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A claim that just isn't true.
Nvidia's partners sell many workstations for AI developers.
What the M3 Ultra Mac Studios is can be summarized as: the first quiet, cool-running, desktop workstation for AI.
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M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio Reviews: Apple's Most Powerful Mac Ever
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A claim that just isn't true.
Nvidia's partners sell many workstations for AI developers.
What the M3 Ultra Mac Studios is can be summarized as: the first quiet, cool-running, desktop workstation for AI.
Hey now, iJustine is a badass video editor on crazy tight Youtube content creator deadlines, she is definitely the kind of media pro who will absolutely benefit from the fast render times of the M3 Ultra. Check out this Mac FCP vs PC Premiere video editing showdown between her and the Linus Tech Tips guys. (spoiler: she smokes em.)
The extra memory bandwidth of the M3 Ultra doesn't seem to be available for general purpose computing (computing that doesn't use the GPU or Neural Engine), because the M3 Ultra is only a few percentage points faster than the M4 Max despite having double the number of performance and efficiency cores. The only substantial advantage to the M3 Ultra in the general computing case is that memory is configurable up to 512GB and SSD up to 16TB. This also begs the question of whether either of the configuration limits on the M4 Max are artificial--the 8TB SSD limit in particular.
I do not believe it will happen, despite what Gurman and Company claim.
Back when the 27" iMac 5K was around, everyone was complaining that Apple did not offer a standalone 5K display because they did not like "throwing away" their display every few years when they bought a new model.
Then Apple releases a standalone 5K display and retires the 27" iMac and now everyone complains they cannot buy an integrated machine anymore that they can "throw away" in a few years for a new model.
Apple just cannot win.
The problem is that tower systems need PCIe for internal expansion - usually including one or more big discrete graphics cards - and Apple Silicon is really designed around external Thunderbolt and integrated GPUs (that get some of their performance boos from the use of unified RAM) and minimal PCIe (execept for the PCIe lanes dedicated to the internal SSD). Great for the laptops and small-form-factor systems that are Apple's bread and butter - not great for workstation towers and servers.
The M2 Ultra Mac Pro has to have the Ultra chip because most of the PCIe lanes are provided by what would be the SSD interface on the second die.... and it doesn't support PCIe GPUs. If it did support PCIe GPUs, the 16 + 8 available PCIe lanes wouldn't go too far since GPUs typically like 16 lanes to themselves.
If it were possible to get a Mx Max tower with 3-4 PCIe slots that I could fill with USB controllers (I need lotsa USB) and SSDs for a sensible price then I'd be tempted - but no way do I need a Mx Ultra CPU.
This is the case for most Macs and always has been. If you think you’ll need to upgrade two or more components to the base model, you’ll be better off just moving up to the next model, as those base models usually come with more memory and storage already.
First Apple had to design the M4. Then it had to design the M4 Pro and M4 Max. Only then could it design the M4 Ultra.
While much of this process can be parallelized (lots of basic core designs they share done at once) not all of it can, which is why it always takes months to get the Pro/Max versions of each Apple Silicon release, and why it takes many months longer to get the Ultra versions.
In the case of the M4 Ultra I believe Apple has already stated that the M4 Max doesn't have the ultrafusion connector hardware necessary to build an Ultra out of two of them. Whether it was a cost or die space issue or time to market issue, I don't know. But its clear they are targeted the M5 for the next Ultra.
You can make the extra memory available from the command line. This is something someone who buys an M3 Ultra is almost certainly going to do.
Glad I didn't wait for a new M4-based Studio, but went with a Mac Mini M4 Pro (14/20/64GB/2TB). The 64GB are important to me and with a M4-based Studio, Apple would force me towards an even higher CPU/GPU configuration to get the 64GB RAM. Combined with the 2TB internal storage, the Studio would be ~ 800 EUR more expensive than the Mac Mini M4 Pro, which is plenty of power for me (software dev, occasional photo/video editing), but want/need to have 64GB RAM for a machine which should last many years in the new tiny form factor.
Same for me. At first I wanted to wait and compare prices. But by the end of December, I got a M4 Pro Mini (14/20/16), 64GB RAM and 4TB storage for €1.100 less than the lowest Studio configuration I could get with the same amount of RAM. Almost forgot mine also has 10Gbps Ethernet.
Only for being ABLE to upgrade the RAM to more than 36GB, I had to pay €375 for a more cores, I might need in 20 years if ever.
I didn't even want such a large internal drive, but the complete BTO configuration had a €553 discount and I got it within 3 days. Apple showed weeks to months for delivery with any change in the configuration.
What I tended to see in most of the reviews were pointless comparisons to other Macs. Of course, they will be faster or should be than the rest of the line up. Yes it's ok to be lazy, not know what you are doing, and most importantly not upset Apple to be allowed to get early freebees to review in the future. But put these machines up against the pro machines the are competing with. Put them against the Windows machines. In power and value and everything else. These reviews if you can call them that are pretty bad, let's be honest.
Sure, but you're not the majority. What percentage of Mac users do you think uses a thunderbolt dock? 10%, on the high-end, I would guess.
I have one for my MacBook; it's TB3 but does everything I need.
M3 Ultra performed almost 50% faster than M4 Max in 3D rendering with Cinebench. More than a few percentage points!
That said, M3 Ultra certainly didn’t perform 50% faster across the board. That was one of the biggest gaps in Tom’s Hardware’s testing.
If you’re someone who does 3D rendering type work, you’ll be excited for the Ultra. If you’re not, then you’ll be excited for the great performance and lower price of the Max. Different needs for different use cases, great improvements overall from the last model.
Me, I don’t think I need to upgrade my M1 Ultra for quite a while yet.
I think they are catering to an audience that understands Mac-to-Mac comparisons much more easily, and is less likely to be pondering a Windows competitor.
A lot of customers "actually wanted" a powerful headless Mac (that didn't start at $6000) so they could pick and choose what kind of displays that they wanted.
Anybody who bought a Studio Display - or any other nice display - alongside their M1/M2 Studio or Mini can now just replace the Mini/Studio and keep the same display, so I'm not sure if Apple are maximising their profits. On past performance, a Studio Display should still be a pretty good display for the next 10 years or so while 3-5 year old CPUs are usually becoming badly outclassed, so for many people the same display should serve 2-3 Macs.
I'm annoyed that my 2017 iMac has a thoroughly outdated i7 CPU inextricably linked to what would still be a top-notch 5k3k display if it could be used with a newer computer.
Check out Tom’s review if you want comparisons with PCs. For me though, it’s irrelevant, I have zero interest in a machine that can’t run MacOS. I’d guess the majority here probably would agree.
“Joining our M3 Ultra and M4 Max review units in our testing are two PC-centric workstation chips: Intel’s Xeon W9-3495X and AMD’s Threadripper Pro 5995WX. We already had systems built around these processors in-house, so it seemed appropriate to compare them. The Xeon w9-3495X is a 56-core chip with a $5,889 MSRP. The Threadripper Pro 5995WX is a 64-core chip with a suggested retail price of $6,499. Those are before being built into systems, so it's a big difference from Apple, which makes entire PCs, not just chips.”
I think the people most excited about the Ultra are AI developers. This is the best machine you can buy for local AI dev, and is the first machine out there that seems uncompromisingly pointed right at us. I’m thrilled it’s a Mac and I don’t have to consider buying a PC for my work in the near future.
These chips take years to develop, so 3 or 4 years ago when Apple was planning out the M4, they probably didn’t see a need for an M4 Ultra and never designed one. (And they recently stated, not every generation will get an Ultra variant.)
The M3 is fab’ed on TSMC’s N3B process. Of which (I believe) only Apple ever committed to designing chips on as most others backed away and decided to wait for the next node, so TSMC did not have an incentive to build many lines. This almost certainly limited volume, and Apple had to wait before they could start producing these huge SoCs.
There aren't any mainstream Intel or AMD processors that are competitive with the M4s in performance.
i9s/i7s and Ryzens top out at 3,000 in Geekbench single core and 21,000 in multicore, far shy of the M4s 3,900 single core and Pros multicore (22,000), Max's multicore (24,000) let alone Ultra's (28,000). The M3 ultra single core is closer to the PC top end at 3,200, but still signficantly higher.
M1 Max (MBP - Oct 2021) to M1 Ultra (Studio - March 2022) was 4 months.
M2 Max (MBP) to M2 Ultra (Studio) was 6 months.
The M4 Max came out in October 2024, so based on past performance, the M4 Ultra appearing sometime between March and May was a perfectly reasonable expectation.
For grandma who wants to face-time with her grandkids, using an iMac, sure.
But, people here are power users.
I can fill up 32GB in a blink of an eye.
Thank you, Tom's guide always does good work.Check out Tom’s review if you want comparisons with PCs. For me though, it’s irrelevant, I have zero interest in a machine that can’t run MacOS. I’d guess the majority here probably would agree.
“Joining our M3 Ultra and M4 Max review units in our testing are two PC-centric workstation chips: Intel’s Xeon W9-3495X and AMD’s Threadripper Pro 5995WX. We already had systems built around these processors in-house, so it seemed appropriate to compare them. The Xeon w9-3495X is a 56-core chip with a $5,889 MSRP. The Threadripper Pro 5995WX is a 64-core chip with a suggested retail price of $6,499. Those are before being built into systems, so it's a big difference from Apple, which makes entire PCs, not just chips.”
Otherwise.
The LPDDR chips are situated right next to the SoC, usually all together on a daughterboard, that then is put on the mainboard.
The LPDDR allows for less power consumption of the memory, and the LPDDR5x chips Apple is using have pretty high bandwidth.
However, along with that lower power consumption comes a lower voltage, so low that one has to be diligent in the system design to not cause errors.
See the outcry over Framework and their recent desktop announcement. The peanut gallery are in an uproar because memory is not upgradeable, because Framework, like Apple, put the LPDDR next to the CPU (in their case.) Framework defends themselves by claiming they couldn't get it to work any other way, and I believe them.
Which should make it easier. Again, these machines are aimed at pros; I have no idea what these reviewers are thinking. Not all of them, of course, but the ones from the usual sycophants are pointless.