Apple unveiled the M3 Ultra chip as an option in the new Mac Studio desktop Wednesday. As the company’s most powerful silicon chip to date, it brings unprecedented performance to pro users with demanding workflows. The other option in the new desktop machine is the M4 Max chip, which is actually less powerful than the M3 Ultra.

“3 Ultra is the pinnacle of our scalable system-on-a-chip architecture, aimed specifically at users who run the most heavily threaded and bandwidth-intensive applications,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

“Thanks to its 32-core CPU, massive GPU, support for the most unified memory ever in a personal computer, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and industry-leading power efficiency, there’s no other chip like M3 Ultra,” he added.

Apple unveils M3 Ultra chip, breaking performance barriers

As the engine of the top 2025 Mac Studio desktop, M3 Ultra pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in a desktop computer, offering performance that dwarfs its predecessors, according to Apple. The chip delivers up to 1.5 times the performance of the M2 Ultra and up to 1.8 times that of the M1 Ultra. For graphics-intensive tasks, the improvements are even more dramatic, with up to 2 times faster performance than M2 Ultra and 2.6 times faster than M1 Ultra. And it can drive up to eight 6K Pro Display XDRs.

At the heart of the M3 Ultra is a massive 32-core CPU configuration, featuring 24 high-performance cores paired with 8 efficiency cores. A possibly-even-more impressive 80-core GPU complements the CPU, providing the largest graphics processor ever built into an Apple chip.

Revolutionary memory capacity

Perhaps most impressive is the M3 Ultra’s memory capabilities. The chip supports up to an unprecedented 512GB of unified memory — over half a terabyte — making it the most high-bandwidth, low-latency memory ever available in a personal computer. This massive memory pool starts at a whopping 96GB in base configurations and outpaces even the most advanced workstation graphics cards currently on the market, Apple noted.

This memory architecture removes significant limitations for professional workflows that demand large amounts of graphics memory, such as complex 3D rendering, visual effects production and increasingly important AI development work.

Built for AI and machine learning

The M3 Ultra arrives at a pivotal moment when AI capabilities are becoming increasingly central to professional computing. The chip features a powerful 32-core Neural Engine specifically designed to accelerate AI and machine learning tasks. That also makes it an ideal platform for Apple Intelligence, the company’s personal intelligence system.

Apple notes that the M3 Ultra is “built for AI” (like so many recent products from the company), incorporating ML accelerators in the CPU, the company’s most powerful GPU ever, the Neural Engine, and over 800GB/s of memory bandwidth. These specifications allow the new Mac Studio with M3 Ultra to run large language models with over 600 billion parameters directly on device, positioning it as “the ultimate desktop for AI development.”

UltraFusion: Two chips as one

The M3 Ultra’s remarkable capabilities stem from Apple’s innovative UltraFusion packaging architecture, which essentially links two M3 Max dies together. This connection happens across more than 10,000 high-speed connections that offer low latency and high bandwidth, allowing the system to treat the combined dies as a single, unified chip.

This engineering feat brings together a total of 184 billion transistors while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading power efficiency. The UltraFusion technology uses an embedded silicon interposer that connects the two dies across more than 10,000 signals, providing over 2.5TB/s of low-latency interprocessor bandwidth.

Thunderbolt 5: Next-gen connectivity

In another industry first, the M3 Ultra brings Thunderbolt 5 connectivity to the Mac Studio. This new standard delivers up to 120Gb/s data transfer speeds — more than double that of Thunderbolt 4. Apple has implemented a custom design where each Thunderbolt 5 port on the Mac Studio has its own dedicated controller directly on the chip. That ensures maximum bandwidth for each connection.

The iPhone giant described the implementation as “the industry’s most capable implementation of Thunderbolt 5” and said it represents a significant advance for professionals who require faster data transfer speeds for external storage, docking solutions and expansion chassis. The technology also enables connecting multiple Mac Studio systems together for workflows that push the limits of content creation and computational research.

Advanced media capabilities

For video professionals, the M3 Ultra offers exceptional media handling capabilities. With twice the resources of the M3 Max, the media engine within M3 Ultra delivers far more concurrent video processing power. The chip features dedicated, hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, and four ProRes encode and decode engines, allowing it to play back up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video simultaneously.

The display engine is equally impressive, supporting connectivity for up to eight 6K Pro Display XDRs and driving more than 160 million pixels across multiple displays.

Environmental considerations

True to Apple’s commitment to environmental responsibility, the power-efficient design of the M3 Ultra helps reduces the total amount of energy consumed over the product’s lifetime, supporting Apple’s carbon neutrality goals.

The company notes that it is currently carbon neutral for global corporate operations and, as part of its ambitious Apple 2030 goal, plans to be carbon neutral across its entire carbon footprint by the end of this decade.

Preorder: Get M3 Ultra in a 2025 Mac Studio

You can preorder a Mac Studio with M3 Ultra as of Wednesday. M3 Ultra version starts at $3,999 for 96GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at $1,999, with 36GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Shipping and in-store availability starts March 12.

Preorder from: Apple

Source: Apple