After over a yr and a half, Apple is updating the Mac Studio with a curious new quirk: it straddles two generations, with an M4 Max for the bottom mannequin and an M3 Extremely for the upgraded mannequin. You possibly can preorder each variations at Apple’s website for $1,999 (M4 Max) and $3,999 (M3 Extremely), and so they’ll be in the stores on March 12.
Apple says the M4 Max Mac Studio is “as much as 3.5x sooner” than the unique M1 Max model, with a 14-to-16-core CPU and 32-to-40-core GPU. Just like the M4 Max MacBook Professional, this model of the Studio begins with 36GB of RAM (up from 32GB within the M2 mannequin) and will be had with as a lot as 128GB, a bump from the 96GB ceiling of the M2 Max Studio. Like its outgoing predecessor, it begins with 512GB of SSD storage however can go as excessive as 8TB.
In the meantime, the Mac Studio with an M3 Extremely chip sounds prefer it’s going to scream. It will get as much as 32 cores, 24 of that are efficiency cores — one thing Apple notes is “50 p.c greater than any earlier Extremely chip.” The GPU has a base 60-core configuration that maxes out at 80 cores, and Apple says it has a 32-core Neural Engine for machine studying and AI functions.
The M3 Extremely model of the Studio has 96GB of RAM to start out, however it might probably go as much as a gobsmacking 512GB of RAM — sufficient to run a few of the largest native AI fashions regionally. Lastly, you may bump the bottom 1TB inside storage to as excessive as 16 terabytes.
Apple says the Mac Studios’ GPUs will characteristic dynamic caching — that’s, it’s going to retailer frequently-accessed information in cache to drop latency — and hardware-accelerated mesh shading, each firsts for the corporate’s graphics chips. It is going to even have “a second-generation ray-tracing engine for extra seamless content material creation and gaming.”
On the surface, the brand new Mac Studio is similar squat, square-ish silver field as earlier than, with two USB-C ports and an SD Card slot on the entrance. Across the again, you’ll discover 4 extra USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and one port every for ethernet, energy, and audio, in addition to an audio jack and the ability button. Each CPU configurations include Thunderbolt 5 connections, however as with older technology Studios, solely the 4 rear USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Max — you’ll want an M3 Extremely Mac Studio to get it on all six.
