At the beginning of the year it was considered fairly certain that we would see a new generation of Mac Studio in March or April at the latest. The current model uses an M3 Ultra in the maximum configuration, while the next series will have an M5 Ultra. As is well known, the M5 has long been available in the basic version as well as the Pro and Max expansion levels, but the M5 Ultra for the Mac Studio is still missing. Apparently Apple had also targeted a March date, but then decided to take a more cautious approach due to the increasingly difficult situation on the memory market. Mark Gurman goes into the device again in an article. M5 Ultra in autumn, or even spring 27?
As discussed in a previous article, the Mac Studio M5 Ultra could appear long after the first M6 has been on the market – and if there are even longer delays even together with the M7 (see message). However, Gurman still thinks a release at the end of the year is conceivable.
Up to 768GB unified memory
In any case, the hardware specs should be impressive. Up to 36 CPU and 80 GPU cores are expected. The latter would not differ from the M3 Ultra, but it is a jump of two chip generations. While the previous maximum configuration, which has since been discontinued, had a maximum of 512 GB of unified memory, the next Mac Studio will even have 768 GB. Of course, this is not aimed at normal users, simply because of the expected price of well over $10,000. However, if you want to run large AI models locally and don’t care too much about hardware costs, you would get a powerful overall system.
Mac Studio M3 Ultra: Actually not available
The Mac Studio M3 Ultra is currently only available with 96 GB of RAM; since the price adjustment, this has cost 6,299 euros. However, given the delivery time of three to four months, there are probably not many customers who are currently using the device in question. Apple may be setting the forecast so high simply because the M5-based generation will come onto the market in September/October.
