Mac Studio M5 Max · 36 GB (32-core GPU)
Mac Studio, Apple M5 Max, 18-core CPU / 32-core GPU / 36 GB unified memory
Announced configuration; not yet shipping as of 2026-09-06.
Physical memory36GiB
Available in calculator 27.0GiB
Peak bandwidth 460GB/s
Use Metal or MLX with support for the chosen model. The OS and other apps share memory; Metal working-set limits vary.
Specifications and setup
- Memory
- 36 GiB Unified memory
- Connection
- On-chip unified memory; no discrete VRAM pool
- Runtime
- Metal / MLX. Actual usable memory is runtime- and OS-dependent; query recommendedMaxWorkingSetSize rather than treating all RAM as VRAM.
- Bandwidth basis
- Apple-published chip bandwidth; shared CPU/GPU traffic reduces bandwidth available to inference.
- System reserve
- Planner assumption: 25% of installed memory reserved for macOS, other apps and allocation headroom. This is adjustable, not an Apple GPU-allocation guarantee.