Apple's Mac Studio compact desktop system is on a less frequent upgrade cycle than its laptops -- more frequent than the Mac Pro, though, which makes sense given the Pro's more commercial target audience -- but like all Apple computers, the design remains the same for a long time before it's refreshed. So unsurprisingly, the new 2025 Studio looks exactly like the original launched in 2022 (and its 2023 successor). All the changes are on the inside, with an upgrade to M4 Max and M3 Ultra processors that bring support for Thunderbolt 5 and a lot more memory.
Along with the MacBook Airs launched alongside the Studio, preorders start today and begin shipping March 12. Entry-configuration pricing remains the same, starting at $1,999, although the base (M4 Max) configuration has a bit more memory (36GB vs. 32GB). The Ultra's based memory is 96GB and maxes out at a nice 512GB.
Mac Studio chip specs
| Apple M4 Max | Apple M3 Ultra | |
|---|---|---|
| Chip configurations (CPU/GPU cores) | 14/32 or 16/40 | 28/60 or 32/80 |
| Performance cores | 10/12 | 20/24 |
| Efficiency cores | 4 | 8 |
| Neural engine cores | 16 (second gen) | 32 (first gen) |
| Peak memory bandwidth (GBps) | 410 | 819 |
| Mac Studio memory configurations (base/max, GB) | 36/128 | 96/512 |
There's still no M4 Ultra chip -- the Ultras are essentially two linked Max chips and because there was no M3 Ultra, Apple just took advantage of the longer lead time available by using the older M3 Max. Apple still updated it to support Thunderbolt 5, though. And like its predecessor, the M3 Ultra has twice the Thunderbolt ports of the Max because the two linked M3-generation chips have their own controllers: That means the two front ports are USB-C for the Max configurations and Thunderbolt for the Ultras.
The large number of cores and amount of memory are for boosting performance on applications which need them -- creative and local AI training/using larger models, among other things. What's notable is that the M3 Ultra will likely make the top configurations of the Studio more powerful than the Mac Pro, which is still on the M2 Ultra. And while there are a lot more of the M3 Ultra cores, the M4 Max's are a faster and more efficient version of them; I think the M3 Ultra will still be faster overall, but it'll be interesting to see by how much. Testing will tell.