Apple today announced that it has updated the Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip options, Thunderbolt 5 ports, and more.
The M4 Max chip was already released last year in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. It can be configured with up to a 16-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU, and up to 128GB of unified RAM. Geekbench 6 benchmark results indicate that the M4 Max is up to 75% faster than the M2 Max chip available in the previous-generation Mac Studio.
The all-new M3 Ultra chip features up to a 32-core CPU, with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores. Apple says the M3 Ultra chip is up to 1.5x faster than the previous Mac Studio's M2 Ultra chip, which has up to a 24-core CPU.
"The new Mac Studio is the most powerful Mac we've ever made," said Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus.
On the graphics side, the new Mac Studio can be configured with up to an 80-core GPU. Apple says graphics performance is up to 2x faster than the previous Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra chip, which is available with up to a 72-core GPU. And with the M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips, the Mac Studio catches up to other newer Macs by gaining hardware-accelerated ray tracing for the first time. This technology enables improved graphics rendering in games.
In addition, the Mac Studio can now be configured with up to 16TB of SSD storage, up from the previous model's 8TB maximum. And the M3 Ultra chip supports up to 512GB of unified RAM, whereas the M2 Ultra maxed out at 192GB of unified RAM.
Following in the footsteps of MacBook Pro and Mac mini models with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, the Mac Studio now supports Thunderbolt 5. There are four Thunderbolt 5 ports on Mac Studio configurations with the M4 Max chip, and six Thunderbolt 5 ports on configurations with the M3 Ultra chip. Thunderbolt 5 provides up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds.
This is the first Mac Studio refresh since the desktop computer was updated with M2 Max and M2 Ultra chip options in June 2023.
The overall design of the Mac Studio has not changed. The front of the computer has two Thunderbolt 5 or USB-C ports depending on the configuration, and an SD card slot, while the rear side has four Thunderbolt 5 ports, an HDMI port, a 10-Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, a headphone jack, a power cord connector, and a power button.
Like the previous Mac Studio, the new model supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
The new Mac Studio can be used with up to eight 6K displays, such as Apple's Pro Display XDR. The previous model supports up to six 6K displays.
Apple Intelligence is supported on any Mac with the M1 chip or newer.
The new Mac Studio is available to pre-order starting today in many countries, and it will launch on Wednesday, March 12. In the U.S., pricing continues to start at $1,999 for configurations with an M4 Max chip, and at $3,999 for configurations with an M3 Ultra chip.
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