Apple today unveiled its updated Mac Studio workstations, taking what at first glance seems like a slightly odd approach: the cheaper Mac Studio model has an M4 Max chip, while the more expensive and powerful one has an M3 Ultra chip. Both chips are significantly more powerful than the M2 Max and M2 Ultra, with the M3 Ultra, which combines two crystals in a single case, significantly outperforming the M4 Max, despite its less-than-modern CPU and GPU architecture.
Image source: Apple
The M3 Ultra is a pair of M3 Max chips joined together by a silicon interposer, similar to what Apple previously did with the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra. The M3 Ultra doubles everything: 32 compute cores instead of 16, 80 graphics cores instead of 40, 32 Neural Engine cores instead of 16, and two ProRes video encoding engines instead of one. Apple also added a few extra features, certifying the M3 Ultra for Thunderbolt 5 at 120 Gbps (the M3 Max only supports Thunderbolt 4) and increasing the maximum memory support from 128 GB to 512 GB.
When asked why the highest-performance Mac Studio received the M3 Ultra chip instead of the M4 Ultra, Apple emphasized that not every generation of chips should have a flagship model with the “Ultra” designation. Experts say that Apple has not previously publicly stated such an approach.
Analysts believe Apple has decided it doesn’t need an Ultra chip in every generation of processors because sales of the high-end Mac Studio and Mac Pro simply can’t justify the cost and effort required to design and manufacture such an advanced chip.
However, this statement from Apple does not completely rule out the possibility of an M4 Ultra. Apple probably has a better understanding of how Max vs. Ultra sales are split, and if real demand emerges, it may well change its policy announced today.