Apple Mac Studio with M5 Max, Ultra launched in India: Price, specs, offers

Apple has launched the new Mac Studio with M5 Max and the new M5 Ultra, bringing higher CPU and graphics performance, faster storage and up to 512GB of unified memory

Apple has launched the new Mac Studio with M5 Max and new M5 Ultra chip. As per Apple, the new desktop is aimed at users working with demanding workloads such as 3D rendering, video production, software development and on-device AI. The M5 Ultra is also the first Apple silicon chip to use a quad-die architecture, with Apple combining four dies into a single processor through its UltraFusion technology.

 

The new Mac Studio is available in multiple chip configurations, with the M5 Max offering up to an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, while the M5 Ultra goes up to a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU. Apple is also offering up to 128GB of unified memory with the M5 Max and up to 512GB with the M5 Ultra. 

 

Apple Mac Studio: Price and variants

In India, the new Mac Studio starts at Rs 2,79,900 with the M5 Max. The M5 Ultra version starts at Rs 6,29,900. Apple is currently accepting pre-orders for the new Mac Studio, with availability starting September 22. The 512GB unified memory option for the M5 Ultra will be available from late October.

 

The M5 Max version comes with two processing configurations. The base option has an 18-core CPU and 32-core GPU, while the higher-end option gets an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU. The latter costs an additional Rs 36,000 according to Apple's India store.

 

The M5 Ultra also has two configurations. The base version comes with a 30-core CPU and 64-core GPU, while the higher-end version gets a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU. The higher-end configuration costs Rs 1,56,000 more than the base M5 Ultra model.

Apple's India store lists unified memory options ranging from 36GB to 256GB, with the 512GB option for M5 Ultra coming later in October. Storage options range from 512GB to 16TB.

 

Apple is also offering up to six months of no-interest EMI and up to Rs 10,000 cashback on Mac Studio with eligible American Express, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank cards.

Apple Mac Studio: Details

The new Mac Studio retains its compact desktop form factor, but Apple has made several changes internally. The company says the new model offers up to 2x faster storage, up to 1.8x faster graphics and up to 1.3x faster CPU performance compared with the previous generation, along with higher memory bandwidth.

 

A major focus this time is on AI performance. Both the M5 Max and M5 Ultra have Neural Accelerators built into their GPU cores. Apple says the M5 Max delivers up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the previous generation, while the M5 Ultra reaches up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance of the M3 Ultra.

 

The Mac Studio also gets faster connectivity. It supports Thunderbolt 5 with bandwidth of up to 120Gb/s, along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Apple says the Thunderbolt 5 ports can be used with external storage, displays and PCIe expansion chassis. The Mac Studio can also be connected to other Mac Studio systems for distributed AI workloads.

 

The new desktop supports up to eight displays. It can also drive up to four Studio Display XDR monitors at 5K resolution and 120Hz. Apple has added support for genlock over USB-C, which can be used to synchronise a display with professional camera capture equipment.

 

Storage performance has also been increased. Apple says the new SSD architecture can deliver up to twice the storage performance of the previous generation, which should help with large file transfers, project loading and local AI models.

 

For video work, the Mac Studio supports hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes and AV1 decode. The M5 Ultra version has twice the video encode and decode blocks of the M5 Max and can handle up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30fps simultaneously, according to Apple.

 

The Mac Studio will also ship with macOS 27, which brings new Apple Intelligence features including Siri AI. Apple says the operating system will be available as a free update this fall, although some of the features are subject to availability by language and region.

Apple M5 Ultra: Details

The M5 Ultra is the more significant change in Apple's new Mac Studio lineup. Apple says it uses its UltraFusion architecture to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips, creating a quad-die design for the first time in an Apple silicon system-on-chip. The interconnect provides more than 4.4TB/s of bandwidth between the dies, allowing them to function as a single processor.

 

The chip has up to a 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores. It also has an up-to-80-core GPU, with Neural Accelerators included in each GPU core. Apple says the M5 Ultra offers up to 1.3x higher multithreaded CPU performance than the M3 Ultra and up to 1.8x faster graphics performance.

 

The biggest change is in memory. M5 Ultra supports up to 512GB of unified memory and provides 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth, which Apple says is 50 percent higher than the M3 Ultra. The combination allows large datasets and AI models to be kept in local memory rather than being split between local hardware and cloud services.

 

The chip also has a 32-core Neural Engine. Apple says its GPU can deliver up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance of the M3 Ultra and up to 9.8x the performance of the M1 Ultra in its tested workloads.

 

For AI developers, Apple is positioning the M5 Ultra around local model development and inference. Its Core AI framework and MLX framework can use the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and unified memory to run, train and fine-tune AI models locally. Apple also says multiple Mac Studio systems can be clustered using Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA, with a four-system cluster delivering up to 3x faster AI inference than a single system.