Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio gets a huge AI boost, Thunderbolt 5, and a new networking chip

Apple’s most powerful desktop just got a serious performance upgrade, but so did its price tag. 

The company refreshed its Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chip options, starting at $2,499. Both models are built around a genuine leap in on-device AI performance rather than the usual incremental bumps. 

So what exactly changed inside the new Mac Studio?

Starting with the M5 Max, it has an 18-core CPU (6 super cores + 12 performance cores), paired with a GPU with up to 40 cores, each with a built-in Neural Accelerator. That’s some serious graphical power for heavy users. Memory tops out at 128GB, with bandwidth reaching 614GB/s, which Apple says is enough headroom to run large language models locally on the device.

The M5 Ultra pushes even further. That chip climbs to a 36-core CPU and an 80-core GPU. If that’s not enough, you can pair it with up to 512GB of unified memory (with 1.2TB/s of bandwidth), a 50% jump over the previous generation. The M5 Ultra is also the first Ultra chip that features Neural Accelerators. The result? Apple claims up to 4.3x the AI compute of the M3 Ultra.

Even so, the package claims 1.8x faster graphics and 1.3x quicker CPU throughput that improves overall performance, all within the same familiar compact case that sits quietly under a monitor.

What else is new?

You can now use multiple Mac Studios together, too. Thunderbolt 5 combined with RDMA lets several units pool their memory, and Apple says four clustered systems handle AI inference up to three times faster than a single Mac Studio. On the software side, a new framework called Core AI now joins MLX for building and running models directly on Apple silicon.

Connectivity also gets a few upgrades. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, previously available on iPhones, land on Mac Studio for the first time, thanks to Apple’s own N1 chip. Meanwhile, storage doubles in speed, courtesy of a PCIe Gen 6 SSD. 

The machine will run on macOS 27 out of the box, with new Siri AI and the new Apple Intelligence features already baked in. 

Pre-orders opened today, and units will start shipping September 22, 2026. M5 Max configurations start at $2,499, while M5 Ultra begins at $5,499. The maxed-out 512GB memory configuration won’t be available until late October.