Apple unveils Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips

Apple introduced a new Mac Studio desktop powered by the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, positioning it for on-device AI and demanding professional workflows.

The system supports up to 512GB of unified memory and memory bandwidth of up to 1.2TB/s. Apple says M5 Ultra delivers up to 4.3 times the peak AI compute performance of M3 Ultra.

Pre-orders opened in the U.S. and 29 other countries and regions on August 25. Deliveries to customers, Apple Stores and authorized resellers begin September 22; the 512GB configuration is scheduled for late October.

Performance in professional workloads

Apple reports up to 10.7 times faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio than Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 3.9 times faster than the M4 Max model. Text-to-image performance is reported at up to 7.4 and 3.5 times faster, respectively.

For M5 Ultra, Apple cites up to 15.4 times faster CopyCat ML training in Foundry Nuke than M1 Ultra and up to 3.3 times faster than M3 Ultra. Scene rendering in Maxon Redshift is reported to be up to 4.7 times faster than on M1 Ultra.

Pricing and availability

Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 in the U.S., with education pricing from $2,299. The M5 Ultra version starts at $5,499, or $5,099 for education.

M5 Max includes an 18-core CPU and a GPU with up to 40 cores. Both models feature third-generation hardware-accelerated ray tracing, while the media engine supports H.264, HEVC, ProRes and AV1.