Apple’s New Mac Studio M5 Max and M5 Ultra Turn the Desk Into a Full AI Workshop

Apple just announced two new Mac Studio models based on the M5 Max and the all-new M5 Ultra. These machines keep the sleek, compact silver box that has long sat beneath monitors and next to keyboards. What changed is within, and the modifications are geared squarely at people who spend their days rendering, training LLM models, grading footage, or creating massive codebases without ever leaving their desk.

The M5 Max arrives first and appears to be the more user-friendly of the two. It features an 18-core CPU with six super cores and twelve performance cores. The GPU starts with 32 cores and can be upgraded to 40 cores, and to top it off, a Neural Accelerator is embedded directly into each of those cores. Memory capacity ranges from the base 36GB to an eye-popping 128GB. Memory bandwidth reaches a stunning 614GB per second when using the highest-end GPU. When it comes to storage, you can expect a minimum of 512GB and a maximum of 8TB, which is plenty for any project, let alone one pushing the boundaries of 3D and motion graphics. The price? You can expect to pay $2,499.

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It’s worth noting that this configuration is intended for professionals such as musicians, photographers, and software developers, who work with real-time 3D and motion graphics on a daily basis. Apple claims a 50% gain in GPU performance over the previous generation, particularly for these types of tasks. We’re also talking about third-generation ray tracing and significantly improved media engines, which will undoubtedly make life much easier for anyone who spends their days switching between a variety of creative programs.

M5 Ultra is the big cheese, and it’s going to blow the doors off. To make it, Apple essentially takes two M5 Max dies and connects them together with their new UltraFusion connection. The end result is a CPU with at least 30 cores (10 super cores and 20 performance cores) and a maximum of 36 cores (12 super cores and 24 performance cores). That’s a lot of processing power, while the GPU starts with 64 cores and can go up to 80. To emphasize the point, each of those GPU cores comes equipped with its own Neural Accelerator. Memory starts at 96GB, but can go up to 256GB right now, or 512GB if you’re lucky and it arrives on time for your project. And what about bandwidth? Let’s just say you’re in for a treat—1.2TB per second, to be specific. Storage? It starts at 1TB and goes up to a whopping 16TB.

This is what Apple calls its most powerful chip yet, and with good cause. They promise up to 1.3 times the CPU performance of the previous M3 Ultra in terms of multithreading, up to 1.8 times quicker graphics, and a staggering 4.3 times peak AI compute. And any video editors out there will be pleased to discover that this system can play 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 material at no less than 30 frames per second. Do you want to operate a large language model locally? Not an issue. Color grade uncompressed 8K film, perform intricate fluid simulations, or train a large model on your own? That’s suddenly no longer an issue.

Both the M5 Max and M5 Ultra retain the same set of ports that made earlier Mac Studios so practical in edit suites and design studios, with Thunderbolt 5 ports capable of delivering up to 120Gb per second. Designers will be pleased to learn that the Ultra model can drive up to eight external displays, including four Studio Display XDR units running at full 5K and 120Hz. They also support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and if you work in production, you’ll be pleased to know that there is a genlock option via USB-C that keeps your camera and display in perfect sync.

As you get away from the base specifications, pricing begins to rise dramatically. A fully configured M5 Max with 128GB of memory and 8TB of storage costs a whopping $8,899. On the Ultra side, upgrading to a 36-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, as well as 256GB of memory and 16TB of storage, costs $18,299. They’re still waiting to release the 512GB RAM option, which is anticipated to be ready in late October, but Apple hasn’t said a word yet about the price. On the other side, education discounts typically reduce the initial price by a few hundred dollars.

Pre-orders began today, and the majority of the options are expected to ship on September 22. However, the Ultra models with the greatest memory specifications will take a few weeks longer to arrive. When they do, they will ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate.