Mac Studio Index

The Mac Studio, and Studio Display were announced on March 8th 2022, available for purchase on the 18th. Although touted as an intermediate between the Mac Pro and Mac mini, this Mac performs more or less the same as the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. The M2 Max/M2 Ultra Mac Studio was released just over a year after the original, seemingly following its own trend in contrast to other Apple Silicon Macs. Dropping and shipping same day, June 5th 2023 was when it was announced. Retaining an identical exterior to the previous generation M1 Max / M1 Ultra Mac Studio, the differences are visually imperceptible. The M2 Max is a second generation 5nm chip to the first generation 5nm M1 silicon, providing better performance.

Mac Studio port configuration

Original Design, M1 Max / Ultra

Mac Studio front

  • M1 Max, (2022): 10-cores, 8x 3.23 Ghz “Firestorm” High Performance Cores: 8x 192 KB (1.5MB) L1i, 8x 128 KB (1MB) L1d cache, 24MB L2, 48 MB System Cache
  • 2x 2.06 Ghz “Blizzard” energy efficient cores: 256K + 128 K L1, 4 MB L2, 48 MB system
  • 32-Core Neural Engine
  • Starts at 32GB of PC5-6400 3200 MHz LPDDR5 SDRAM of unified memory.
    • M1 Max Configurable up to 64 GB
    • 400 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
      .
  • M1 Ultra, (2022): 20-cores, 16x 3.23 Ghz “Firestorm” High Performance Cores: 16x 192 KB (3MB) L1i, 16x 128 KB (2MB) L1d cache, 48MB L2, 96 MB System Cache
  • 4x 2.06 Ghz “Blizzard” energy efficient cores: 256K + 128 K L1, 8 MB L2, 96 MB system
  • 32-Core Neural Engine
  • Starts at 64GB of PC5-6400 3200 MHz LPDDR5 SDRAM of unified memory.
    • M1 Ultra Configurable up to 128 GB
    • 800 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

  • M2 Max (2023): 12-cores, 8x 3.69 Ghz “Avalanche” High Performance Cores: 8x 192 KB (1.5MB) L1i, 8x 128 KB (1MB) L1d cache, 256MB L2, 48 MB SLC
  • 4x 2.42 Ghz “Blizzard” energy efficient cores: 4x 128 KB (512K) L1i, 4x 64 KB (256K) L1d cache, 16 MB L2, 48 MB SLC
  • 16-Core Neural Engine
  • Starts at 32GB of PC5-6400 3200 MHz LPDDR5 SDRAM of unified memory.
    • M2 Max Configurable up to 64 GB (96GB w/38-Core GPU)
    • 400 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
      .
  • M2 Ultra (2023): 24-cores, 16x 3.69 Ghz “Avalanche” High Performance Cores: 16x 192 KB (3MB) L1i, 16x 128 KB (2MB) L1d cache, 1GB L2, 96 MB SLC
  • 8x 2.42 Ghz “Blizzard” energy efficient cores: 8x 128 KB (1MB) L1i, 8x 64 KB (512K) L1d cache, 64 MB L2, 96 MB SLC
  • 32-Core Neural Engine
  • Starts at 64GB of PC5-6400 3200 MHz LPDDR5 SDRAM of unified memory.
    • M2 Ultra Configurable up to 192 GB
    • 800 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Third Generation, Beyond UltraFusion interconnect

The Early 2025 Mac Studio sports the first “Ultra” chip without UltraFusion interconnect, featuring a monolithic M3 Ultra chip. This feat allows for the M3 Ultra to be more efficient by eliminating the performance scaling issues from prior generations of Ultra chips. While the exterior of the Mac Studio remains unchanged, it remains an extraordinary part of the Apple Silicon lineup of Macs.

  • M4 Max (Early 2025): 14 Cores, 10x 4.5 GHz “M4” High Performance Cores: 1.28MB L1i, 1.28MB L1d, ~320?MB L2*, ~48?MB System Level Cache*
    • 4x 2.85 GHz “M4” energy efficient cores: 512K L1i, 256K L1d, 16MB L2, ~48? MB SLC*
    • 410 GB/s Memory Bandwidth, 4266 MHz LPDDR5X-8533 SDRAM, up to 128 GB
    • 512 GB PCIe SSD, 1 TB (+$200), 2 TB (+$600), 4 TB (+$1200), and 8 TB (+$2400)
    • 16-Core Neural Engine, 32-Core GPU configurable to 40.
      .
  • M3 Ultra (Early 2025): 28 Cores, 20x 4.01 GHz “M3” High Performance Cores: 2.56 MB L1i, 2.56 MB L1d, 640 MB L2, 96 MB System Level Cache
    • 8x 2.75 GHz “M3” energy efficient cores: 1 MB L1i, 512K L1d, 32 MB L2, 96 MB SLC
    • 819 GB/s Memory Bandwidth, 3200 MHz LPDDR5-6400 SDRAM, up to 512 GB
    • 1 TB PCIe SSD, 2 TB (+$400), 4 TB (+$1000), 8 TB (+$2200), and 16 TB (+$4600)
    • 32-Core Neural Engine, 40-Core GPU configurable to 80.