Apple's new Mac Studio has more AI memory than a $13,000 Nvidia box. let that sink in

The M5 Ultra tops out at 512GB of unified memory — here's the actual math on whether that beats a real GPU for running big local models. Aliteq Ravi Malhotra · Hardware Editor

Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio scales to 512GB of unified memory at 1.2TB/s bandwidth, up 50% over the M3 Ultra.

Nvidia's RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell caps out at 96GB of GDDR7 at 1.79TB/s — under a fifth of the Mac's max memory, at a similar or higher price.

The 256GB M5 Ultra config costs $9,499; the 512GB tier isn't priced yet and won't ship until late October.

Bandwidth and CUDA software support still favor Nvidia for raw token-generation speed, even though the Mac has more room to load bigger models.

Verdict: buy the Mac Studio to fit a model that won't fit anywhere else this cheap; buy the RTX PRO 6000 if tokens-per-second is what you're actually optimizing for.

If your actual goal is running the biggest open-weight models you can find, without a multi-GPU rig, and you'll trade raw speed for simplicity and a far lower power bill, the 256GB M5 Ultra at…

Should you buy the M5 Ultra Mac Studio for local AI?

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