Launched with the New Mac Studio and Mac Pro, Apple M2 Ultra: Is it Overpriced?

With the most recent addition to the M-series chipsets, the Apple M2 Ultra, the Mac lineup underwent a significant redesign. With up to 2.5TB/s of bandwidth, the M2 Ultra processor builds on the M1 Ultra chip from the previous year by fusing two Apple M2 Max circuits. A second-generation 5nm technique was used to fabricate the latest top-end Apple processor.

Apple claims M2 Ultra's 24-core CPU is 20% quicker than M1 Ultra's

The M2 Ultra's powerful 76-core GPU is 30% quicker. Compared to M1 Ultra, the 32-core Neural Engine (NPU) provides a 40% improvement. The M2 Ultra may be configured to have up to 192GB of combined memory, which is 50% more than the M1 Ultra, and 800GB/s of bandwidth, which is twice as fast as the M2 Max.

Apple boasts that its new video processing technology is 50% faster in practice and can simultaneously playback up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes footage. Up to 6 Pro Display Pro XDR screens can be connected.

The upgraded Mac Pro and the M2 Ultra Mac Studio are the two new Macs with the new M2 Ultra chip.

Apple has finished making the switch to Mac silicon. With either M2 Max or M2 Ultra CPUs, up to 192GB of unified memory, and enhanced connectivity through HDMI with support for 8K monitors and a 240Hz frame rate, Mac Studio is now available. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 capabilities are included in Mac Studio as well.

With the classic aluminium chassis and the new M2 Ultra chip, the new Mac Pro is available in both tower and rack-mounted enclosures. It gains from PCIe expansion by enabling the addition and replacement of video cards. There are six available PCIe gen four slots. Advanced users can add digital signal processing (DSP) cards, serial digital interface (SDI) I/O cards, additional networks, and storage, depending on the workflow.

Up to 24 4K camera feeds can be handled by a Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, and ProRes encoding is supported. It also gains Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 compatibility and can connect to six Pro Display XDRs. Additionally, there are two USB-A connections, two HDMI 2.1 ports, two 10GB Ethernet ports, and a headphone jack on the I/O.

What is the price of the Apple M2 Ultra processor?

Starting at $1,999 is the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra processor. The price of the Mac Pro in its Tower enclosure is $6,999, while the cost of the Rack enclosure model is $7,499. Both new Macs are available for pre-order and will be sold in the US starting next week.