Both Studio models also come with almost all of the same ports. On the back, you’ll find four 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10Gbps Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a pair of 5Gbps USB-A ports. On the front, both Studios have a UHS-II SD card reader, but the Max comes with two 10Gbps USB-C ports and the Ultra comes with two more 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports.
The Ultra’s extra oomph extends to external display support. The M5 Max supports up to five external displays and the M5 Ultra supports up to eightalthough both come with caveats depending on the resolution and refresh rates you’re using.
Shows support details for M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studios.
Credit: apple
Shows support details for M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studios.
Credit: apple
The M5 Max is a known quantity at this point and Apple has been shipping it since March in the MacBook Pro. It improved over the last-gen M4 Max by introducing new “super” cores for the CPU and increasing the maximum memory bandwidth from 546GB/s to 614GB/s. The number of GPU cores remained the same (40), but new neural accelerators integrated into each GPU core helped improve their performance for ML/AI-assisted technologies such as MetalFX upscaling and frame rendering.
The M5 Ultra is a bigger change for several reasons. The first is that there was no M4 Ultra, so we are effectively skipping two generations of processors despite skipping only one generation of product.
| CPU S/P/E Cores | GPU cores | RAM options | Memory bandwidth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M5 Ultra (low) | 10S/20P | 64 | 96GB/256GB | 1,228.8 GB/s |
| Apple M5 Ultra (tall) | 12S/24P | 80 | 96/256 GB/512 GB (planned) | 1,228.8 GB/s |
| Apple M3 Ultra (tall) | 24P/8E | 80 | 128GB/256GB/512GB | 819.2 GB/s |
| Apple M2 Ultra (tall) | 16P/8E | 76 | Up to 192 GB | 819.2 GB/s |
| Apple M1 Ultra (tall) | 16P/4E | 32 | Up to 128 GB | 819.2 GB/s |
The second is that the way the chip is built has changed quite a bit. The M1 Ultra, M2 Ultra, and M3 Ultra were essentially a pair of Max chips joined together using a high-speed interconnect to get most of the benefits of making a huge chip without all of the manufacturing difficulties that come with making a huge chip.
The M5 Ultra is still basically a pair of M5 Max chips stuck together; that’s the same. The chip includes up to 12 super CPU cores, up to 24 P cores, up to 80 GPU cores, 32 Neural Engine cores, two video decoding engines and four encoding engines, and just over 1.2 TB/s (yes, that’s TB with a T) of memory bandwidth. This is a clear duplication of all the main specifications of the M5 Max.
