Apple intros new Mac Studio models with M4 Max and… M3 Ultra?

Apple announced its first Mac Studio updates in nearly two years today, a few months after bringing the M4 and M4 Pro chips to the Mac mini.

As before, Apple offers a lower-end and a higher-end configuration of the Mac Studio. The lower-end model is pretty much what you expect: It gives you the same M4 Max processor Apple introduced in the high-end MacBook Pro last year. It has up to 16 CPU cores (10 P-cores, 4 E-cores), up to 40 GPU cores, and a 16-core Neural Engine.

The $1,999 base model comes with 14 CPU cores (10 P-cores, 4 E-cores), 32 GPU cores, 36GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. That model's RAM can't be upgraded until you step up to the fully-enabled M4 Max, which also gets you 48GB of RAM for $300. From there, the desktop can be upgraded with either 64GB or 128GB of RAM, same as the MacBook Pro.

Apple's new Mac Studio desktops come with the M4 Max or the M3 Ultra. Credit: Apple

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The high-end Mac Studio is a bit of a curveball. It comes with an M3 Ultra rather than an M4 Ultra; as with past Ultra chips, this is still essentially two M3 Max processors joined together with a silicon interposer to facilitate high-bandwidth communication. But it puts the high-end Studio in an odd position: It comes with more execution resources than the M4 Max does but is based on an older architecture.

The M3 Ultra has up to 32 CPU cores (24 P-cores, 8 E-cores), up to 80 GPU cores, and a 32-core Neural Engine, which is still a big bump over the M4 Max despite the slightly older chip design.

The $3,999 base model starts with 28 CPU cores (20 P-cores, 8 E-cores) and 60 GPU cores, 96GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. This model can be upgraded to 256GB of RAM for $1,600 (!). You could also upgrade to the fully-enabled M3 Max for $1,500, which unlocks the 512GB RAM upgrade for $4,000 (!!). Any of these models can be configured with up to 16TB of storage. A fully-loaded M3 Max Studio will run you over $14,000.

Both Mac Studio models have four 120 Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10 Gbps Ethernet port, two 5 Gbps USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and an audio jack on the back. Both also include two ports and an SD card reader on the front. On the M4 Max version of the Studio, these are 10 Gbps USB-C ports. On the M3 Ultra version, they're also 120 Gbps Thunderbolt 5 ports. Externally, they're identical to Apple's previous Mac Studios. The Ultra version also remains two pounds heavier than the Max version, thanks to a more robust heatsink inside.

The new Mac Studios go up for preorder today and will be available starting March 12, the same date as Apple's new M4 MacBook Airs. Apple didn't update or mention the Mac Pro desktop, which still uses the M2 Ultra chip and still starts at $6,999. But "questioning Apple's continued commitment to the Mac Pro" is status quo for Mac desktop buyers at this point.

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