Apple Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips introduced
Following the MacBook Air M4, the new Apple Mac Studio has also been announced with M4 Max and brand new M3 Ultra chips. The latest Mac desktop is aimed at video producers, developers, engineers, photographers and creative professionals. Originally, the Mac Studio was launched in 2022 with M1 Max and M1 Ultra chipsets. The new M4 Max and M3 Ultra models offer significant improvements for 3D rendering, video editing, code compilation and other workflows.
The base model of the Apple Mac Studio features the M4 Max chip with a 14- or 16-core CPU, 32-40-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine. You get 36GB of shared memory as standard, expandable up to 128GB with 546GB/s bandwidth. Storage starts at 512GB and ends at 8TB.
The M3 Ultra chip Apple Mac Studio is still significantly better than the M4 Max in terms of performance with its 28-32 core CPU, 60-80 core GPU and 32 core Neural Engine. There is also 36 GB of unified RAM (instead of 32 GB), which is expandable to 512 GB (800 GB/s bandwidth). Up to 16 TB is possible with regular SSD storage.
Apple touts 1.8 times faster CPU performance and 2.6 times faster GPU rendering than the M1 Ultra. Apple also said that the M3 Ultra Mac Studio can run large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory.
In terms of workflow, the new Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra supports up to 24 streams of 8K ProRes video playback with H.264, HEVC and ProRes encoding and decoding. You can also connect the device to up to 8 displays. Both the M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio also have Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports on the back. The Ultra model also has two more of these on the front.
The remaining ports on the back include two USB-A ports, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 10Gbps Ethernet port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. You also get a UHS-II SDXC card reader on the front. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
Apple Mac Studio M4 Max and M3 Ultra pricing
The new Apple Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at €2,499 / $1,999, while the M3 Ultra costs double that at €4,999 / $3,999. The top version with 512 GB of shared RAM and 16 TB of storage costs a whopping €17,624 / $14,099. Pre-orders are now possible, with delivery scheduled for March 12.
