Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Mac desktops are deliver a bit of an identity crisis .
Before the release of Apple ’s M3 chipsets , the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra was the flying Mac around . But the M3 Max change everything , allow theMacBook Pro to rival the Mac Studioin operation by offer a more sophisticated chipset design . Unless Apple plans to discontinue the Mac Studio , it needs to convey out a meaningful update — sooner rather than later .
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
No change is needed on the outside
TheMac Studiois an excellent strong-arm specimen . It ’s a remarkably small desktop that packs in a short ton of major power , and no other PC can match its refined , yet functional design .
I ended upchoosing the MacBook Pro 16 over the Mac Studio , not because I did n’t love Apple ’s stocky background . Far from it . Rather , I made a complicated conclusion built around the dual - enjoyment aspect of the MacBook Pro and how it fits best within my rather complicated computing workflow .
Every now and then , I wish I ’d stuck with the Mac Studio . The MacBook Pro read up a lot more room on my desk , and I thought its fan dissonance would bother me less than it does . The Mac Studio was almost utterly quiet even when pushed hard , something I ca n’t say for the MacBook Pro . But in the last , the versality and power of the MacBook Pro more than makes up for the conflict . It ’s why so many creative professionals are choosing to advance flat to the MacBook Pro rather than a Mac Studio or Mac Pro .
A massive change is needed on the inside
But when I made my selection , the M3 Max was the more attractive chipset . Looking at some benchmarks , we can see that the MacBook Pro 16 with the 16 - meat CPU/40 - kernel GPU M3 Max matches or exceeds the Mac Studio with the 24 - core CPU/60 - essence GPU M2 Ultra in several of our tests . The most impressive result is in the GPU portion of Cinebench 2024 , where the M3 Max was almost double as fast . Even the M2 Ultra with 76 GPU core could n’t keep up .
The M2 Ultra sustain a fairish margin in the PugetBench Premiere Pro variant 23.4 bench mark , thanks to the combining of brute military group afforded by so many core and how Premiere Pro utilizes them . It ’s reasonable to assume , though , that Adobe will leverage the M3 Max ’s various GPU sweetening to increase its operation , which could even the spiel playing field .
That has n’t happened yet . The MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max scored 8,046 in PugetBench interpretation 24.1 , running in Premiere Pro 2024 , while the M2 Ultra 24/76scored around 9,500 . But as Adobe optimizes Premiere Pro , including add AI processing that can leverage the M3 Max ’s more ripe Neural Engine , the M2 Ultra could lose some of its advantage .
If you ’re a hard-core creator who demand the highest possible performance in apps like Premiere Pro , the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra remains a viable pick . But just about anyone else , including gamers , will require to face to the hereafter and take the M3 Max .
Will an M3 Ultra Mac Studio ever arrive?
The presumption has been that Apple will introduce an M3 Ultra variant of the Mac Studio . The Ultra series chipsets are basically two Max chipsets fused together using a technology squall UltraFusion . According to Apple , the engineering science almost doubles performance , not only of the CPU and GPU but also of memory , which feed at 800GB / s.
benchmark show that the performance is n’t doubled in existent - humankind usage , but it ’s close enough . The M2 Ultra provide a tremendous cost increase over the M2 Max . Given the performance of the M3 Max , an M3 Ultra would be a blisteringly firm chipset that would bollix these benchmark out of the weewee .
However , some questions have popped uparound whether the M3 Max incorporates the UltraFusion technology . If it does n’t , then that raises questions about the futurity of not only the Mac Studio , but also of the Mac Pro , Apple ’s answer to professional users who demand upgradeability . I suspect Apple has a solution in mind , whether the M3 Max include UltraFusion or the next high - end chipset will apply some other fabrication method .
Either room , the longer Apple waits to bring out the M3 Ultra , the longer these high - oddment Mac desktop will sense completely out of their constituent .
