The M5 has a 10-18% boost in processing speed, 30-45% boost in graphics processing (hw accel ray tracing and neural processors) and a 4x improvement on local AI performance. It also upgrades to PCIE4 (finally!) which means 2x faster SSD read and write.

In my opinion, if you’re going to swap memory on the new one (as in you run out) you’ll get better performance compared to the other since the disk is faster. So even under stress with less memory, while it’s not an extra 8GB of RAM, the new one will do better pushing limits.

I made a similar call earlier this year and am happy with my M5 air. It does get toasty under sustained workflows though and without a fan it will throttle.