The M5 Ultra Mac Studio tears through our benchmark tests

There’s a lot to consider with Apple’s over-the-top $12,300 computer, so this is just a first taste.

There’s a lot to consider with Apple’s over-the-top $12,300 computer, so this is just a first taste.

by

Antonio G. Di Benedetto

Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Sep 21, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC

What’s in the box?! Cores. So many cores.

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Antonio G. Di Benedetto

is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.

The Mac Studio review unit that Apple sent us to test this year is, put simply, kind of outrageous. It has an M5 Ultra chip with a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU, 256GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage and costs $12,299. This thing is not for your typical content creation workloads. It’s for AI developers and some of the most demanding 3D visual effects houses out there.

Frankly, our usual benchmarks aren’t cutting it.

The latest version of Apple’s most powerful computer begins shipping today with new chips and prices that extend even further into the stratosphere. The new Mac Studio uses the same design that’s been with ussince 2022, replete with ultra-fast ports both front and back, now kitted out with either an M5 Max or M5 Ultra chip, compared to the M4 Max or M3 Ultra oflast year’s model.

Related

My precious! (I’m talking about the SD card slot, of course.)

The M5 Max model starts at a relatively modest $2,499 with an 18-core CPU / 32-core GPU, 36GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. We’ve tested an M5 Max already,in the MacBook Pro, where it starts at $4,099 with the same amount of memory and 2TB of storage (the equivalent Mac Studio costs $3,299). The M5 Ultra is another beast altogether. It starts at $5,499 with 30 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores, 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage.

I’ve only had my hands on the new Mac Studio as well as a pair of the latest Mac Minis for a handful of days. That’s enough time toadequately test the M6 and M5 Pro chips in the Mac Mini, and to run our standard benchmarks on the M5 Ultra — but not enough time to seriously challenge it.

Mac Studio (2026) / Apple M5 Ultra / 256GB / 4TB

Mac Studio (2025) / Apple M3 Ultra / 256GB / 4TB

Mac Studio (2023) / Apple M2 Ultra / 128GB / 4TB

MacBook Pro 16 / Apple M5 Max / 128GB / 4TB

MacBook Pro 16 / Apple M4 Max / 128GB / 4TB

Mac Mini (2026) / Apple M5 Pro / 48GB / 1TB

MacBook Pro 16 / Apple M4 Pro / 48GB / 2TB

MacBook Pro 14 / Apple M5 / 16GB / 1TB

CPU cores

36

32

24

18

16

18

14

10

Graphics cores

80

80

76

40

40

20

20

10

Geekbench 6 CPU Single

4310

3246

2623

4330

4011

4294

3976

4208

Geekbench 6 CPU Multi

37870

28376

21397

29143

26422

29104

22615

17948

Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL)

151392

144437

129482

145613

115870

88531

70018

49059

Geekbench 6 GPU (Metal)

233865

214488

224158

227435

192753

142708

113600

77595

Geekbench 7 CPU Single

3763

2975

-

-

-

3675

-

-

Geekbench 7 CPU Multi

52441

40375

-

-

-

34021

-

-

Geekbench 7 GPU (OpenCL)

159918

121553

-

-

-

88763

-

-

Geekbench 7 GPU (Metal)

246680

208163

-

-

-

137117

-

-

Cinebench 2026 Single

751

580

-

734

663

715

-

736

Cinebench 2026 Multi

17960

12240

-

8952

7881

8059

-

4486

Cinebench 2026 GPU

133119

81731

-

-

-

52660

-

-

PugetBench for Photoshop

17236

14354

-

15716

13424

17726

12374

12354

PugetBench for Premiere Pro (2.0.0+)

224556

183298

-

154829

145350

105041

-

71122

PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve (2.0.0+)

177056

131801

-

124942

103051

85624

-

50882

Blender classroom test (seconds, lower is better)

11

15

-

15

19

24

-

44

Blender cosmos test (seconds, lower is better)

23

34

-

35

39

51

-

-

Premiere 4K Export (lower is better)

40 seconds

50 seconds

1 minute

1 minute, 10 seconds

1 minute, 18 seconds

1 minute, 51 seconds

2 minutes, 13 seconds

2 minutes, 47 seconds

Sustained SSD reads (MB/s)

14867.60

7160.03

-

13638.91

7340.85

12218.07

6737.84

7049.45

Sustained SSD writes (MB/s)

18782.91

7996.90

-

17814.19

7969.07

15420.95

7499.56

7317.6

Price as tested

$12,299

$8,099

$6,799

$6,149

$6,149

$2,899

$3,349

$1,949

Conveniently, we still have the similarly specced M3 Ultra Mac Studio from last year — though it was only $8,099 at the time. Aside from CPU core count and architecture, they’re nearly the same, which makes them easy to compare.

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is around 30 percent faster than our similarly configured M3 Ultra in both single-core and multicore synthetic CPU tests. It varies more in graphics tests, but some, like the newGeekbench 7OpenCL test, also saw around a 30 percent uplift. And a heftier GPU rendering test like Cinebench scored 63 percent higher.

I’ve never tested anything this fast before. The storage speeds are off the proverbial charts. It renders the classroom test in Blender faster than I can tie my shoes. Our Premiere 4K video export test, which yields an MP4 file of about 1.7GB, is done in about 40 seconds. I can’t get up from my desk and get a cup of coffee that fast without risking a serious burn.

All ports in a storm.

Apple is talking a big game about the M5 Ultra being “a monumental step for AI.” I don’t normally run local AI stuff (I just don’t find generative AI and LLM stuff very useful for my work — andI’ve tried). But I want to give it a serious go, so I’m open to suggestions. I’ve alreadyreached out to our greatVergeaudience for ideas, and I appreciate all of you who commented. (Yes, even those of you with the “Can it runDOOM” jokes. I see you, and it never gets old. I mean, it does. But it doesn’t. I loveDOOM.)

How long is this going to take me? Hopefully not very long, but it’s going to be a busy couple of months. Google isannouncing its whole new line of Googlebook laptopsat exactly the same time this article publishes. And there’s aMicrosoft event coming up next weekthat sounds a whole lot like it’ll jumpstartNvidia’s RTX Spark initiative. There’s never a drought of laptops to test, but this Techtember and Techtober seems like a deluge that’s about to engulf Your Friendly Neighborhood Laptop Reviewer.

I know, I know; “So many cool computers to test, what a burden.” Truly, it is a very exciting time for computers. An expensive one,for sure, but I don’t think the space has ever been this dynamic. So I’ll do my best to get back to you when I’ve got something cool to share about the M5 Ultra Mac Studio. Feel free to drop more ideas and tips in the comments here. Or email me or DM me on Bluesky if you’ve got suggestions you’d like to share. I also accept words of encouragement and compliments. :)

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is a powerful machine. Let’s see if we can find its limits. Stay tuned.

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  • Antonio G. Di Benedetto

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