Apple Mac Studio (2023)
The new Mac Studio is smoother than its predecessor, with more CPU and GPU cores. Aside from a few minor updates, you’re basically buying the same hardware. In its current state, the new Game Porting Toolkit isn’t exactly a game-changer for those who want to play on their Mac, and flaws such as lack of fixing and upgradeability are also present unchanged. On the one hand, you get an impressively efficient and quiet machine, which is equipped with several quick-connects. It makes the new Mac Pro unnecessary for almost all users.
During WWDC, Apple updated its Mac Studio with M2 series socs. Although on the outside the new version is barely distinguishable from last year’s, the new hardware inside will make it even more powerful. Exactly how fast is the new Mac Studio, and how does it compare to the Mac Pro that was announced at the same time?
Like the first generation Mac Studio, you can configure the new Studio with two different processors. We’ve already come across the M2 Max in our review of the 16″ MacBook Pro. This soc has twelve cores, divided into eight P-cores and four electron cores. That’s 2 more than the M1 Max, and in addition there’s also an increase in clock speeds by several hundred times. MHz, and the soc no longer has 32, but 38 gpu cores.
Since the M2 Ultra is incongruously made up of two M2 Max glued together, the number of CPU cores on this chip has been increased from 20 to 24, while the GPU goes from 64 to 76 cores. According to Apple, this should make the chip twenty percent faster on CPU tasks, and thirty percent faster on GPU tasks. By the way, the Neural Engine has also been upgraded, but it does not have additional cores, and therefore it is most likely only about higher clocks.
If you’re going to configure the new Mac Studio, you’ll probably notice that you have to pay extra for the M2 Max or Ultra with the GPU fully enabled, and that a new memory option has been added. In the most powerful configuration we tested, 192GB of RAM is available. With the M1 Ultra, the limit was still 128GB.
| m 2 | M2 Pro | M1 Max | M2 Max | M1 Ultra | M2 Ultra | |
| CPU (maximum) | 8 core | 12 cores | 10 cores | 12 cores | 20 cores | 24 cores |
| GPU (maximum) | 10 cores | 19 cores | 32 cores | 38 cores | 64 cores | 76 cores |
| memory (max) | 24 GB | 32 GB | 64 GB | 96 GB | 128 GB | 192 GB |
| memory bandwidth | 100 GB / sec | 200 GB / sec | 400 GB / sec | 400 GB / sec | 800 GB/sec | 800 GB/sec |
| transistors | 20 billion | 40 billion | 57 billion | 67 billion | 114 billion | 134 billion |
Specifications of all Apple M2 processors compared to the M1 Max and M1 Ultra processors
