Apple just announced a new Mac Studio built around the M5 Max and an all-new M5 Ultra. It’s still the same compact desktop that sits on your desk, but this time it focuses on local AI performance and the heaviest pro workloads.
The company is claiming up to 4.3x faster AI performance, up to 1.8x faster graphics, up to 1.3x faster CPU speeds, higher memory bandwidth, and up to twice the storage speed compared with the previous generation. You also get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the first time on Mac Studio, plus Thunderbolt 5 ports. It pairs with Studio Display and Studio Display XDR and runs the upcoming macOS 27 Golden Gate with the next version of Apple Intelligence, including Siri AI.
Pre-orders start today, with units scheduled to start arriving September 22. Here’s everything you need to know about the new Mac Studio.
Mac Studio: Price & availability
The Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 (or $2,299 for education), while the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 (or $5,099 for education). Apple offers configure-to-order options on its site. The top 512GB unified memory configuration is expected in late October.
Pre-orders begin today on Apple’s website and in the Apple Store app in 30 countries and regions, including the U.S. Units begin shipping on September 22.
Mac Studio: Design
The new Mac Studio keeps the familiar compact form factor that fits on a desk. Apple didn’t announce major exterior changes, so it should look and feel like the previous model.
What is new is the connectivity. Thunderbolt 5 ports deliver up to 120Gb/s, which is useful for fast external storage, PCIe expansion chassis, and high-performance hubs. You can also cluster multiple Mac Studio systems together over Thunderbolt 5 with RDMA support. Apple says a cluster of four can deliver up to 3x faster distributed AI inference than a single machine.
Wireless gets an upgrade too. The Apple N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the Mac Studio for the first time. There’s also genlock support over USB-C for tighter synchronization between a display and a camera (Apple specifically calls out the iPhone 17 Pro).
On the display side, the Mac Studio can drive up to eight displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR units at full 5K resolution and 120Hz.
Storage is faster as well. Apple switched to a next-generation SSD architecture based on PCIe Gen 6 and claims up to 2x the performance of the previous Mac Studio for loading projects, transferring files, and working with large language models.
Mac Studio: Specs & performance
There are two chips here. M5 Max is the more affordable option for serious pro work. M5 Ultra is the maxed-out version for the most extreme workloads.
Component |
Spec |
|---|---|
CPU |
18-core (6 super cores + 12 performance cores) |
GPU |
Up to 40-core with Neural Accelerators in each core |
Unified memory |
Up to 128GB |
Memory bandwidth |
Up to 614GB/s |
Apple says the GPU is up to 50% faster than the previous generation. It also includes third-gen hardware-accelerated ray tracing and enhanced shader cores. The Media Engine handles hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and AV1 decoding, which should help with uncompressed 8K footage and multiple concurrent video streams.
Other claims for M5 Max include:
- Up to 10.7x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio versus Mac Studio with M1 Max (3.9x versus M4 Max)
- Up to 7.4x faster text-to-image performance versus M1 Max (3.5x versus M4 Max)
- Up to 5.3x faster Magic Mask in Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio versus M1 Max (3x versus M4 Max)
- Up to 3.5x faster DNA sequencing basecalling in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW versus M1 Max (1.9x versus M4 Max)
Component |
Spec |
|---|---|
CPU |
Up to 36-core (12 super cores + 24 performance cores) |
GPU |
Up to 80-core |
Unified memory |
Up to 512GB |
Memory bandwidth |
1.2TB/s (50% higher than before) |
Apple positions the Ultra as the chip with no real equivalent. Multithreaded CPU performance is listed at up to 1.3x higher than the M3 Ultra. Graphics are up to 1.8x faster than the prior generation.
Neural Accelerators appear on the Ultra for the first time, helping deliver the peak AI numbers. The Media Engine has twice as many video encode and decode blocks as the M5 Max, enough to play up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30 fps simultaneously.
Other claims for M5 Ultra include:
- Up to 15.4x faster CopyCat ML training in Foundry Nuke versus Mac Studio with M1 Ultra (3.3x versus M3 Ultra)
- Up to 9.8x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio versus M1 Ultra (4x versus M3 Ultra)
- Up to 8.2x faster text-to-image performance versus M1 Ultra (4.3x versus M3 Ultra)
- Up to 4.7x faster scene rendering in Maxon Redshift versus M1 Ultra (1.7x versus M3 Ultra)
On the AI side, Apple highlights Neural Accelerators in every GPU core to speed up matrix multiplication. M5 Max is rated up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the prior generation. M5 Ultra reaches up to 4.3x the peak AI compute of M3 Ultra and 9.8x that of M1 Ultra. Combined with the large unified memory pools, the pitch is that you can run substantial open-weight models entirely on-device.
Apple is also pushing two frameworks: Core AI (a new architecture optimized for unified memory, CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine) and the existing open-source MLX framework. Both are meant to make local training, fine-tuning, and deployment more practical on Apple silicon.
Mac Studio: Outlook
The new Mac Studio is for people who want to run large AI models, complex video timelines, heavy 3D/VFX work, or big data jobs on a single compact desktop instead of relying on the cloud. The jump in memory (especially the 512GB Ultra configs), the faster storage, Thunderbolt 5 clustering, and the Neural Accelerator hardware are the main selling points.
Whether the real-world gains match Apple's claims will depend on the specific apps and workloads you actually use. The base prices are in line with previous high-end Mac Studios, though they're certainly not cheap. We’ll see what the Mac Studio can do when we get it into our testing lab in September, so stay tuned for more!
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