With the Apple Mac Studio, the Cupertino-based company presented an absolute monster of a PC at the Apple event on March 8. It is not only equipped with the M1 Ultra chip, which is twice as powerful as the previous top model, the M1 Max. On top of that, there’s also 64 GPU cores, 128 GB of RAM and a compact size that fits on any desk.
Apple Mac Studio unveiled
With the compact and extremely powerful Apple Mac Studio desktop PC, the manufacturer wants to put the fear of God into AMD and Intel. Visually, the small box is reminiscent of a slightly larger version of the Mac Mini and is only 19.7 x 19.7 x 9.5 cm (width x depth x height).
For the first time in a Mac, the Studio model has two USB-C ports and an SD card reader on the front. On the back, there are four Thunderbolt USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI, two USB-A, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Studio is also compatible with WI-Fi 6, offers Bluetooth 5.0, and has an internal speaker as well.
Depending on the model, the Apple Mac Studio comes with 32GB or 64GB of RAM, with the top model also optionally available with 128GB of RAM. In terms of storage, 512 GB or 1 TB are available, while expansions to 2 TB, 4 TB or 8 TB are possible. They realize speeds of 7.4 GB/s.
M1 Ultra chip with gigantic performance
The Apple Mac Studio is offered with the already known M1 Max chip or with the brand-new M1 Ultra, which combines two M1 Max via “UltraFusion” and realizes a bandwidth of 2.5 TB/s.
The result is twice the performance of the already extremely high-performance M1 Max. Practically, this means that the M1 Ultra combines 16 performance cores with 4 efficiency cores. A whopping 64 GPU cores are used for graphics, while 117 billion transistors make the Ultra up to seven times faster than the regular M1.
Compared to the current Mac Pro (with Intel Xeon including 28 cores), the Apple Mac Studio is supposed to offer a 60 percent higher processor performance. The graphics power is said to be 80 percent higher than that of the AMD Radeon Pro W6900X of the Mac Pro.
The operating system used is macOS Monterey. The Mac Studio is operated classically with mouse and keyboard or via voice control. In addition, Apple promises a revolutionary thermal management system that cools the components efficiently and works whisper quiet.
Prices and Availability
The Apple Mac Studio is available for pre-order now from Apple’s website. It is scheduled to begin shipping on March 18, 2022. The base model including M1 Max with 10 CPU and 24 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD storage is priced at 2,299 euros. The top model with M1 Ultra including 20 CPU and 48 GPU cores, 64 GB of memory and 1 TB SSD will cost 4,599 Euros.
The top configuration with 64 GPU cores, 128 GB of RAM and an SSD with 8 TB of storage costs 9,199 Euros for the Apple Mac Studio.
