In a twist, Apple has finally updated the Mac Studio with the M4 Max and the M4 Ult— I mean, the M3 Ultra!? Let’s compare these to each other, as well as the M2 Max and Ultra models they’re replacing.
M4 Max vs M4 Ultra: The Outside
Starting on the outside, the biggest difference is… nothing! There’s no difference at all, so let’s go inside.
M4 Max vs M3 Ultra: The Chips
Let’s start with the elephant in the room and talk about what it means for the M4 Max to upgrade to the M3 Ultra. Now, besides the obvious weirdness in the naming, the reason why having the higher-end model go with the M3 instead of M4 series is awkward is because within the same numerical generation, the main difference in performance between the base M, the Pro, the Max, and the Ultra chips lies in the number of CPU and GPU cores.
As we go up the stack, the core counts increase, leading to higher multi-threaded performance. However, single-core CPU performance generally stays the same. That means the M3 Ultra’s single-core performance should be comparable to the M3 Max, which is 20% slower than the M4 Max. Of course, the Ultra, being 2 Max chips fused together, has twice as many CPU and GPU cores, so it should be faster in multi-core workloads. However, initial reports seem to indicate maybe only 10% faster, though, so definitely a lot less difference than you might expect.
For GPU performance, the higher end 80-core M3 Ultra benchmarks at around 38% faster than the higher-end 40-core M4 Max. Given the lower end M4 Max has 80% of the GPU cores while the lower end M3 Ultra has 75% of the cores, the difference between those 2 might be a little less.
And the neural engine on the M4 with 16-cores is rated at 38 TOPS, which is 20 TOPS or 111% more than an equal tier M3 chip. That means the M3 Ultra’s doubling to 32 cores results in 36 TOPS, which is actually 5% LESS performance than the M4 Max.
All in all, the performance difference between M4 Max and M3 Ultra isn’t as large as it was for the M2 Max vs M2 Ultra, and in fact is worse in single-core and AI, yet the price difference is still the same with the Max starting at $2000 and the Ultra at twice as much at $4000. This essentially means Apple has either increased the price of, or decreased the performance of the Ultra Mac Studio.
The remaining differences in the chip are the usual ones, with 2 and 4 video decode and encode engines instead of 1 and 2, respectively.
Now let’s dive into the details of exactly what else is difference between these models.
M4 Max vs M3 Ultra: Optional Upgrades
The base M4 Max Mac Studio starts with a 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine. You can choose to upgrade by adding 2 CPU and 8 GPU cores for $300, but you are also forced to upgrade to 48GB of memory from 36GB for $200 at the same time, making the minimum spend for this model $2500. That memory upgrade costs $200 for 12GB, or $16.67 per GB.
From there, you can upgrade the memory again to 64GB, an increase of 16GB, for another $200, so it’s actually cheaper at $12.50 per GB. Upgrading to 128GB from there will cost an extra $800 though, which is the same $12.50 per GB, so no more discounts. On the M3 Ultra, the base 96GB can be upgraded to 256GB for $1600, which comes out to $10 per GB. You can add on another 256GB for $2400 extra, or $9.375 / GB.
Storage can go from 512GB all the way to 8TB on the M4 Max models. As usual, Apple charges an arm and leg for storage upgrades, ranging from $400 / TB to $320 / TB if you go all the way up to 8. On the M3 Ultra, the base is 1 TB and you can go all the way up to 16GB for $4600, which is $3.07 / TB.
The M3 Ultra model has twice as many CPU, and Neural Engine cores as the max, but base Ultra has only 60 GPU cores compared to the 32 in the base Max. Only the upgraded Ultra has 80 GPU cores, twice as many as the upgraded Max, so this is once again a spec downgrade. However, the price to upgrade is far more at a whopping $1500, which is 5 times more than the $300 upgrade on the Max version. You would think the upgrade cost would just be 2 times more if the price increased linearly.
M4 Max vs M3 Ultra: Everything Else
Besides those core upgrade options, moving to the Ultra comes with some additional upgrades.
The M4 Max version supports up to 5 displays: 4 over Thunderbolt and 1 over HDMI, while the M3 Ultra supports up to 8 displays.
Looking at ports, the 2 front USB-C 10Gb/s ports turn into full-fledged Thunderbolt 5 120Gb/s ports, making for a total of 6 of those instead of 4.
The M3 Ultra also weighs quite a bit more than the M4 Max Studio, at 8 lbs versus 6.1, making this hefty brick even more hefty. This could be due to additional cooling for the Ultra chip.
M4 Max vs M3 Ultra: Summary
And that’s it for the differences. So in summary, paying $2000 more for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio over the M4 Max gets you:
- The M3 Ultra chip, which will be faster in multi-core performance, but possibly by only 10%, slower in single-core by 20%, 30-40% faster in graphics, and maybe slower in AI workloads
- The option to shell out tons more money to upgrade memory to 256GB or 512GB, and storage to 16TB
- Support for 3 additional displays
- 2 extra Thunderbolt 5 ports converted from regular USB-C ports on the front
- And 1.9 lbs additional weight, possibly resulting from added cooling… although the Max Mac Studio’s cooling has already been more than sufficient to keep things cool and quiet even under heavy loads
If the early performance benchmarks hold true, paying an extra $2000 for the M3 Ultra over the M4 Max is definitely NOT WORTH IT, unless you absolutely must have the fastest graphics performance or insane amounts of memory or storage. Otherwise you might as well buy 2 M4 Max machines instead to get a 100% more performance, display support, and Thunderbolt ports. Like the video if you agree!
M4/M3 vs M2 Mac Studio: The Chip
What about compared to the M2 Max and M2 Ultra Mac Studios? Let’s start again with chip performance for the base core-count models in each generation. In single core CPU, the M4 Max is 39% faster than the M2 Max, and in multi-core, it’s 66% faster. In multi-core, the M4 Max is also about 17% faster than the M2 Ultra. The M3 Ultra is 32% faster than the M2 Ultra in multi-core, while M3 vs M2 single core performance difference is about 16%.
For graphics performance, the M4 Max is 35% faster than the M2 Max. The higher end 80-core count M3 Ultra benchmarks at around 16% faster than the higher-end M2 Ultra.
Neural Engine performance on the M2 generation was only 15.8 TOPS for the 16 core Max and 31.6 for the 32-core Ultra. That means the M4 Max at 38 TOPS is 140% faster than the M2 Max, while the 36 TOPS for the M3 Ultra is only 14% faster than the M2 Ultra.
For the media engine, the most obvious difference is the M2 chips didn’t support AV1 decode. The less obvious is that Apple says performance has increased as well, though how much is due to the media engine vs the CPU and GPU power is uncertain.
M4/M3 vs M2 Mac Studio: Everything Else
Besides the chip, here’s everything else different between the M2 generation of Mac Studio and the current. Memory and storage are configurable, so I’ll just note that the M2 versions only supported up to 192GB of memory and 8TB of storage versus the possibility of going up to 512GB and 16TB now.
For display support, while the total number hasn’t changed, the number of 6K displays supported has increased by up to 2, and 8K displays has increased by 1, presumably because of the port bandwidth difference.
The M2 Studios only had Thunderbolt 4 for 40 Gb/s transfer speeds, while the new Studios have Thunderbolt 5 at 120 GB/s.
And finally, the weight of the M2 Studios are slightly less than the M4 or M3 Studio by 0.2 or 0.1 lbs.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that the new Studio still has Wi-Fi 6E and not Wi-Fi 7, but most folks will probably make use of Ethernet for a desktop.
M4/M3 vs M2 Mac Studio: Summary
So to summarize, if you upgrade from the M2 series to an M4/M3 Mac Studio, you would get:
- An M4 or M3 chip that gives 2 or 1 generation faster CPU, graphics, and neural engine performance
- A faster media engine that supports AV1 decoding
- The option to upgrading memory beyond 192GB and storage beyond 8TB
- An extra 2 6K or 1 8K displays supported
- 3 times faster Thunderbolt 5 instead of Thunderbolt 4 ports
- And a slightly heavier machine
Whether this upgrade is worth it depends on how much you can sell the M2 Studio for. I think the M4 Max might be worth it if you split the difference and can benefit from the extra performance, but you may have a hard time recouping the cost of the M2 Ultra, especially since even the $2000 cheaper M4 Max is faster in CPU performance.
