Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio: A powerful, pricey tool for AI coders

Key facts

• Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio is designed for professionals running language models and AI agents locally.
• The M5 Ultra chip is built using a chiplet design, essentially combining four distinct silicon pieces.
• The M5 Ultra offers up to 12 super CPU cores, 24 P-cores, 80 GPU cores, and 32 Neural Engine cores.
• Memory bandwidth on the M5 Ultra reaches over 1.2TB/s.
• The M5 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,499, a $500 increase from the previous generation.
• The M5 Ultra Mac Studio with a cut-down chip, 96GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage starts at $5,499, a $1,500 increase.

Apple has officially launched its M5 Ultra Mac Studio, a high-end desktop computer aimed at professionals, particularly those working with artificial intelligence applications like local language models and agents. This refresh effectively skips a processor generation, moving from the M3 Ultra to the M5 Ultra, and addresses a market demand that Apple had previously underestimated.

The new Mac Studio retains the same physical design as its predecessors, a compact box with a 7.7-inch square footprint. However, the M5 Ultra variant is two pounds heavier due to a more robust copper heatsink required to cool the more powerful chip. Connectivity remains robust, with four 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10Gbps Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and two 5Gbps USB-A ports on the rear. The front panel includes a UHS-II SD card reader, with the M5 Max featuring two 10Gbps USB-C ports and the M5 Ultra offering two additional 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports. The M5 Ultra also supports up to eight external displays, compared to the M5 Max's five, with caveats regarding resolution and refresh rates.

The M5 Max chip, already available in MacBook Pros, offers improved CPU performance with new 'super' cores and increased memory bandwidth to 614GB/s. The M5 Ultra chip is a significant leap, essentially a doubled-up version of the M5 Max, featuring up to 12 super CPU cores, 24 P-cores, 80 GPU cores, and 32 Neural Engine cores, all supported by over 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth. This chiplet-based design, where the M5 Ultra is composed of four distinct silicon pieces, may present some communication speed limitations compared to a monolithic chip, but it does not impede overall performance.

However, the new hardware comes with a notable price increase across the board. Apple has raised prices due to ongoing AI-driven memory shortages and increased component costs. The M5 Max Mac Studio now starts at $2,499, a $500 jump from the previous M4 Max model. The M5 Ultra, in a configuration with a cut-down chip, 96GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, is priced at $5,499, representing a $1,500 increase over its predecessor.