Apple has released a formidable desktop computer that it claims is “the most powerful Mac ever made”.
Unveiled a year-and-a-half after its predecessor, and arriving on March 12, the new Mac Studio comes with the choice of two chips: the M4 Max and M3 Ultra.
Despite being numerically lower, it’s the latter that is the most powerful of the two processors. In fact, the M3 Ultra is actually two fused M3 Max chips – and it sounds like a beast.
Here’s everything we know about the new Mac Studio.
Read more on our tech page.
What is the Apple Mac Studio?
Before we get to its blistering specs, you may be wondering if the Mac Studio is right for you.
Think of it as the middle child in Apple’s desktop family. It’s more powerful than the Mac Mini, and bulkier to boot (though it’s still compact enough to fit snugly on your desk), but not as modular as the Mac Pro.
In short, the Mac Studio is aimed at creative professionals who need serious performance without the bulk or price tag of Apple’s top-tier machine. If you edit high-res videos or images for work, or want to run a massive artificial intelligence model locally on your machine, this could be the Mac for you.
The latest version sticks to the same design but now boasts the newest M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips, promising a big leap in speed and efficiency.
With a generous selection of ports, including the latest Thunderbolt 5 connections (which is twice as fast as Thunderbolt 4 for data transfers), HDMI, and an SD card slot, you should be able to hook up multiple monitors and even charge other devices simultaneously.
How powerful is the Mac Studio with M3 ultra?
The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is a desktop computing powerhouse.
It boasts a 32-core CPU (the most ever in a Mac) and an 80-core GPU, delivering up to 2.6x the speed of the M1 Ultra and more than six times the power of the fastest Intel-based Mac Pro.
With a staggering 800GB/s memory bandwidth and up to 512GB of unified memory (Apple’s term for RAM that the CPU and GPU share for faster performance), it can handle massive workloads like 3D rendering, high-resolution video editing, and AI development.
Not one to shy away from hype, Apple claims the M3 Ultra is its “highest-performing chip ever”. And, while the company has a frustrating habit of providing dated comparisons with old processors (like the three-year-old M1 Ultra), we have some early external benchmarks that pit its newcomers against each other.
A newly released Geekbench 6 result shows the 32-core M3 Ultra achieving a multi-core CPU score of 27,749, making it around 30 per cent faster than the M2 Ultra and eight per cent faster than the 16-core M4 Max, though slightly below Apple's advertised 1.5x boost over the previous generation.
While real-world performance can vary, benchmarks like these offer a useful comparison of raw processing power.
This level of sheer horsepower makes the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra a fiend for AI workloads. It can run large language models (LLMs) with more than 600 billion parameters directly on-device, meaning it should be able to process complex AI tasks more securely without needing a supercomputer or cloud servers.
Plus, Apple’s advanced GPU architecture includes hardware-accelerated ray tracing (which improves lighting and reflections in graphics-heavy games) and mesh shading (which boosts rendering efficiency in 3D environments). All told, whether you're editing 8K video, building AI models, or designing intricate 3D worlds, this Mac should be able to handle it all.
How much does the Mac Studio with M3 ultra cost?
The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra starts from £4,199, but the top-tier configuration will set you back a whopping £14,299.
For that delirious price, you get a 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine, 512GB unified memory, and a massive 16TB SSD storage.
Meanwhile, the Mac Studio with M4 Max starts from a more palatable £2,099.
One caveat: like most modern Macs, the Mac Studio isn’t upgradable after purchase. So, whatever specs you choose at checkout, you’re stuck with — making it all the more important to future-proof your setup.
You can pre-order both models right now from Apple ahead of their March 12 release date.
