1, up to 1.5x faster versus the M4, and up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition versus the M4.

The most significant architectural change is in the CPU. The M5 splits its ten cores into performance and efficiency groups, while the M6 adds a third tier called super cores, which handle single-threaded workloads and which Apple says give the chip the world's fastest single-threaded performance. The Neural Engine is also doubled, with system frameworks able to use both engines at once so apps see faster model execution without any work from developers required.