For the past three years, Apple has slowly migrated its Mac computers to Apple Silicon chips, like the M1 and M2. The Mac Pro was the last Intel-based Mac, and now that’s finally changing, along with a refresh of the smaller Mac Studio.
Apple has launched two new computers, starting with the Mac Studio. This is a rather tiny unit that’s a slightly taller, considerably more powerful version of the Mac Mini, coming equipped with a choice of either an M2 Max or the new, ultra-powerful M2 Ultra. You also get up to 192GB of RAM, 8TB of storage, and a 76-core GPU, making it perhaps one of the most powerful computers your money can buy.
Apple also has a new Mac Pro, which is now comparatively quite a bit cheaper and, at least according to Apple, not one bit less powerful than the last Intel model. Like the Mac Studio, it’s powered by the M2 Ultra SoC, which has 24 CPU cores — actually four cores less than the best Intel Xeon chip you could outfit on the previous model, but this should still perform better according to Apple’s promises. So well, in fact, that Apple’s promising that this should have the performance of roughly seven Afterburner cards, without even coming with any dedicated GPUs.
The big addition of the Mac Pro over the Mac Studio is, however, the capability for PCI Express expansion. You’re getting a total of seven PCI Express 16x slots, with six of them open out of the box and featuring Gen 4 speeds, letting you expand the computer however much you want. It would’ve been nice to have Gen 5, but Gen 4 is also pretty fast.
The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 for the base model and goes up to $8,799 after maxing it out. The Mac Pro, meanwhile, starts at $6,999 and goes up to a whopping $12,199 for the maxed-out model. Again, it’s a lot of money — but given the previous Intel model infamously went over $50K after maxing it out with expansion cards and plenty of RAM, you could say you’re actually saving a little bit of money.
Source: Apple
