The M5 Ultra Mac Studio tears through our benchmark tests — SkimNews
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- Apple begins shipping the refreshed Mac Studio today in M5 Max ($2,499 starting) or M5 Ultra ($5,499 starting) configurations, retaining the same physical design introduced in 2022.
- The M5 Ultra review unit sent to The Verge is configured with a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage, carrying a $12,299 price tag — a configuration Apple is pitching at AI developers and high-end 3D VFX houses.
- The M5 Ultra ran approximately 30% faster than a similarly configured M3 Ultra Mac Studio in single-core and multicore CPU benchmarks, with the Cinebench GPU rendering test scoring 63% higher and Geekbench 7 OpenCL showing roughly a 30% uplift.
- The M5 Ultra completed The Verge's standard 4K Premiere Pro export test — a roughly 1.7GB MP4 file — in about 40 seconds, with the reviewer describing storage speeds as "off the charts."
- Apple is marketing the M5 Ultra as "a monumental step for AI," though The Verge notes its standard benchmarks "aren't cutting it" for the machine and plans to spend the next couple of months pushing it further on AI workloads.
- The Verge also tested the M6 and M5 Pro chips in the new Mac Mini but has not yet seriously challenged the M5 Ultra, calling the review "just a first taste" with limits yet to be found.
Why it matters: Apple is positioning a $5,499–$12,299 desktop as a serious workstation for local AI development, pitching the M5 Ultra against GPUs that dominate AI training. If sustained benchmarks hold up, it gives well-funded developers a path to run large models on Apple silicon — but the price floor puts it well out of reach for the mainstream creators who traditionally anchor Mac Studio sales.
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