Not to be outdone by theM4 MacBook Air,7th gen iPad Air, and 11th gen iPad, Apple has also refreshed its somewhat forgotten Mac Studio with a pair of new, more powerful chips.
The beefy Mac Studio now features the M4 Max chip (which first released in theMacBook Pro) and the new M3 Ultra chip. No, that isn’t a typo on my part; the most powerful chip for the Mac Studio is actually an M3-series processor. While it’s still unclear, it seemsApple’s development processfor its Ultra series desktop chips is lengthy, and the inevitable M4 Ultra just isn’t ready yet (we’ll likely see it in the Mac Pro at some point).
Mac Studio (M4 Max / M3 Ultra)
The Mac Studio is back, and this time it features Apple’s M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip.
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The M4 Mac Studio features up to a 16-core CPU and up to a 40-core GPU, offering over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth. Overall, the Mac Studio with an M4 Max chip is up to 3.5x faster than its M1 Max counterpart, according to Apple. The Mac Studio skipped the M3-series entirely (at least until now), with the M2 Ultra being the desktop Mac’s previously highest-end chip.
Apple says that the M4 Max chip features a Neural Engine that’s over 3x faster than the M1 Max’s. This lets the processor offer more advanced graphics capabilities, including dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and second gen ray-tracing, allowing resource-intensive titles like Cyberpunk 2077 to be ported to the Mac Studio.
Regarding pricing, the M4 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,000 and the M3 Ultra starts at $4,000.
The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra side features up to a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores, 50 percent more than any other Ultra chip. It also offers an 80-core GPU, similar to its CPU cores, which is more than any other Apple silicon chip. The M3 Ultra also features a 32-core Neural Engine focused on AI and on-device machine learning. RAM starts at 96GB and can be configured all the way up to 512GB. Regarding storage, the Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra can be configured with up to a 16TB SSD. Apple says the M3 Ultra offers overall 2x faster performance than the M4 Max. And finally, the Mac Studio features Thunderbolt 5 ports for the first time – four on the back with the M4 Max and a total of six with the M3 Ultra.
Regarding pricing, the M4 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,000 and the M3 Ultra configuration starts at $4,000. Both areavailable now. Alongside the Mac Studio, Apple has also announced a hardware refresh of its 7th gen iPad Air, 11th gen iPad, andM4-powered MacBook Air.
iPad and iPad Air upgrades offer more power, will be available next week
Apple has launched the new M3 iPad Air and the 11th generation iPad.
