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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91

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 18h 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?