Report: Apple is Testing New Desktop Macs With M2 Max and M2 Ultra Chips

Apple is reportedly testing new desktop Macs that use the company’s M2 Max chip as well as a yet-to-be-announced M2 Ultra chip. The new high-end Macs could be announced at the company’s upcoming WWDC developer conference next week.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Mac Studio is the most likely candidate to be upgraded with these new M2 chips. The M2 Max, which made its debut earlier this year in the refreshed 14” and 16” MacBook Pros comes with eight performance CPU cores, four efficiency cores, and 30 GPU cores. Gurman reports that the new desktop Mac that Apple is testing with this M2 Max chip has 96GB of unified memory.

The M2 Ultra chip, which is expected to replace the M1 Ultra model in the high-end Mac Studio reportedly comes with 24 CPU cores (16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores), 60 GPU cores, and up to 192GB of unified memory. According to the report, a more powerful version of that chip will offer a total of 76 GPU cores.

“The M2 Ultra chip was initially designed for a future version of the high-end Mac Pro desktop,” Gurman noted. The Mac Pro is the only Mac that has yet to make the transition to Apple Silicon, though it seems unlikely that we’re going to see an M2 Mac Pro at WWDC next week.

Gurman previously reported that Apple will also introduce a 15-inch version of its MacBook Air at its developer conference this year. The reporter also shared some details about Apple’s new 3nm M3 chip, which is expected to make its debut in new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac models later this year.