Apple unveils new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

Chance Miller | Aug 25 2026 - 6:00 am PT

Alongside the new Mac mini, Apple today has announced its next-generation Mac Studio. The new Mac Studio lineup is powered by the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips and supports up to 512GB of unified memory.

The new Mac Studio models are available to pre-order today.

M5 Max Mac Studio

First, Apple has announced a new Mac Studio powered by M5 Max, an upgrade from the previous-generation M4 Max model. The M5 Max first debuted in the MacBook Pro earlier this year.

M5 Max features an 18-core CPU with 6 super cores and 12 performance cores. The GPU can be configured with up to 40 cores, with Neural Accelerators built into each core. Apple says GPU performance is up to 50% faster than the previous generation. It offers up to 614GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, up from up to 546 GB/s with the M4 Max generation.

The M5 Max Mac Studio starts with 36GB of unified memory and supports up to 128GB. For comparison’s sake, those numbers are the same as when the M4 Max Mac Studio was first announced. In the intervening year, however, Apple has gradually whittled down the options due to the industry-wide memory shortage. As of yesterday, the M4 Max Mac Studio started at 36GB of memory and maxed out at 96GB.

Here are some benchmarks Apple shared for the M5 Max Mac Studio:

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

M5 Ultra Mac Studio

The real star of the show today is the M5 Ultra Mac Studio.

The new M5 Ultra Mac Studio offers up to a 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores. This delivers up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the previous-generation M3 Ultra Mac Studio.

The M5 Ultra packs an up-to-80-core GPU, which Apple says is the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever. This also marks the first time Apple has added its Neural Accelerators to the Ultra chip. Neural Accelerators are dedicated hardware in each GPU core designed to speed up AI workloads.

In terms of memory, Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts with 96GB and can be configured with up to 512GB. This is unchanged from when the M3 Ultra Mac Studio first launched. Over the last year, however, Apple cut the M3 Ultra Mac Studio memory options to just 96GB due to memory shortages. Memory bandwidth clocks in at up to 1.2TB/s.

The M5 Ultra’s Media Engine has twice the video encode and decode blocks as M5 Max, supporting up to 33 simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes video.

Apple touts the following benchmarks for the M5 Ultra Mac Studio:

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.

More Mac Studio specs and tidbits

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, powered by Apple’s N1 networking chip
Support for up to eight external displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR at 5K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate
Storage performance is up to twice as fast thanks to PCIe Gen 6 support
Thunderbolt 5 with up to 120Gb/s bandwidth
Support for genlock over USB-C for precise synchronization between a display and professional camera capture.

Mac Studio pricing and availability

Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499, and the base configuration includes 512GB of storage. That price is unchanged compared to the M4 Max Mac Studio. Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 with 1TB of storage. That is a $200 increase compared to the M3 Ultra configuration.

Buy Mac Studio at Apple:

M5 Max Mac Studio: from $2,499 (or $2,299 for education)
M5 Ultra Mac Studio: from $5,499 (or $5,099 for education)

The new Mac Studio lineup is available to order starting today and will begin arriving to customers on September 22. Apple, however, says the M5 Ultra Mac Studio with 512GB of memory “is coming in late October.”