M4 Max, a new M3 Ultra chip, Thunderbolt 5, a potential 512 GB of unified memory, and an up to 16 TB SSD… it all adds up to extreme performance in a Mac Studio shell.
Alongside all the Air products unveiled this week, two new Mac Studios have also been launched on the world that take Mac performance up to a whole new level.
Mac Studio with M4 Max
We'll start with the slightly saner one that seems to be a perfect fit for a range of post tasks. The Mac Studio with M4 Max boasts what Apple says is now the world’s fastest CPU core, featuring an up to 16-core CPU, an up to 40-core GPU, over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth, and a Neural Engine that is over 3x faster than M1 Max.
Apple loves its comparisons with previous models at the moment, so is happy to share that according to its own data Mac Studio with M4 Max is up to 3.5x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Max, and is up to 6.1x faster than the most powerful Intel-based 27-inch iMac.
That translates as:
- Up to 1.6x faster image processing in Adobe Photoshop when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 2.9x faster when compared to the 27-inch iMac with Core i9.
- Up to 1.2x faster ProRes transcode performance in Compressor when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 2.8x faster when compared to the 27-inch iMac with Core i9.
- Up to 1.6x faster video processing performance in Topaz Video AI when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 5x faster when compared to the 27-inch iMac with Core i9.
The GPU in M4 Max also brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to Mac Studio for the first time, including dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and a second-generation ray-tracing engine for more seamless content creation (and gaming too in all that spare time you’re suddenly creating not waiting for things to render).
Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at a spec of an M4 Max chip with a 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine; 36 GB unified memory; and 512 GB SSD storage for $1999.
It also features Thunderbolt 5 ports that deliver transfer speeds up to 120 Gb/s, up to 3x faster than the prior generation. 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. It will drive up to five displays, the M3 Ultra model boosting that up to an impressive eight!
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra
Talking of which, the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra takes what already seems a fairly impressive machine and just makes it more so. This is the first machine to feature M3 Ultra, and higher CPU and GPU counts help it deliver roughly double the performance of the M4 Max machine when it comes to workloads that are enabled by that sort of thing.
It features an up to 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores, 50% more than any previous Ultra chip and the most CPU cores ever in a Mac. It also offers an up to 80-core GPU, more than any Apple silicon chip; a powerful 32-core Neural Engine; and a high-bandwidth memory architecture that delivers over 800 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth.
It’s a beast, frankly, though looking past Apple’s benchmarks here you can see that the performance is possibly more geared to AI research tasks than anything. Apple claims up to 16.9x faster token generation using an LLM with hundreds of billions of parameters in LM Studio when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra. In contrast, it only offers a 1.4x faster 8K video rendering performance in Final Cut Pro when compared to the same machine.
It will cost you too. The base level M3 Ultra Mac Studio starts at $3999, but you can take it a lot further than that. Add in the top-range chip, a 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine, 512 GB unified memory, and 16 TB SSD storage and you have a machine capable of jaw-dropping performance but will have also just cost you $14,099.
tl;dr
- The Mac Studio with M4 Max features up to 16 CPU cores and a 40-core GPU, achieving up to 3.5x faster performance compared to the M1 Max and 6.1x faster than the Intel-based 27-inch iMac.
- It offers impressive performance metrics, such as up to 1.6x faster image processing in Adobe Photoshop and 2.9x faster video processing performance compared to the 27-inch iMac with Core i9.
- The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra includes an up to 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, delivering nearly double the performance of the M4 Max in specific workloads, particularly for AI research tasks.
- Pricing starts at $1,999 for the M4 Max and $3,999 for the M3 Ultra, with top configurations going up to $14,099 for ultimate performance capabilities.