The last Apple MacBook Air, Mac Studio has put its new chips to a good job

You can unleash and create a machine with 32 GB of memory and 2 TB of $ 3900 memory. Most people will not need it, but it means that you have an alternative to the MacBook Pro in a thin and light design. Thanks to M4, all MacBook arias can now connect to two external displays while using the integrated screen.

MacBook Air is the predefined Apple computer for many people, and although Apple does not particularly offer a new less expensive model (in previous years it is tends to retain a version with an older chip), the current version is so good that most people will never have to look at MacBook Pro or a separate desktop machine. For those who use iPhone and other Apple products, Macos has also become a children’s game thanks to the sharing of seamless settings and the copy glued between the devices, as well as features such as Apple Intelligence.

The air is an excellent machine also for games, with performance similar to a console. Race Rise of the Tomb Raider At maximum graphic settings and native resolution, the M4 managed 30 frames blocked at the second without sweating. Lower the average Full-HD resolution settings brought me 60fps, in all the more situations full of effects.

In the desktop space, the range of Mac and Mac Studios in Apple presents a series of much less clear choices than its MacBook Airs and Pro. The last Mac Studio Entry-Lavel is equipped with the robust M4 Pro Max chip. But if you want to become really extreme with the specifications, you will have to choose a model with the new Ultra M3, which is what I tested.

The choice here is confused on the surface, but is reduced to the workloads you are targeting. It is possible to configure M4 Max with a CPU up to 16 cores, a 40 -core GPU and a 16 -core neural engine, as well as 128 GB of unified memory that has a bandwidth of over 500 GB per second. This is a huge amount of ability practically for any creative work and will cost between $ 3500 and $ 9350.

So why are Ultra M3 versions more expensive? Above all, why does that chip have a 3 in the name instead of a 4? The chip is based on the oldest silicon, which means that M4 Max can technically have a slight advantage when it comes to single-core performance. But M3 Ultra allows a huge increase in core count: the number of processing units, which allow it to carry out more activities at the same time.

The high -end Ultra M3 has a 32 -core CPU, 80 core GPU and 32 -core neural engine, of which you will notice is double of what is capable of M4 max. It has a support for an incredible 512 GB of memory, a quadruple increase, which has a bandwidth greater than 800 GB per second. This is a car that will cost between $ 7000 and $ 22,000.

Do most creative professionals need such a ridiculous construction? Obviously not. But this is Apple that has claimed the same type of workstation that Nvidia is observing: desktop machines that require enormous local artificial intelligence power and a huge calculation of the GPU through as many core as possible.

If you are working with large language models with billions of parameters or 3D or 8K video rendering or perform a DNA sequencer (which is always an example that Apple specifically calls for some reason), this is a machine that can do it incredibly quickly without needing a connection to the cloud or a server, without even taking a lot of space on your desk or making a lot of noise.

The reference parameters would indicate that there are no commercial machines on the market capable of touching the ultra M3 for multicore processing. Although the M4 Max version is not as powerful, it is much more efficient in terms of power of Windows chips, including the latest Ryzens and Intels.

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Externally, the Mac study is unchanged. It has a SD card reader and two USB-C ports in front (supporting Thunderbolt 5 on the M3 Ultra models) and on the back there are four Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet, two USB-AS and a HDMI 2.1.

Obviously, you would never buy a car like this for games, but you would like to stretch all those GPU nuclei to have fun after hours.

In my tests, the results are impressive, but as always with the Mac games, it will depend on how they have been built and optimized. I set the demanding No men’s sky At the high settings at 1440p with 120 frames per second cap and has reached it very well without further necessary changes.

At Ultra Settings and without cap, I had a fluctuation between 80 and 170, but by changing the resolution scale or the Metalfx settings have helped. Most of the other native Mac games that I tested had no problems remaining at 144 frames per second, with the considerable exception of Baldur’s Gate 3, that in the highest settings it did not like exceeding 100.

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