RTX 5090 vs M5 Ultra: Which AI Powerhouse Wins?
RTX 5090 leads on raw speed; M5 Ultra wins on memory capacity for large models
A Hugging Face video benchmarks the Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studio against the NVIDIA RTX 5090 for local AI inference. The RTX 5090 delivers roughly 2x the token generation speed (136 vs 100 tokens/sec with MTP), but the M5 Ultra's 256GB unified memory dwarfs the 5090's 32GB VRAM, making it the better choice for large or unquantized models. The tradeoff is practically significant for practitioners choosing local inference hardware, though the content is a community benchmark video rather than a primary research or announcement source.