Home / CPU Comparison / Apple M5 Ultra 36 Cores or Intel Xeon 6980P: What's better?

Apple M5 Ultra 36 Cores

vs

Intel Xeon 6980P

CPU Comparison Result

Below are the results of a comparison of Apple M5 Ultra 36 Cores and Intel Xeon 6980P processors based on key performance characteristics, as well as power consumption and much more.

Advantages

Apple M5 Ultra 36 Cores

Higher Technology: 3 nm (3 nm vs 5 nm)
Newer Launch Date: August 2026 (August 2026 vs September 2024)

Intel Xeon 6980P

More Total Cores: 128 (36 vs 128)
Higher Memory Type: DDR5-6400 (Unified memory vs DDR5-6400)

Basic

Apple

Label Name

Intel

August 2026

Launch Date

September 2024

Desktop

Platform

Server

Apple M5

CPU Architecture

Apple M5 Ultra

CPU Name

Apple M5 Ultra 36 Cores

Model Name

Xeon 6980P

Code Name

Granite Rapids

Foundry

Intel

Generation

Xeon 6(Granite Rapids-AP)

CPU Specifications

Over 4.4 TB/s

Interconnect Bandwidth

UltraFusion quad-die architecture

Interconnect Technology

4.61 GHz

Super-core Max Frequency

Total Cores

Cores is a hardware term that describes the number of independent central processing units in a single computing component (die or chip).

128

Total Threads

256

Performance-cores

Super-cores

Performance-core Base Frequency

2 GHz

Performance-core Max Turbo Frequency

3.9 GHz

L1 Cache

112 KB per core

L2 Cache

2 MB per core

L3 Cache

504 MB shared

Bus Frequency

100 MHz

CPU Socket

The socket is the component that provides the mechanical and electrical connections between the processor and motherboard.

Intel Socket 7529

Multiplier

20.0

Unlocked Multiplier

3 nm

Technology

Lithography refers to the semiconductor technology used to manufacture an integrated circuit, and is reported in nanometer (nm), indicative of the size of features built on the semiconductor.

5 nm

TDP

500 W

Max. Operating Temperature

Junction Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.

95°C

PCIe Version

PCI Express is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard used for connecting high-speed components, replacing older standards such as AGP, PCI, and PCI-X. It has gone through multiple revisions and improvements since its initial release. PCIe 1.0 was first introduced in 2002, and in order to meet the growing demand for higher bandwidth, subsequent versions have been released over time.

Memory Specifications

Unified memory

Memory Type

DDR5-6400

512 GB

Max Memory Size

Max memory size refers to the maximum memory capacity supported by the processor.

3 TB

Memory Channels

The number of memory channels refers to the bandwidth operation for real world application.

1.2 TB/s

Max Memory Bandwidth

Max Memory bandwidth is the maximum rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by the processor (in GB/s).

ECC Memory Support

ECC Memory Supported indicates processor support for Error-Correcting Code memory. ECC memory is a type of system memory that can detect and correct common kinds of internal data corruption. Note that ECC memory support requires both processor and chipset support.

Yes