Apple Unveils Most Powerful Macs Yet with M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studios

Apple has only recently released its new Mac Studio line with the M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips, a massive performance and capability upgrade. The new Mac Studio is touted as the most powerful Mac ever created, designed for professional buyers who require excessive processing capabilities for demanding applications such as video editing, training AI models, and high-end content creation.
The M4 Max Mac Studio is built as a performance-focused model suitable for video editors, developers, engineers, and other creative professionals. It features an up to 16-core CPU and an up to 40-core GPU, which is much improved compared to the previous models. The M4 Max variant is 3.5 times faster than the standard M1 Max Mac Studio and 6.1 times quicker than Intel-based 27-inch top-end iMac. The variant starts at $1,999 with 36GB unified memory and a 512GB SSD and is budget-friendlier for professional consumers.
The M3 Ultra variant is the high-end variant, for users with stringent computational needs. It features a powerful CPU that arrives with up to 32 cores, of which 24 are high-performance cores, a 50% increase over previous Ultra chips. The GPU starts at 60 cores and goes up to 80 cores, along with a 32-core Neural Engine to process advanced AI and machine learning tasks. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio features 96GB of unified memory that can be expanded to a staggering 512GB and can execute large AI models of over 600 billion parameters in memory. It has a base 1TB SSD that can be expanded to 16TB. The base price for this model is $3,999.
The two models also have the same small, square silver enclosure with their previous versions but feature Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, which is much more speedier in transferring data than Thunderbolt 4. The M3 Ultra model features Thunderbolt 5 on all the six USB-C ports, whereas the M4 Max model supports Thunderbolt 5 on the four rear ports. The front panel contains two USB-C ports and an SD card slot, while the rear panel contains additional USB-C ports, USB-A ports, HDMI, 10Gb Ethernet, and an audio jack.
The new Mac Studio performs the most demanding workloads with its high-performance CPU, next-generation graphics architecture, high-unified memory bandwidth, ultra-fast SSD storage, and fast Neural Engine acceleration. It outperforms supporting large language models and other AI workloads using its enhanced GPU and Neural Engine performance. It is thus suited for professionals involving AI, machine learning, and other compute-heavy workloads.
Pre-ordering for the new Mac Studio series began on March 5, 2025, and they will hit the market on March 12, 2025. The release of these models is a significant point in Apple’s silicon transition, giving users unrivaled power and efficiency in an extremely compact and silent package.