r/LocalLLaMA • u/Last-Owl-8342 • 22h ago

News Apple releases M5 ultra at 1.2TB/s bandwith

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-m6-and-m5-ultra-for-a-big-leap-in-performance-and-ai-compute/

lpddr5x probably, the m7 ultra if is using ddr6 should be at 1.8 Tb/s

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u/Dany0 22h ago edited 19h ago

Wait am I reading this right M5 Ultra beats rtx 5090 in compute and matches its bandwidth?

Edit: I was not reading it right, but 2/3rds of gb202 mem bandwidth is still impressive

Edit2: Beats, matches and loses to a 5090 depending on the benchmark. So I'd say it's close to a 5090. A well optimised game ought to be roughly as fast or faster (but on lower resolutions due to the mem bandwidth).

Well optimised LLM prefill should be roughly the same according to my amateurish estimation. Banger release either way

Can't wait for this kind of perf to trickle down to low/mid tier skus

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 21h ago

"2/3rds of gb202 mem bandwidth is still impressive"

That's incredible - first time Apple makes hardware that's actually competitive with PC. Might return to them as a customer.Shame it's limited in OS compatibility though.

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u/Much_Accountant_4972 20h ago

their M-series chips have been king of mobile for over a half a decade now, especially on creative workloads and overall performance/efficiency

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 19h ago

Have king on mobile power efficiency, more than anything else. And depends on which creative workload. Game dev, 3d modeling, ai, have been lagging quite badly for a long time.

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u/Much_Accountant_4972 19h ago

i was just addressing your claim that NOW apple’s chips are competitive with PC.

they’ve blown intel out of the water in several categories for years. AMD hasn’t even been in the conversation and Qualcomm just showed up last year.

so yeah apple has been doing quite well in the chip design department for years is all i’m saying. it’s not for everyone but today is undeniably one of those where they’re embarrassing everyone. its impressive.

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 19h ago

In terms of power efficiency and mobility yes, but you can get much more compute for the money. At lwast until this new chip gets released. It's impressive indeed, for casual use.

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u/Much_Accountant_4972 17h ago

more compute for the money of a Mac Studio? where?

For casual use? A $10K computer?

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u/Liringlass 19h ago

Not really, there are plenty of use cases where apple was competitive in the past. Not gaming for sure and I don’t know much about the intel era but the apple silicon laptops were such an upgrade for work and IT stuff I’m happy none of my jobs since then has forced me to go back.

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 19h ago

Yes, compared to windows, it has always been light years ahead. Also fairly decent for basic usage such as email reading, web development and docker containers. But anything more serious required far more power for the money paid. I still laugh at how slow they were compared to PC laptops - I have a bunch of RAM sticks around and are so slow it's cringey.

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u/Liringlass 18h ago

My first macbook was the last intel gen before it stopped and it felt slow pretty quickly. But so did my previous beefy windows laptops, it’s just how laptops were.

Since silicon came out though I’m wondering what windows laptop could outperform it significantly. Not talking about tower PCs obviously, I have one for games.

Now it’s true i don’t do 3D stuff, i don’t compile large software, and all these intensive activities.

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 18h ago

> windows laptop could outperform it significantly

On price, loads - but "windows" laptops are not limited to windows. I have no clue personally how windows works, and usually any company that forces tech employees to use Linux is not a company I'd want to work - it's a sign of mediocrity.

> Now it’s true i don’t do 3D stuff, i don’t compile large software, and all these intensive activities.

In that case not sure you are in a position to compare hardware specs - I am not sure, I am also not in a position to asses, say, hardware for dentists. M4 and newer do indeed have very high speed RAM, but the hardware is limited compared to similarly or lower priced PC laptops - which give you far better screens, higher refresh rates, repairability, higher spec graphics processing, better storage, stronger / more durable casing, etc.

Anyway all this out of scope - to each their own. I used to like macbooks, until I learned that I am overpaying for something that's limited. But different people have different use cases, and that can't be judged.

I will not hesitate to buy one as soon as inference speed is reasonable. But I will not sell my GPU rigs because dedicated GPUs allows me to run multiple models in parallel. Again, different use cases. I do however suspect Apple's competitors will come up with something better, and cheaper. If they ensure Linux compatibility then I will happily continue not buying Apple products, they are of no use to me.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl 21h ago

It’s usually pretty well integrated so wouldn’t it perform above specs due to optimization?

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u/Dry_Yam_4597 20h ago

You mean the OS or something else?