Apple has announced a new Mac Studio powered by the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, bringing faster CPU, GPU, AI, storage, and connectivity performance to its compact desktop. The new lineup starts at $2,499 and is available to pre-order from August 25, with deliveries and wider availability starting September 22.
The M5 Max model replaces the previous M4 Max version, while the new M5 Ultra becomes Apple’s most powerful desktop chip so far. Both models focus heavily on local AI workloads, professional video production, 3D rendering, software development, and other demanding tasks that benefit from large amounts of unified memory.
Apple has also restored higher memory configurations across the lineup, with the M5 Max supporting up to 128GB and the M5 Ultra reaching 512GB of unified memory.
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M5 Max Mac Studio gets faster CPU, GPU, and AI performance
The M5 Max Mac Studio features an 18-core CPU with six super cores and 12 performance cores, along with a GPU that can be configured with up to 40 cores. Apple has also added Neural Accelerators to every GPU core, which directly speeds up AI workloads such as running large language models and generating images.
Apple says GPU performance is up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation, while unified memory bandwidth now reaches 614GB/s compared with up to 546GB/s on M4 Max.
The M5 Max model starts with 36GB of unified memory and supports configurations up to 128GB. Apple had previously reduced the maximum memory configuration of the M4 Max Mac Studio to 96GB during the wider memory shortage.
Apple shared several performance comparisons for the new model:
- Up to 10.7x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio than M1 Max and 3.9x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 7.4x faster text-to-image generation than M1 Max and 3.5x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 5.3x faster Magic Mask performance in DaVinci Resolve Studio than M1 Max and 3x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 3.5x faster DNA sequencing basecalling in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW than M1 Max and 1.9x faster than M4 Max.
M5 Ultra pushes Mac Studio up to 512GB of memory
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio moves further into high-end professional and AI workloads with an up-to-36-core CPU made up of 12 super cores and 24 performance cores. Apple says multithreaded CPU performance is up to 1.3x faster than the previous M3 Ultra model.
Its GPU can scale to 80 cores, making it the largest Apple silicon GPU currently available. Neural Accelerators also appear in every GPU core for the first time on an Ultra chip, with Apple claiming up to 4.3x higher peak AI compute performance than M3 Ultra.
The M5 Ultra starts with 96GB of unified memory and supports up to 512GB, while memory bandwidth reaches 1.2TB/s. That combination allows users to run much larger AI models entirely on the Mac without relying on cloud processing.
The Media Engine also includes twice as many video encode and decode blocks as M5 Max, allowing the system to handle up to 33 simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30fps.
Apple says the M5 Ultra delivers:
- Up to 15.4x faster CopyCat ML training in Foundry Nuke than M1 Ultra and 3.3x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 9.8x faster LLM prompt processing than M1 Ultra and 4x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 8.2x faster text-to-image performance than M1 Ultra and 4.3x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 4.7x faster Redshift scene rendering than M1 Ultra and 1.7x faster than M3 Ultra.
Both Mac Studio models now support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 through Apple’s N1 networking chip, while Thunderbolt 5 provides bandwidth of up to 120Gb/s. Storage performance is also up to twice as fast thanks to a new PCIe Gen 6 SSD architecture.
Mac Studio can drive up to eight external displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR monitors running at 5K resolution and 120Hz. Apple has also added genlock over USB-C for synchronizing professional cameras and displays.
The M5 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,499 with 512GB of storage, while education pricing starts at $2,299. The M5 Ultra model starts at $5,499 with 1TB of storage, which represents a $200 increase over the previous M3 Ultra starting price, while education pricing begins at $5,099.
Apple will begin shipping the new Mac Studio on September 22, although configurations with 512GB of unified memory will arrive later in October.
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