apple, Today By introducing the M6 and M5 Ultra chips, Apple has taken an important step towards two different levels of performance in the Silicon family. The company is bringing the M6, the first 2nm Apple chip, to the new Mac mini, while placing the M5 Ultra with four-chip architecture at the center of the new Mac Studio. The M6 uses a 12-core CPU and GPU, as well as a dual 16-core Neural Engine, while the M5 Ultra goes up to 36 CPU and 80 GPU cores. Apple focuses especially on artificial intelligence models running on the device, professional graphics work and applications that require high memory.
The M6’s CPU section has a total of 12 cores, including two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores. According to Apple’s own tests, the chip is better at multi-core CPU processing than the M5. up to 1.2 timescompared to M1 up to 2.4 times provides higher performance. On the GPU side, while the number of cores increases from 10 to 12, Apple adds Neural Accelerator to each GPU core and increases the artificial intelligence-focused peak GPU processing power by approximately 30 percent compared to the M5. M6 also 170 GBps combined memory bandwidth and at most 32 GB combined memory offers.
With the M6, Apple is also changing the usual 16-core layout on the Neural Engine side. The company uses two separate 16-core Neural Engines and activates both engines simultaneously when the system infrastructure requires. Apple states that this layout increases peak AI processing power by up to two times compared to previous generations. In addition, updated Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and 50 percent higher geometry processing speed strengthen the M6’s hand in graphics loads.
The new Mac mini gives more concrete figures on how much of a difference the M6 can make in practice. In its own tests, Apple says the Mac mini with M6 runs up to four times faster on AI tasks, twice as fast in graphics performance, and up to 40 percent faster in CPU performance than the M4 model. According to company M4 in large language model prompt processing testing in LM Studio Up to 4.8 timesIn Microsoft Excel calculations, up to 1.5 times measured increase. The new Mac mini also supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and 2.5Gb Ethernet connectivity as standard.
M5 Ultra runs four chips as a single processor
M5 Ultra, on the other hand, takes Apple’s approach to the professional desktop side further and the company uses a four-chip M series architecture for the first time. Apple connects two dual-chip M5 Max packages with its new UltraFusion technology and Over 4.4 TBps provides bandwidth. In the top configuration, there is a 36-core CPU consisting of 12 super cores and 24 performance cores. Apple’s tests show that the M5 Ultra provides up to 1.25 times higher performance in single-core operations and 1.3 times higher performance in multi-core operations compared to the M3 Ultra.
M5 Ultra on the GPU side up to 80 cores comes out and Apple adds Neural Accelerator to every core. The company states that peak GPU processing power for artificial intelligence has increased up to 4.5 times compared to the M3 Ultra, and graphics performance has increased by up to 40 percent. The 32-core Neural Engine and four ProRes encoding and decoding engines provide an important infrastructure especially for video, 3D and local artificial intelligence workflows. In fact, we see one of the biggest differences on the memory side, because the M5 Ultra 512 GB combined memory And 1.2 TBps memory bandwidth It aims to run large language models with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on Mac.
Apple’s previous M3 Ultra also offered an 80-core GPU option, but the M5 Ultra differs especially with its memory bandwidth and artificial intelligence accelerators. While the M3 Ultra provides memory bandwidth of 819 GBps, the new chip increases this value by 50 percent to 1.2 TBps. Apple is also positioning the M5 Ultra for tasks that demand consistently high processing power, such as scientific analysis, complex 3D rendering, visual effects and large local AI models. Therefore, the M5 Ultra is more than just a faster M series chip, it is a platform prepared for professionals who want to run large models on Mac without sending them to the cloud.
M6 comes first to new Mac mini
Apple in the US for Mac mini with M6 $899 It set a starting price and opened pre-orders on August 25. The company introduces new Mac mini models September 22, 2026 It will be put up for sale on. The M5 Ultra will be included in the new Mac Studio, and the starting price for the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra in the USA is $ 5,499. Since Apple’s current store pages in Türkiye do not yet show the local prices of the new models while this news was being prepared, it is not necessary to give an exact figure for the price in Türkiye.
Even though the M6 and M5 Ultra were introduced at the same time, Apple is appealing to very different user groups with the two chips. While the M6 accelerates daily use, software development, gaming and more accessible native AI tasks, the M5 Ultra highlights memory capacity for much larger data sets, professional video work and models with hundreds of billions of parameters. We shouldn’t make definitive performance judgments without comparing Apple’s test results to independent reviews, because the company achieved these figures under its own testing conditions with pre-production Mac mini and Mac Studio systems. Despite this, the 2 nm production process, double Neural Engine and combined memory reaching 512 GB show that Apple has placed local artificial intelligence computing on the desktop Mac side in a much more central position from now on.
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