What's inside Apple's 'not for the average person' computer?

Mac Studio M3 Ultra stands out with its compact size and powerful performance that is not for ordinary users.

Mac Studio 2025. Photo: The Verge .

Mac Studio was upgraded by Apple on March 5. The device has new hardware in a compact body.

Between the M4 Max or M3 Ultra options, the higher-end Mac Studio uses the M3 Ultra chip. The device starts at $4,000 , but if you want to upgrade to the highest configuration (512 GB RAM and 16 TB SSD), the price goes up to $14,100 .

After a week of experience, author Chris Welch from The Verge said that the M3 Ultra is so powerful that it "will never be within the reach of most technology enthusiasts, let alone ordinary users".

Who is the M3 Ultra chip for?

True to its price, the Mac Studio isn’t for everyone. This is a workstation for those who know what they’re getting into and what they’re getting out of it. If you have a lot of graphics projects to finish quickly, the M3 Ultra can render faster. Literally, the money you invest in the device will come back sooner.

Still, Welch says most users will only need a Mac mini with an M4 or M4 Pro chip. Meanwhile, filmmakers or 3D graphic designers can do well with the Mac Studio M4 Max version, which starts at a more affordable $2,000 .

The Mac Studio version tested by The Verge costs $8,100 , uses an M3 Ultra chip with a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256 GB RAM, and 4 TB SSD.

The back of the Mac Studio. Photo: The Verge .

Those are impressive specs for a compact machine like the Mac Studio. However, the important detail is that the single-core performance of the M3 Ultra is worse than the M4 Max. This is the factor that determines the “fast” feeling when using most common apps.

“The day-to-day user experience is incredibly responsive in both cases, and that’s true of all recent M-chip devices. You don’t need to spend that much to get a fast, reliable Mac,” Chris Welch said.

The M3 Ultra version has an advantage in terms of connection ports, when the 2 front USB-C ports both support Thunderbolt 5, with a theoretical speed of 120 Gb/s. Meanwhile, the M4 Max option is only equipped with a regular USB-C port, with a speed of 10 Gb/s.

The back of the Mac Studio includes four Thunderbolt 5 ports on both versions, so it's a matter of whether you need the best features from every port.

The front of the Mac Studio. Photo: The Verge .

If your work requires connecting multiple external monitors, this is also a factor to consider because the Mac Studio M3 Ultra supports up to 8 external monitors, while the M4 Max only supports 5 monitors.

The USB-A port is still present on the Mac Studio. The back of the machine also has an HDMI port, 10Gb/s Ethernet, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the Mac mini, the 3.5mm port is on the front, which is more convenient for plugging in headphones but inconvenient for connecting external speakers.

There is still a significant difference in weight, with the Mac Studio M4 Max weighing 2.77 kg and the M3 Ultra weighing 3.63 kg. This version is heavier due to the integration of a large heatsink module, using copper material compared to aluminum on the M4 Max.

The machine is not for the masses

Except for single-core CPU performance, most of the Mac Studio M3 Ultra's benchmarks outperform the M4 Max.

In Tom's Hardware 's Geekbench 6 benchmark, the Mac Studio M3 Ultra scored 3,249 on the single-core CPU, higher than the M2 Ultra (2,815 points), far surpassing the AMD Threadripper Pro 5975WX (2,121 points) and the Intel Xeon w9-3495X (2,360 points).

The M3 Ultra clocks at 4.05 GHz, while the M4 Max is at 4.5 GHz. Explaining the lower single-core CPU performance than the M4 Max (4,113 points), author Brandon Hill said that the M4 Max uses TSMC's second-generation 3nm manufacturing process, a new and faster CPU architecture. Meanwhile, the M3 Ultra still uses the first-generation 3nm process.

Comparing the CPU performance of the M3 Ultra on Geekbench 6. Photo: Tom's Hardware .

In our Handbrake 4K to 1080p transcoding test, the M3 Ultra finished in 1 minute and 16 seconds, while the M4 Max finished in 1 minute and 56 seconds. By comparison, the Mac Studio M2 Ultra took 2 minutes and 45 seconds, while the Intel Xeon and AMD Threadripper took around 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Like its predecessor, the Mac Studio delivers solid performance while remaining quiet. During The Verge ’s few days of testing, the device had no trouble with Lightroom projects, quickly processing Adobe’s AI noise reduction and other effects.

“The M3 Ultra is overkill for many people. If you need this much power, you know how to get the most out of it. It’s for digital effects artists, animators, and ambitious audio/visual producers.

“Do you regularly run large medical databases? All the cores and internal memory will probably be useful. And as AI continues to advance, the 256 or 512 GB RAM option could be appealing to anyone who wants to run complex LLM models on the device,” writes Chris Welch from The Verge .

All that power packed into a body just a little taller than an iPod nano. Photo: The Verge .

Gizmodo writer Sherri Smith agrees, noting that it’s difficult to get the most out of the Mac Studio, and that it’s rare to hear the fan. Of course, high performance comes at a price.

In Gizmodo 's testing, the Mac Studio handled the following tasks smoothly: opening 80 mixed tabs in Google Chrome (video, news, document processing...), editing 300 RAW photos down to Full HD resolution in Photoshop (time 1 minute 12 seconds), editing five 10-minute 4K videos in DaVinci Resolve (average time 2 minutes 53 seconds). All while the cooling fan was running quietly.

“If you can afford it, the Mac Studio is the perfect desktop machine for creative professionals who do a lot of heavy work,” Smith says.

Source: https://znews.vn/co-gi-trong-chiec-may-tinh-manh-nhat-cua-apple-post1537503.html