It turns out there’s something in the air today, too. Apple has unveiled a new Mac Studio, the second revamp to the desktop powerhouse that it launched in 2022. The new Mac Studio is available in two chip configurations: the M4 Max and the M3 Ultra.
The new Mac Studio
Apple says:
Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever made, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The ultimate pro desktop delivers groundbreaking pro performance, extensive connectivity now with Thunderbolt 5, and new capabilities in its compact and quiet design that can live right on a desk. Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine. It provides a big boost in performance compared to the previous generation, and a massive leap for users coming from older Macs.
While the M4 Max chip has been available in the MacBook Pro since last fall, this marks the first machine with the M3 Ultra chip. Here are some specs on the M3 Ultra chip from Apple:
- An up to 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, which is the most CPU cores in a Mac
- An up to 80-core GPU, more than any Apple Silicon chip
- Nearly 2x faster performance than M4 Max in workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts
- Up to 2.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Ultra
More details on the M3 Ultra chip are in our full write-up here.
The M3 Ultra Mac Studio starts with 96GB of unified memory, which can be configured up to 512GB. Its SSD storage can also be upgraded to a whopping 16TB.
In terms of connectivity, the new Mac Studio features two USB-C ports and an SD card slot on the front. On the back, you’ll find four Thunderbolt 5 ports, an HDMI port, a 10Gb Ethernet port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and two USB-A ports.
Apple says:
The new Mac Studio features Thunderbolt 5 ports that deliver transfer speeds up to 120 Gb/s, up to 3x faster than the prior generation, enabling faster external storage, expansion chassis, and powerful hub solutions. For those who rely on PCIe expansion cards for their workflows, Thunderbolt 5 allows users to connect an external expansion chassis with higher bandwidth and lower latency. And with M3 Ultra, Mac Studio now drives up to eight Pro Display XDRs at the full 6K resolution. Mac Studio also offers a wide array of connectivity within easy reach for pros, including a 10Gb Ethernet port, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot on the front to conveniently import photos and video, along with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The new Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with the M4 Max configuration. The M3 Ultra configuration starts at $3,999.
Here are the base configurations at each starting price:
M4 Max:
- 14-core CPU
- 32-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- 32GB unified memory
- 512GB SSD
M3 Ultra
- 28-core CPU
- 60-core GPU
- 32-core Neural Engine
- 96GB unified memory
- 1TB SSD
You can pre-order the new Mac Studio today, with the first shipments arriving on March 12. For those wondering, a fully specced-out M3 Ultra Mac Studio runs $14,099.
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