(VIDEO) 5 New Things to Know About Apple’s New Mac Studio With M5 Max and M5 Ultra Chips Starting at $2,499

Apple announced a redesigned Mac Studio on Monday, calling it the company’s most powerful Mac ever, built around two new chips, M5 Max and the all-new M5 Ultra, that Apple says deliver a dramatic leap in on-device artificial intelligence performance. Here are five key things to know about the new desktop computer.

1. It’s built primarily for running AI models directly on the device

Apple positioned the new Mac Studio explicitly as a machine designed to handle massive AI workloads locally, rather than relying on cloud computing. Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, framed the upgrade as a significant step forward for the product line. “Mac Studio is the ultimate desktop for on-device AI and the world’s most demanding pro workflows, relied on by users for its tremendous performance and extensive pro connectivity, all in a quiet, compact design that sits right on your desk — and today, we’re pushing the boundaries even further,” Srouji said. “With the powerful M5 Max and the incredible capabilities of M5 Ultra, Mac Studio ushers in a new era of desktop computing, delivering huge performance gains for pro workloads and AI inference with frontier-class models.”

According to Apple, the top-end M5 Ultra chip delivers up to 4.3 times the peak AI compute performance of the previous M3 Ultra chip, and nearly 10 times that of the original M1 Ultra. Neural Accelerators built directly into each GPU core handle dramatically faster matrix multiplication, a core computational operation underlying most modern AI systems. Apple said the combination of that processing power with massive on-device memory allows users to run large AI models “entirely on device with complete privacy — without counting tokens or worrying about rising cloud costs.”

2. Memory capacity reaches a staggering 512GB

The new Mac Studio can be configured with up to 512GB of unified memory when equipped with the M5 Ultra chip, paired with 1.2 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth, which Apple said represents a 50% increase over the previous generation. That combination is specifically designed to let users load and run enormous large language models directly on the machine rather than splitting workloads across cloud servers. The M5 Max configuration tops out at a still-substantial 128GB of unified memory with 614 gigabytes per second of bandwidth. Apple noted that the 512GB memory configuration will arrive slightly later than the rest of the lineup, becoming available in late October rather than at the initial September 22 launch.

3. Multiple systems can be linked together for even more AI power

For users and teams needing to go beyond the capabilities of a single machine, Apple built in support for clustering multiple Mac Studio units together using Thunderbolt 5 and remote direct memory access, or RDMA, technology. According to Apple, this creates a shared memory pool spanning multiple systems, allowing users to load some of the largest and most demanding open-weight AI models currently available. Apple said a cluster of four Mac Studio systems delivers up to three times faster AI inference performance compared with a single standalone machine, a capability aimed squarely at AI researchers, data scientists and development teams working with particularly large models.

4. New chips also bring major gains for video, graphics and creative work

Beyond AI performance, Apple detailed substantial improvements across graphics-intensive creative workflows. The M5 Max’s GPU, which scales up to 40 cores, is up to 50% faster than the prior generation, according to Apple, while the M5 Ultra’s GPU, scaling up to a massive 80 cores, marks the most powerful Apple silicon GPU built to date and brings Neural Accelerators to the Ultra chip for the first time. Apple said the new Mac Studio also includes third-generation hardware-accelerated ray tracing for more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows in professional 3D and visual effects work.

Specific creative software benchmarks cited by Apple, based on internal testing conducted in July 2026, include up to 5.3 times faster performance for the Magic Mask feature in Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve Studio on the M5 Max compared with the original M1 Max, and up to 4.7 times faster scene rendering in Maxon Redshift on the M5 Ultra compared with M1 Ultra. Apple also said the redesigned Media Engine allows the M5 Ultra configuration to simultaneously play back up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 footage at 30 frames per second, a capability aimed at professional video editors working with high volumes of uncompressed footage.

5. Storage, connectivity and pricing have all been upgraded, starting at $2,499

The new Mac Studio introduces a next-generation SSD architecture built on the PCIe Gen 6 standard, delivering storage performance Apple says is up to twice as fast as the previous generation, speeding up project loading and large file transfers. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 arrive on Mac Studio for the first time, powered by Apple’s own N1 wireless chip, while Thunderbolt 5 ports deliver transfer speeds up to 120 gigabits per second. The machine also supports up to eight connected displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR monitors running at full 5K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate.

Pricing starts at $2,499 for the Mac Studio configured with the M5 Max chip, or $2,299 for education customers, while the M5 Ultra configuration starts significantly higher, at $5,499, or $5,099 for education buyers. Apple is also offering the machine through its Apple Upgrade leasing program, with M5 Max configurations starting at $48.99 per month and M5 Ultra configurations starting at $110.10 per month over a 36-month term. Pre-orders opened Monday, Aug. 25, across 30 countries and regions including the United States, with the new Mac Studio set to begin arriving to customers and Apple retail locations starting Sept. 22.

The new Mac Studio also ships alongside the upcoming macOS 27 update, which introduces Apple’s more capable Siri AI assistant and expanded Apple Intelligence features across the operating system’s built-in apps. Apple said the new Mac Studio was manufactured using 35% recycled content overall, including fully recycled aluminum in its enclosure, as part of the company’s broader push toward becoming carbon neutral across its entire product footprint by 2030.