M3 Ultra: Key aspects you should know about Apple's latest PC chipset

Just a few days ago, Apple launched the all-new Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and M4 Max chipsets.

The new M3 Ultra comes with big upgrades and promises to deliver faster and efficient performance compared to M2 Ultra.

M3 Ultra: Here are key features you should know about the latest and most powerful Apple PC chipset

-- M3 Ultra is said to be built using Apple’s innovative UltraFusion packaging architecture, which links two M3 Max dies over 10,000 high-speed connections that offer low latency and high bandwidth. With this technique, Apple has managed to incorporate up to 180 billion transistors on the M3 Ultra chipset

-- It features up to a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, delivering up to 1.5x the performance compared to M2 Ultra, and up to 1.8x that of M1 Ultra.

--It also has the largest GPU in any Apple chip, with up to 80 graphics cores that bring up to 2x faster performance than M2 Ultra, and up to 2.6x faster than M1 Ultra.

-- It also houses a powerful 32-core Neural Engine tailor-made to run Artificial Intelligence and machine learning (ML). It supports over 800GB/s of memory bandwidth and is tailor-made for AI professionals to use Mac Studio to run large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters directly on device.

Apple Mac Studio (2025) series.

-- Thanks to unified memory architecture of M3 Ultra integrates the most high-bandwidth, low-latency memory ever available in a personal computer. Starting at 96GB, it can be configured up to 512GB (over half a terabyte of RAM). It outpaces almost all advanced workstation graphics cards, support workloads that demand large amounts of graphics memory like 3D rendering, visual effects, and AI.

-- Mac Studio with With M3 Ultra chipset supports Thunderbolt 5. This allows the PC support up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds — more than double that of Thunderbolt 4. Each Thunderbolt 5 port is supported by its own custom-designed controller directly on the chip. This provides dedicated bandwidth for each port on Mac Studio.

Apple Mac Studio (2025) comes with multiple connectivity options.

-- With 2x the resources of M3 Max, the media engine within M3 Ultra is capable of far more concurrent video processing. The chip offers dedicated, hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, and four ProRes encode and decode engines, allowing M3 Ultra to play back up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video.

-- The display engine supports up to eight Pro Display XDRs, driving more than 160 million pixels.

-- Like all Apple chipsets, the M3 Ultra too boasts of the Secure Enclave. It can do hardware-verified secure boot. This ensures that only trustworthy software is loaded and run during the boot process on the Apple PC. The high security chipset prevents any hackers from trying to attempt installing illegal software on the system.

Apple's new Mac Studio is slated to hit store later this week on March 12. The price starts at Rs 2,14,900 for regular customers and Rs 1,94,900 for students and educators via University Student plan.

Additional configure-to-order options are available at the Apple online store and mobile app.

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