M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio Reviews: Apple's Most Powerful Mac Ever

[WarmWinterHat]

You might want to consider getting out more. Heck go in any Apple Store I had 64 gb 15 years ago. And own a Studio now. I've never seen a great white shark, but I'm pretty sure they exist.

Your point that most people don't need a Studio... maybe, but so? We're discussing the relative merits of the computer, not how many it will sell or not sell.

Haha, I might have glanced at one from a distance at the Apple store, but I've never walked up and looked at the Studio while there.

My comment was a response to someone posting that this is the computer that most desktop users should buy.

 

[rp2011]

Yep. I've always been disappointed that some of the top reviewers don't do two easy things that I think would make good content. One, pick a several years older Mac and run a deep comparison. Because it is people that have that older Macs (in this case I would compare to an M1, but a review against some of the last Intel Macs would be fun as well) are the people that might be thinking that an upgrade is in order. Second, run it against a current PC because a buyer's decision today also can include cross shopping against whatever is offered in PC land.
The one thing that basically nobody should be doing is be considering upgrading from an M3 to an M4 Mac. And yet 90% of the reviewers will focus on that question for a huge portion of their review.

I've been thinking about whether I've been too hard on these reviewers. And I get it. The name of the game for them is "fast", not "good". To get it out there before anyone else. That's their MO. Good content takes time.
What I do think is true though, is that they are out of their depth. That it would do them well to know when they are out of their depth and either step aside and let someone like Tom's Guide do what they do, because it seems it is too much to ask of themto put some effort into producing something useful.

 

[CWallace]

Apple may see the "influencers" as just a way of advertising to a larger audience that a new product is available. And once said audience knows such a machine is available, those in the target demographics will seek out the reviews of those who have the technical background to provide a comprehensive review.

 

[obviouslogic]

I've been clear about referring to the case of general purpose computing. The M3 Ultra is roughly 7% faster than the M4 Max, despite having double the Performance and Efficiency cores--32 cores total vs. 16.

1. You’re basing that off a single test.
2. CPU access to memory is not being throttled and is not the cause for the difference in performance.
3. You’re comparing different generation cores; cache size, clock speed, process node, core design, ISA, etc.
4. Some CPUs, the more cores that are running at once the slower they are throttled. This ensures the CPU stays within thermal bounds. (Not sure if this is the case with Apple’s SoCs?)

 

[adamw]

Check out 15% of all new Macs, including both Mac Studio Models (M4 Max and M3 Ultra) and the new M4 Macbook Air at Micro Center (www.microcenter.com) if you have one of those Micro Center computer stores near you. This morning they just added the new Mac Studio models and the M4 MacBook Air. With 15% off the Apple list price, you can get a M4 Max Mac Studio base model for $1699 vs $1,999 ($300 Savings), an M3 Ultra Mac Studio base model for $3,399 vs $3,999 ($600 Savings), or the new base model M4 MacBook Air for $849 vs $999 ($150 Savings). For all those considering upgrading, this should be 15% off vs. Apple Educational discount of 10% off, plus you get an extra 3% off all purchases with the Micro Center credit card. Hope this saves you some money $$$.

 

[Helloworld75]

There's no Geekbench results out yet, is there? Im currently owning an old iMac 27" and MacBook Pro (M4 Pro 48 gb ram). Im mainly doing lots of photoshop and figma work.

What can I expect from an upgrade to Mac Studio 4 max 16 cores and 64 gb ram? Maybe hard to answer but any thoughts is helpful.

 

[bzgnyc2]

There's no Geekbench results out yet, is there?

Not on their website but 3rd party reviewers have run some benchmarks. Check out the articles at the head of this thread for unofficial results from it and specific applications (e.g. Cinebench). Tom's Hardware review has Geekbench 6 results for the hi-test version of the M4 Max.

Im currently owning an old iMac 27" and MacBook Pro (M4 Pro 48 gb ram). Im mainly doing lots of photoshop and figma work.

What can I expect from an upgrade to Mac Studio 4 max 16 cores and 64 gb ram? Maybe hard to answer but any thoughts is helpful.

Compared to your MacBook Pro M4 Pro, I expect Geekbench scores about the same on single CPU, maybe 20% higher on multicore, and perhaps 70% on Metal. If the components of PhotoShop that you are using are heavily optimized for multicore, you might see up to 50% improvement due to the 12 p-cores of the Max versus 8 p-cores of the base M4 Pro. If you did video encoding, the Studio Max's two video encode and ProRes engines might have been significant.

The relatively small difference between your MacBook Pro and the Studio isn't a reflection on the Studio so much as that your MacBook Pro M4 Pro is already pretty pretty good. Plus the Studio's advantage at its entry is more around capacity than peak performance (e.g. better thermals, more Thunderbolt ports, more external displays, etc).

 

[Helloworld75]

Not on their website but 3rd party reviewers have run some benchmarks. Check out the articles at the head of this thread for unofficial results from it and specific applications (e.g. Cinebench). Tom's Hardware review has Geekbench 6 results for the hi-test version of the M4 Max.



Compared to your MacBook Pro M4 Pro, I expect Geekbench scores about the same on single CPU, maybe 20% higher on multicore, and perhaps 70% on Metal. If the components of PhotoShop that you are using are heavily optimized for multicore, you might see up to 50% improvement due to the 12 p-cores of the Max versus 8 p-cores of the base M4 Pro. If you did video encoding, the Studio Max's two video encode and ProRes engines might have been significant.

The relatively small difference between your MacBook Pro and the Studio isn't a reflection on the Studio so much as that your MacBook Pro M4 Pro is already pretty pretty good. Plus the Studio's advantage at its entry is more around capacity than peak performance (e.g. better thermals, more Thunderbolt ports, more external displays, etc).

Thanks for taking the time to explain. My Macbook is from work so I'm kinda looking for reasons to buy a Studio for myself.

Im gonna go with 16 cores and 40 for graphics to be able to upgrade memory so hopefully that will be the slight performance bump more noticeable.

Once again, thanks!!

 

[TallManNY]

I've been thinking about whether I've been too hard on these reviewers. And I get it. The name of the game for them is "fast", not "good". To get it out there before anyone else. That's their MO. Good content takes time.
What I do think is true though, is that they are out of their depth. That it would do them well to know when they are out of their depth and either step aside and let someone like Tom's Guide do what they do, because it seems it is too much to ask of themto put some effort into producing something useful.

I think they are in a bit of a pickle. The reviewers are mini-production studios basically. So they are sophisticated computer users in their day to day life. So it was easy for them to talk about their production process. Now the base M4 MBA basically handles pretty high level video editing fine. And this is the hardest thing most of them do (and what most people do) and it happened to be the thing that they had to do well in order to make their content. So they are left reporting that an M4 Max does an export a handful of minutes faster and this is a step in their production process that they might do, what, four times in a work day? The time savings is meaningless.

I do think M1 vs M4 is meaningful and it should have been the focus of most reviews, even for the folks who got early review units. Though maybe it isn't great content to do a review that concludes: no need to upgrade from an M1 to today's M4.

 

[rp2011]

I think they are in a bit of a pickle. The reviewers are mini-production studios basically. So they are sophisticated computer users in their day to day life. So it was easy for them to talk about their production process. Now the base M4 MBA basically handles pretty high level video editing fine. And this is the hardest thing most of them do (and what most people do) and it happened to be the thing that they had to do well in order to make their content. So they are left reporting that an M4 Max does an export a handful of minutes faster and this is a step in their production process that they might do, what, four times in a work day? The time savings is meaningless.

I do think M1 vs M4 is meaningful and it should have been the focus of most reviews, even for the folks who got early review units. Though maybe it isn't great content to do a review that concludes: no need to upgrade from an M1 to today's M4.

Yes and luckily, there were many other folks who got their machines and put them up against their own use cases, which got me a great idea of the machine's strengths and weaknesses were other than mostly video editing.

What the chip results mean for me this year as someone hoping to get away from Windows machines for graphics work is that the base Ultra will not be that machine, as the Max fares much better and is a better value. I am not even sure the M3 Ultra is something anyone should consider, as it feels like a quickly regrettable purchase with upcoming releases.

 

[CWallace]

Max Tech has released their video comparing the M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studios. They do perform both benchmarks and application testing.

The tl;dr is that the Max is much better in single core and not too far behind in multi-core on GB6, but again, GB6 is said to not accurately report the true performance of large-core platforms. GPU performance is where the Ultra starts to shine and, of course, it can take four times as much RAM and twice as much storage. The Ultra also runs only about 15 degrees C warmer than the Max when stressed. The M3 Ultra is also a Logic Pro beast so this could help Mac Pro sales for audio studios (be it with an M3 Ultra or the M4 "Hidra") and it does exceptionally well on projects that need a lot of memory bandwidth (like Lightroom).

 

[TallManNY]

Yes and luckily, there were many other folks who got their machines and put them up against their own use cases, which got me a great idea of the machine's strengths and weaknesses were other than mostly video editing.

What the chip results mean for me this year as someone hoping to get away from Windows machines for graphics work is that the base Ultra will not be that machine, as the Max fares much better and is a better value. I am not even sure the M3 Ultra is something anyone should consider, as it feels like a quickly regrettable purchase with upcoming releases.

Yes, but you kind of have to dig a bit deeper past the usual suspects of reviewers. And I think past the folks who get review units from Apple. But there are plenty of folks who got release week units who have gone to YouTube.

As for the M3 Ultra, as I understand it, it is a bit of a game changer for local AI work and can do things in that area that the M4 Max can't do at all. But outside of that area, unclear that trade off of slower cores for more cores, RAM, and memory bandwidth is worth it. Certainly clear that the trade off is not worth it for many users.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Yes, but you kind of have to dig a bit deeper past the usual suspects of reviewers. And I think past the folks who get review units from Apple. But there are plenty of folks who got release week units who have gone to YouTube.

As for the M3 Ultra, as I understand it, it is a bit of a game changer for local AI work and can do things in that area that the M4 Max can't do at all. But outside of that area, unclear that trade off of slower cores for more cores, RAM, and memory bandwidth is worth it. Certainly clear that the trade off is not worth it for many users.

Agree -- Studio M3 Ultra is a niche within the Studio segment (niche of a niche if you will). You'll know -- or better yet you'll have tested head-to-head when making a purchase this size -- if the Studio M3 Ultra is worth it for your work. If you can't tell, it's not. As I've said elsewhere, the Studio M4 Max is the mainstream choice [within the Studio's market segment]. The 256/512 GB RAM/VRAM options, double GPU, and double ProRes engines worth it for some but unlikely for many.

Let's also not be so down on the M3. It was best-in-class just 18 months ago and the M4 is "only" 25% faster at general CPU stuff. People are acting like Apple offering the M3 Ultra is a forced downgrade from the 68040 to 68030 (or 486 to 386 for the Intel familiar).

 

[TallManNY]

Agree -- Studio M3 Ultra is a niche within the Studio segment (niche of a niche if you will). You'll know -- or better yet you'll have tested head-to-head when making a purchase this size -- if the Studio M3 Ultra is worth it for your work. If you can't tell, it's not. As I've said elsewhere, the Studio M4 Max is the mainstream choice [within the Studio's market segment]. The 256/512 GB RAM/VRAM options, double GPU, and double ProRes engines worth it for some but unlikely for many.

Let's also not be so down on the M3. It was best-in-class just 18 months ago and the M4 is "only" 25% faster at general CPU stuff. People are acting like Apple offering the M3 Ultra is a forced downgrade from the 68040 to 68030 (or 486 to 386 for the Intel familiar).

Perfect summary. A niche of a niche. Somewhat confused in the comment section by folks with money to burn and more of a desire to buy the "best" instead of necessarily buying for their current workflow. Also some resistance by folks who feel bad because it turns out their work flow can actually be handled by a M4 Pro mini that costs less than $2,000, but they think of themselves as "power users".

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

Check out 15% of all new Macs, including both Mac Studio Models (M4 Max and M3 Ultra) and the new M4 Macbook Air at Micro Center (www.microcenter.com) if you have one of those Micro Center computer stores near you. This morning they just added the new Mac Studio models and the M4 MacBook Air.

The problem is (and I’ve mentioned this before, when you mention Micro Center) is that they usually only carry base models and even if they do, they’re usually sold out of them. I only have one Micro Center within driving distance, and - yep - they are sold out of the 2 new Mac Studio models. Quelle surprise!