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.
First, Apple has announced a new Mac Studio powered by M5 Max, an upgrade from the previous-generation M4 Max model. For comparison’s sake, those numbers are the same as when the M4 Max Mac Studio was first announced. The M5 Max Mac Studio starts with 36GB of unified memory and supports up to 128GB.
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.
In the intervening year, however, Apple has gradually whittled down the options due to the industry-wide memory shortage.
The M5 Max first debuted in the MacBook Pro earlier this year. As of yesterday, the M4 Max Mac Studio started at 36GB of memory and maxed out at 96GB.
The M5 Ultra packs an up-to-80-core GPU, which Apple says is the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever. Memory bandwidth clocks in at up to 1.2TB/s. 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. 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.
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.” The new Mac Studio models are available to pre-order today .
