Apple M3 Ultra crushes Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti in GPU benchmark, but falls short of RTX 5080
Apple's recently unveiled M3 Ultra, simply put, is the fastest chip that has ever shipped in a Mac. With a massive 32-core CPU with 24 high-performance cores, as well as an 80-core GPU, the M3 Ultra should easily impress in benchmarks - that is, excluding single-threaded performance, for obvious reasons. The system recently made its debut on Geekbench, but the scores were somewhat disappointing. Now, as more reviews hit the scene, it appears that the true potential of the M3 Ultra is coming to light.
According to Dave2D's review and GFXBench, the M3 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio truly shines in GPU performance, which is to be expected considering that the M3 Max, which the Ultra is based on, was itself a major generational jump in GPU performance. In GFXBench's 4K Aztec Ruins (High Tier) test, the M3 Max managed around 200 FPS, whereas the M3 Ultra nearly doubled the score to a whopping 374 FPS. This puts the M3 Ultra (Metal) roughly 9% behind the GeForce RTX 5080 (DirextX 12), and 20% ahead of the RTX 5070 Ti according to GFXBench's data. Compared to the M4 Max, which is also found on high-end MacBook Pros (currently $3,564 on Amazon), the M3 Ultra is around 63.6% ahead.
In Cinebench 2024 GPU test, the M3 Ultra raked in around ~20,000 points according to The Verge, which puts the M3 Ultra a whopping 25% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which scores around ~16,000 points in the same test. The M3 Ultra is neck-and-neck with the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti in this test, which is quite interesting. Needless to say, a few benchmark runs are hardly representative of real-world performance, especially considering the different APIs involved.
Moreover, its almost certain that there will be plenty of workloads where the M3 Ultra will shine thanks to its dedicated engines, and others, such as 3D rendering, where the M3 Ultra will most likely fail to keep up with high-end RTX cards. In terms of efficiency and VRAM, there is no doubt that the M3 Ultra will reign supreme, considering that there is not a single consumer GPU that comes even close to offering half a terabyte of decently fast VRAM. As time progresses, more real-life performance comparisons between M3 Ultra and its x86 competitors should emerge, which should make things clearer for interested buyers.
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