Apple M3 Ultra makes Geekbench debut alongside new Mac Studio
Apple slyly showed off an entirely new chip alongside the new Mac Studio. The M3 Ultra, once assumed to be cancelled, bought forth some mind-blowing upgrades over the M2 Ultra, such as extra CPU cores and support for 512 GB of unified memory. Now, a bunch of Geekbench listings tell us how the M3 Ultra fares compared to its last-gen counterpart.
The Mac Studio in question is code-named Mac15,14. Its last-gen counterpart with an M2 Ultra goes by Mac 14,14. Therefore, one can reasonably assume the latter is indeed the new SKU, a fact further confirmed by its 32 CPU cores and 256 GB RAM, which is exclusive to the M3 Ultra. Apple's website states this variant comes with 80 GPU cores.
In Geekbench 6.4's CPU test, the M3 Ultra scores 3,262 and 28,333 points. Its last-gen counterpart, the M2 Ultra, scored 2,718 and 21,754 points. That represents a 20% increase in single-core performance and 30% in multicore. The former is a result of increased clock speed (4.05 GHz vs 3.48 GHz) and under-the-hood improvements bought forth by the M3 architecture, while the latter can be explained by increased CPU core count. However, those impressive gains are only limited to the CPU.
In the GPU department, the gains are a lot less impressive. For example, in Geekbench's Metal test, the M3 Ultra scores 259,277 points, making it 13% faster than the M2 Ultra which scored 229,348 in the same test. The increment is more or less the same in OpenCL, with the M3 Ultra (147,719) clocking in at a 9% faster than the M2 Ultra (135,233).
Apple M3 Ultra vs AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395
The closest non-Apple chip one can compare the M3 Ultra with is AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which scored 2,978 and, 21,269 points in Geekbench 6.4's CPU test and 90,181 points in the OpenCL benchmark. Apple's top-spec offering is 9% faster in single core and about 33% faster in multicore. On the GPU side, that lead skyrockets up to 63%. Clearly, the M3 Ultra's increased CPU and GPU core count is what gives it a leg-up over Strix Halo.
Apple continues to reign supreme, but a specced-out Strix Halo machine with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB RAM and free NVMe SSD slots from Framework can be had for just $1,999, whereas an M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studio with 96 GB RAM will set you back by a whopping $3,999, that too with a paltry 512 GB of non-upgradable storage.
