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Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio Goes For Absolutely Bonkers Performance
Sure, that M5 Max inside the recent MacBook Pro models was an absolute beast of CPU and GPU performance, but why stop there? The next Mac Studio is supposed to be Apple’s “most powerful Mac,” and we’re keen to believe it considering the paper specs suggest it’s packing literally twice the chip of its previous “most-powerful Mac.”
There are two versions of the new Mac Studio. It’s running inside the same aluminum box with rounded corners, now packing either the M5 Max or the M5 Ultra chip. We’ve seen the M5 Max on a 14-inch MacBook Pro burn through our benchmarks, even topping discrete mobile graphics tests of a discrete Nvidia RTX 5060 or (in some tests) an RTX 5070. The M5 Ultra is somehow even more powerful.
Compared to the previous-gen Mac Studio that peaked with an M3 Ultra chip, the new version with the M5 Ultra is the first time Apple is using a self-described “quad-die architecture.” Apple says it's using new bridge technology it calls “UltraFusion” to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips together without any increased latency. That 4.4TB/s bandwidth connection between the two dies means that Apple can claim the M5 Ultra packs a peak 80-core GPU. To put that into perspective, the new M6 chip inside the new Mac mini is running a measly 12 cores.
For the sake of VFX artists or game designers who need a heavy-duty computer for rendering complex scenes, Apple says the new desktop should hit 1.7X faster rendering times in a program like Maxon Redshift than the M3 Ultra. However, the real boon for this new chip design is being held for people working with on-device AI. Apple promises this new “Ultra” chip can handle LLM (large language model) prompt processing 4X faster than an M3 Ultra.
On the CPU side, the M5 Ultra is running a 36-core CPU. That’s packing in 12 of Apple’s so-called “Super” cores built to push the system’s single-thread performance. The other 24 cores are all performance, meaning this is supposed to get 1.3X better multi-threaded performance than the M3 Ultra could.
Otherwise, this is the same Mac Studio you’ve seen before, though with a few upgrades. It now supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Both M5 Max and M5 Ultra versions sport the same array of four Thunderbolt 5 ports in the rear, plus HDMI, Ethernet, two USB-A, and a good ol’ headphone jack.
Apple’s going all-in on performance with the new Mac Studio, and you can bet your bottom dollar that means you’ll need to save up your pocket change to buy one. The version with M5 Max starts at $2,500. The top-end version with the M5 Ultra starts at $5,500. You’ll have to spend more for the top-end GPU model of either desktop.
And it could get even more costly once you consider the max memory spec for this model goes up to 512GB of unified memory with a 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth. Considering today’s memory prices, it could easily be Apple’s most expensive Mac product to date, even more costly than its now-discontinued Mac Pro studio-level desktops.
Apple’s top-end processor may be its last big chip until after the M6. According to rumors first reported by Bloomberg, Apple may not release an M6 Pro or M6 Max chip and instead wait for the M7 generation in 2027 for its higher-end CPUs. The M7 Ultra may follow in 2028. Rumors hint it could support 1.5TB of memory. If you thought the M5 Ultra Mac Studio was costly, you shouldn’t hold out hope for an affordable next-gen Mac Studio.
The new Mac Studio is up for preorder starting Tuesday with an expected launch date of Sept. 22.
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