Apple’s Best New Chipset Isn’t the M4 Max
In addition to the launch of the sky blue M4-based MacBook Air , Apple’s series of announcements this week revealed Apple’s most powerful desktop silicon processor yet. Given Apple’s own chipset numbering scheme, you’d think this would be a chipset labeled M4, but it’s actually the M3 Ultra that will run on the latest Mac Studio.
Ever since Apple started releasing its own chipsets with the M designation, we’ve seen a lot of different labels. First came the standard processor, then the Pro, then the Max, and then the Ultra, with performance improving with each iteration. Now we come to the M4 Max and M3 Ultra.
When you pre-order directly from Apple, you can outfit the latest Mac Studio with either the M4 Max or the M3 Ultra, but the latter’s superior capabilities are evident in the price: the M3 Ultra Mac Studio’s starting price is double that of the M4 Max Mac Studio.
Here’s what’s happening: As with the previous generation of chipsets called Ultra, the M3 Ultra is essentially two M3 Max processors fused together to look like one, using a technology Apple calls UltraFusion. Essentially, you get twice the performance: this piece of silicon contains an incredible 184 billion transistors.
So many cores
Here are some more stats: The M3 Ultra offers up to 32 CPU cores (compared to 24 on its most comparable predecessor, the M2 Ultra). It features up to 80 CPU cores (compared to 76 on the M2 Ultra), 32 neural cores (same as the M2 Ultra), support for up to 512GB of memory (compared to 192GB on the M2 Ultra), and up to 819GB/s memory bandwidth (compared to 800GB/s). Overall performance is about 1.5 times faster than the Apple M2 Ultra.
While the M2 Ultra chipset is a direct predecessor to the M3 Ultra, if you buy a Mac Studio, you’ll have to choose between the M3 Ultra and M4 Max—the latter being the processor that launched last year with the refreshed MacBook Pro . M4 Max gives you up to 16 CPU cores, up to 40 GPU cores, 16 neural cores, support for up to 128GB of memory, and memory bandwidth of up to 546GB/s.
One of the benefits of supporting such a large amount of RAM on the M3 Ultra (more than half a terabyte) is that users can run more powerful AI models locally on their machines . A Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra inside should have enough power to run something like DeepSeek R1 locally without having to connect to servers in China.
The M3 Ultra also comes with a Thunderbolt 5 upgrade, which doubles the maximum data transfer speed of Thunderbolt 4 to 120 Gbps. This means you can even chain multiple Mac Studios together (if you have the budget for it), and the M3 Ultra’s display processor is capable of handling over 160 million pixels – the equivalent of eight Pro Display XDRs.
“M3 Ultra is the pinnacle of our scalable system-on-chip architecture, specifically designed for users who run the most heavily threaded, bandwidth-intensive applications,” said Johnny Srouji, senior vice president of Hardware Technologies at Apple.
What about the M4 Ultra? Apple hasn’t said anything on the matter yet, but it did hint to Ars Technica that it might not add an Ultra model this time. This would make the M4 series the first not to have an Ultra variant, but since these super-powerful and super-expensive chipsets are only of interest to those with the most demanding needs and deepest pockets, less frequent launches may be the most logical course of action.