Apple's M5 Ultra is its most powerful chip ever - with 4x faster AI performance than M3 Ultra

its most powerful chip ever - with 4x faster AI performance than M3 Ultra">

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Apple announced on Tuesday a new range of chip configurations for its Mac Mini and Mac Studio desktop devices with the base M6 processor, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra chips. The latter is the company's most powerful chip to date, representing a new high-end processor tier with an 80-core GPU and four times faster LLM prompt performance compared to the M3 Ultra.

Also: Can you guess Apple's next move? Last chance to win big in ZDNET's Big Guessing Game The M5 Ultra features up to a 36-core CPU and up to 512GB of unified memory, enabling users to run massive LLMs locally on-device. Particularly interesting, however, is the M5 Ultra chip's jump up in connectivity, with support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, up to six Thunderbolt 5 ports with transfer speeds up to 120Gb/s of bandwidth, which can drive up to eight external displays, or four Studio Display XDR displays at 5K resolution and 120Hz refresh. Apple's M5 Ultra uses a quad-die architecture that fuses two M5 Max chips together, easily making these the most powerful Mac computers in its catalog. They're also the most expensive: the base models for both the Mac Mini and Mac Studio are $100 higher, respectively, putting the Mac Mini at $899 for the M6 and $1,699 for the M5 Pro.

The Mac Studio with the M5 Max starts at $2,499, and the high-end M5 Ultra and 96GB of unified memory starts at $5,499, with pricing for the higher-end configurations still unannounced. This price window propels the device firmly outside consumer desktop territory and into the pro AI power-user demographic.

These announcements represent a different approach this year, as we usually get Mac Mini and Studio refresh announcements in October -- or in the spring. This year, Apple may be trying to simplify its launch plans by releasing new products as they become available, particularly since components are more expensive than ever and Apple has already raised prices across the board once this year.

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It also comes down to how Apple wants to differentiate its products. Announcing these higher-end chips now for Mac Studio means we'll likely see MacBook Pro laptops with the base M6 chip later this fall. That would allow Apple to delineate its more consumer-focused laptops with a separate inventory of processors from the Mac Studio, which now acts as its high-end flagship AI workstation.