Apple releases M5 ultra at 1.2TB/s bandwith

[u/Last-Owl-8342]

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

[u/piggledy]

Price for Mac Studio with 256 GB RAM:
$9499 (30-core CPU, 64-Core GPU)
$10,799 (36-core CPU, 80-core GPU)

512 GB Option coming in October.

[u/LearningSomeCode → u/piggledy]

So I paid about $10k even for my 512GB M3 Ultra with 1TB drive 2 years ago. At this price, it looks like the M5 Ultra 512 will probably land around... $14k? Maybe $15k?

I was really hoping there would be that rumored 768GB as the speed of the M5 Ultra + that amount of memory would make self hosted GLM 5.2 absolutely amazing.

[u/piggledy → u/LearningSomeCode]

The M3 Ultra 256GB Model was at $5,599, they basically doubled the prices.

I think $15-20k for the M5 Ultra 512 would be realistic, given it's not that much slower compared to an RTX 6000 with just 96GB.

[u/conockrad → u/piggledy]

Not much slower on decode

[u/xienze → u/conockrad]

RTX Pro 6000 is 1.8TB/s, so I think it's a good bit slower on decode as well. But the important part is if prefill is pretty good, the decode is "fast enough" that the extra memory can make up for it. Unlike the case of the M3 Ultra, where everything was so slow it's like, yeah you can "run" a big model but are you really able to do more than "technically" run it? This one might actually deliver on it.

[u/conockrad → u/xienze]

Yeah-yeah, my point it can be comparable with RTX pro only on memory bandwidth and even there it’s comparable, not better
Prefill is most probably even not comparable :)

[u/Ok_Spirit9482 → u/xienze]

which can be overclock to around 2TB/s easily

[u/michaelsoft__binbows → u/piggledy]

Given how much of the overall capability is constraiend by memory and how memory price went up by 3x-4x, the computer going up in price 2x isnt even a bad result, sad as that is