The base M5 starts at 10 cores and scales to 18 cores. The performance is similar to high end dekstop consumer CPUs.
> I don't typically compile Linux on my M5, so I don't really care,
If you don't compile large codebases, why do you care then?
I do compile large codebases and I'm speaking from experience with the same codebase on both platforms. Not "LOC/s" benchmarks
There's a large C++ codebase I need to compile, but it can't compile/run on OSX in the first place, hence the desktop that I use remotely for that. Since it's also kind of a shitshow, that one has really terrible compile times: up to 15 minutes on a high powered Intel ThinkPad I no longer use, ~2 minutes on desktop.
I could do it in a VM as well, but let's be real: running it on the M5 in front of me is going to be nowhere near as nice as running it on the water cooled desktop under my desk.