Summary
- M3 Ultra chip offers double the resources of M3 Max with powerful media capabilities.
- Mac Studio, claimed as the most powerful Mac ever, offers a choice between M3 Ultra and M4 Max chips.
- Mac Studio excels in CPU tasks, video processing, and AI, with advanced GPU and up to 512GB unified memory.
Apple fans have been eating well this past week, and it's only Tuesday. Yesterday, the Cupertino giant got things started with the news of a brand new iPad Air, which is twice as fast as the previous M1 model. Now, the company has announced both a brand new M3 Ultra chip and a shiny Mac Studio to put it in.
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The Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2024, M4 Pro) is the best laptop that I've ever used. And if you were using M1 before, it might even be worth upgrading.
The M3 Ultra is the ultimate version of the chip's range
Before we hop into the Mac Studio, let's take a look at what's powering it. On the Apple Newsroom, the company reveals what we can expect from the M3 Ultra. It has double the Neutral Engine cores, and what Apple claims will be "the most unified memory ever in a personal computer" with up to 512GB. Its infrastructure includes two M3 Max dies linked up to provide over 10,000 connections, so you know it's going to be powerful.
Apple claims that the chips perform especially well when crunching media:
With 2x the resources of M3 Max, the media engine within M3 Ultra is capable of far more concurrent video processing. The chip offers dedicated, hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, and four ProRes encode and decode engines, allowing M3 Ultra to play back up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video.
Even at a base level, the M3 Ultra looks like a solid upgrade. It's a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, with Apple claiming that it's 50% faster than the previous M2 Ultra.
The new Mac Studio comes with your choice of an M3 Ultra or an M4 Max
Now that we know what's at the heart of the Mac Studio, it's time to take a closer look at the unit itself. As announced on the Apple Newsroom, the company starts its announcement with a real haymaker, claiming that the device is "the most powerful Mac ever made." And it's easy to see why; you get to choose between the M3 Ultra or the M4 Max when you grab one.
It's hard to find something that the Mac Studio can't do. Its powerful hardware lets it breeze through intensive CPU tasks and video processing, and it can render 3D graphics just fine. There's also a strong emphasis on AI with this new model:
Mac Studio is a powerhouse for AI, capable of running large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory, thanks to its advanced GPU and up to 512GB of unified memory with M3 Ultra — the most ever in a personal computer.
You can preorder your own Mac Studio starting at $1,999 from today on the Apple store.