Apple has announced a new Mac Studio powered by the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, with a clear focus on running AI models locally and handling demanding professional workloads in a compact desktop enclosure. The company says the device delivers up to 4.3 times faster AI performance, up to 1.8 times faster graphics, and twice as fast storage compared with previous generations, with up to 512GB of unified memory.
What do the M5 Max and M5 Ultra offer?
The M5 Max version comes with an 18-core CPU, a GPU with up to 40 cores, integrated neural accelerators in every GPU core, and up to 128GB of unified memory. These specifications target developers, designers, photographers, and musicians, in addition to 3D graphics, game development, and video processing workloads.
The M5 Ultra raises the ceiling to 36 CPU cores, up to 80 GPU cores, and 512GB of unified memory. Apple links this capacity to the ability to run large language models entirely on the device, without sending data to the cloud. This version also includes a more capable media engine, with the ability to run up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 frames per second, according to the company’s results.
A greater focus on local AI
The announced leap is based on adding Neural Accelerators inside the GPU cores. Apple says the M5 Max delivers up to 3.9 times faster AI performance compared with the previous generation, while the maximum performance improvement in the M5 Ultra reaches 4.3 times compared with the M3 Ultra, and 9.8 times compared with the M1 Ultra.
The new platform supports running, training, and fine-tuning models locally through the open-source MLX framework, alongside the new Core AI framework for building, running, and deploying AI models on Apple silicon. Apple also enables multiple Mac Studio devices to be linked through Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA to create a cluster with shared memory; the company says a cluster of four devices can deliver up to three times faster inference compared with a single device.
What changes in practice?
For AI teams and content creators, the update is not limited to increasing processor speed; the large unified memory capacity may reduce the need to split some models or move them to a cloud infrastructure, while video and design professionals benefit from hardware-accelerated ray tracing, support for encoding and decoding H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and AV1, and 8K footage processing.
However, these promises remain figures provided by Apple and tested in July 2026 according to methodologies and comparisons defined by the company. Therefore, the material alone does not reveal performance across all models, tools, or operating conditions. In addition, some AI capabilities associated with macOS 27 and Siri AI are still in testing and may change, and not all features are available in every region or language.
Connectivity, availability, and pricing
Mac Studio adds Wi‑Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the first time, and supports Thunderbolt 5 with transfer speeds of up to 120Gb/s, along with the ability to connect up to eight displays or four Studio Display XDR displays at 5K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It also supports precise synchronization through genlock via USB‑C.
Preorders open on August 25 through the Apple Store in 30 countries and regions, and devices become available on September 22. The M5 Max version starts at $2,499 in the United States, or $2,299 for education, while the M5 Ultra starts at $5,499, or $5,099 for education. The 512GB memory option will be available in late October.