Apple Unveils Its New Mac Studio With M5 Max and M5 Ultra Options Aimed for On-Device AI

The New Apple Mac Studio Models

The big specs here, again, have to do with AI performance, which the company claims is now 4.3 times faster. Alongside this generic AI stat, they also share numbers indicating the Mac Studio models will provide up to 2x faster storage, 1.8x faster graphics, and 1.3x faster CPU speed, along with higher overall memory bandwidth.

These are great stats for video editors considering the Mac Studio for video editing. You're allowed to do that regardless of how you feel about AI and whether you want to use a Mac Studio for both purposes.

The new Mac Studio with the M5 Max chip will be quite a beast, featuring an 18-core CPU, an up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators built into each core, and up to 128GB of unified memory. The M5 Ultra model will provide even more beastly specs with up to a 36-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory.

Video Editing and AI Usage

Of course, when you look through all the info on these new Mac Studio models, it’s really all about AI, but there are nuggets of info sprinkled in from the specs and quotes from the company about overall performance and pro workflows.

“Mac Studio is the ultimate desktop for on-device AI and the world’s most demanding pro workflows, relied on by users for its tremendous performance and extensive pro connectivity, all in a quiet, compact design that sits right on your desk — and today, we’re pushing the boundaries even further. With the powerful M5 Max and the incredible capabilities of M5 Ultra, Mac Studio ushers in a new era of desktop computing, delivering huge performance gains for pro workloads and AI inference with frontier-class models. By integrating Neural Accelerators directly into the GPU and offering massive amounts of high-bandwidth unified memory, the new Mac Studio is our most powerful Mac ever.” - Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer.

One big win for filmmakers and editors alike is that Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 will come to Mac Studio for the first time, with Thunderbolt 5 rounding out the model’s expensive connectivity as well.

Price and Availability

We’ll have more to explore on these Mac Studio models, as well as the latest M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, in the future, but for now, if you’re curious about the specs and pricing, here are the main numbers for each.

Mac Studio with M5 Max enables:

• 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.

Price: Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 (U.S.)

Mac Studio with M5 Ultra enables:

• 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.

Price: Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 (U.S.)