It is and it isn't. Why are you comparing the m5max instead of the m4ultra?

The big deal to me is the number of compute cores for prefill tps, which is suppose to be 4x faster on the m5ultra.

It's my opinion that the m5 ultra is going to be a really big deal in terms of local AI accessibility. Flash sized models (~200-300b params) are going to be reasonably fast as long as you aren't throwing 40k context at it on each or the first request (ie, agentic harnesses).

Even agentic harnesses like Cline should move at a reasonable clip on m5 ultra. I suppose we will know sooner than later.

FYSA: Former m4 ultra 512GB owner and current 4x rtx6000 owner here. I upgraded because I needed more prompt processing speed and concurrency.