Apple M5 Ultra vs The Fastest PC
Hardware Canucks · 2026-09-21 · 17 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_IUYbCHiY0Video summary
Mac Studio M5 Ultra beat the RTX 5090 by over 20x on a 70B AI model, while the PC dominated gaming.
The reviewer compares Apple’s 36-core M5 Ultra Mac Studio with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RTX 5090 PC, noting that a 5090 alone can cost nearly $9,000 while the Mac starts below $7,000. In sustained CPU tests, the M5 Ultra nearly doubled the PC’s score while drawing about 150W versus 200W, and it led in Blender, Houdini, and video exports. The RTX 5090 remained faster on smaller local AI models, but the M5 Ultra processed a 70-billion-parameter model over 20 times faster because its unified memory avoided the PC’s 32GB VRAM limit and PCIe overflow. The 5090 decisively won gaming, and both systems tied in DaVinci Resolve exports. The review concludes that the Mac suits local AI and optimized creative workflows, but its 256GB configuration is expensive and faces 16–18-week delays; a Threadripper Pro 9975WX/5090 build could exceed $14,000.
Chapters
- 0:00Who Is the M5 Ultra For? Advanced 3D, VFX, and Local AI
- 1:03PC Costs, Test Setup, and M5 Ultra CPU Speed and Efficiency
- 5:03Animation and Video Transcoding: M5 Ultra Leads CPU Tests, OptiX Changes Blender
- 6:35AI Workloads and Efficiency: M5 Ultra Runs 70B Models Over 20× Faster
- 11:02Creator Apps: Premiere Pro M5 Ultra Export Takes Under Half the PC Time
- 12:10Gaming Is Possible, While Mac Studio Keeps Its Ports and SDXC Reader
- 14:16Pricing Hurts Everyone: 5090 Inflation, Mac Delays, and $14,000 Builds
- 16:01A PC Can't Match Local Frontier-Model Capacity, but Workloads Decide
What the full analysis includes
8 chapters · 35 key points · 8 section summaries · mind map
Preview of the first chapter · Who Is the M5 Ultra For? Advanced 3D, VFX, and Local AI
The remaining 32 key points, section summaries and mind map are in the full analysis. Analyze this video to see everything →
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