Apple has announced a new iteration of the Mac Studio today with the new M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, superseding the previous variant that featured the M4 Mac and M3 Ultra chipsets. The new Mac Studio still starts with 512GB of storage and 36GB of unified memory, along with a starting price of $2,499.
The M5 Max variant of the Mac mini can be configured with up to an 18-core CPU and a 40-core GPU similar to the MacBook Pro, and features a memory bandwidth of 614GB/s.
According to Apple’s claims, the M5 Max is,
- Up to 10.7x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and 3.9x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 7.4x faster text-to-image performance when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 3.5x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 5.3x faster Magic Mask performance in Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 3x faster than M4 Max.
- Up to 3.5x faster basecalling for DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 1.9x faster than M4 Max.
The M5 Ultra is a significant step ahead of the M3 Ultra. According to Apple, “The new Mac Studio with M5 Ultra features an up-to-36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, delivering up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than M3 Ultra. Its up-to-80-core GPU, the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever, brings Neural Accelerators to the Ultra chip for the first time, enabling up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance when compared to M3 Ultra.1 It also features up to 1.8x faster graphics than the prior generation, providing smoother real-time 3D rendering for VFX workflows.
Apple claims that the M5 Ultra Mac Studio comes with:
- Up to 15.4x faster CopyCat ML training performance in Foundry Nuke when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 3.3x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 9.8x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 4x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 8.2x faster text-to-image performance when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 4.3x faster than M3 Ultra.
- Up to 4.7x faster scene rendering performance in Maxon Redshift when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 1.7x faster than M3 Ultra.
In terms of connectivity, the new Mac Studio features the N1 chip, upgrading the Mac to WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6 standards.
Pricing and availability: The 18-core CPU/32-core GPU variant of the M5 Max can be configured with 36GB of unified memory and storage options of 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. Pricing for this starts at $2,499.
The 18-core CPU/40-core GPU variant of the M5 Max can be configured with unified memory options of 96GB and 256GB, with storage options being 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. Pricing for this starts at $3,099.
For the M5 Ultra variant, it can be configured with unified memory options of 24GB, 48GB, and 64GB, along with storage options of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, and 16TB. Pricing for this variant starts at $5,499.
The new Mac Studio can be pre-ordered now, with availability beginning on September 22nd, which is almost a month from now.
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