Apple has unveiled details of the new Apple Mac Studio. The company says it is the most powerful Mac ever, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. It also offers Thunderbolt 5, up to 512 GB of unified memory, and an SSD up to 16 TB.
“The new Mac Studio is the most powerful Mac we’ve ever made,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “A complete game-changer for pros around the world — powering both home and pro studios — Mac Studio sits in a class of its own, offering a staggering amount of performance in a compact, quiet design that fits beautifully on your desk. Mac Studio truly is the ultimate pro desktop.”
Mac Studio with M4 Max
Apple says that the new Mac Studio with M4 Max is the perfect choice for video editors, colorists, photographers and creative pros. Mac Studio with M4 Max also features an up to 16-core CPU and an up to 40-core GPU. The GPU in M4 Max brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to Mac Studio for the first time. This delivers dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading and a second-generation ray-tracing engine. Additionally, you get over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth and a Neural Engine that is over 3x faster than M1 Max. Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at 36 GB of unified memory, with support for up to 128 GB.
Performance boosts
The powerful Media Engine in M4 Max features two ProRes accelerators. This is ideal for videographers and means that you can easily work with multiple streams of 4K ProRes. Mac Studio with M4 Max delivers up to 1.6x faster image processing in Adobe Photoshop compared to M1 Max model and is up to 2.9x faster than the 27-inch iMac with Core i9. In addition, video processing performance in Topaz Video AI is up 1.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Max, and up to 5x faster than the 27-inch iMac with Core i9.
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra features an up to 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores. This is 50 percent more than any previous Ultra chip, and the most CPU cores ever in a Mac. As a result, Mac Studio with M3 Ultra offers nearly 2x faster performance than M4 Max in workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts. You also get an up to 80-core GPU, more than any other Apple silicon chip.
Also, Mac Studio with M3 Ultra has a powerful 32-core Neural Engine for on-device AI and delivers over 800 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth. Mac Studio with M3 Ultra starts with 96 GB of unified memory. You can configure that up to 512 GB along with up to 16 TB of ultrafast SSD storage.
Video rendering performance
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra delivers 1.4x faster 8K video rendering in Final Cut Pro when compared to Mac Studio with M1 Ultra. It’s also up to 4x faster when compared to the 16-core Intel-based Mac Pro with Radeon Pro W5700X. In addition, scene rendering performance in Maxon Redshift is up to 2.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 6.4x faster than the 16-core Intel-based Mac Pro with Radeon Pro W5700X.
Other features
The new Mac Studio features Thunderbolt 5 ports that deliver transfer speeds up to 120 Gb/s. This is up to 3x faster than the previous generation. You also get a 10 Gb Ethernet port, an HDMI port and an SDXC card slot, along with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.
Apple says that Mac Studio is a powerhouse for AI, capable of running large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory.
What we think
The specifications for the new Mac Studio are very impressive. For video and photo editing, VFX, or 3D rendering, there’s little out there that can match the performance of Apple’s new flagship desktop computers. Unfortunately, these levels of power come at a very premium price. The top-of-the-range Mac Studio with M3 Ultra will set you back an eye-watering $14,099. However, for professional creatives, the new Mac Studio models could boost your productivity and earn their keep.
Pricing and availability
Pricing for Mac Studio starts at $1,999 for the M4 Max model and $3,999 for the M3 Ultra option. You can preorder now with shipping scheduled to start from March 12.
