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13900K: 2940 / 19837
M2 Ultra: 2837 / 21730

Sounds close to me.
Or you take the passmark score (combined single and multicore) which puts the M1 (!) Ultra at around 40.000 and the i9 at around 60.000 - and the fastest Xeon at 100.000 and the fastest AMD at 126.000. So the M2 Ultra should be about half as fast as if they released a current gen xeon macpro instead. (Not counting the GPU you could put in that Macpro)
 
I think all of the Intel and AMD comparisons are irrelevant. If you want the fastest Windows machine in a very large form factor, by all means get an Intel or AMD-based computer. If you want something the size of the Mac Studio, you get the Mac Studio. There will be NOTHING from AMD or Intel with that form factor that even comes close to the performance of the Studio. Also, people buy Apple to do real work. They know what they need, and Apple (for the most part) provides it. If you want a gaming machine, by all means, get a Windows box. I use both MacOS and Windows on a daily basis, and MacOS is just a better OS. Period. Linux is a different story. I'll leave that to others to discuss.
 
Not to mention will any x86 chip in that performance range be acceptable in a silent room or silent PC use case?

Mac Studio's active HSF is designed to make it as silent as possible.

The Ultra's die shrink makes it possible to run cool enough for that overengineered active HSF and yet have the highest performance per watt in its chip class.

i9 & RTX 4090 may make sense in a room where having multiple airblowers are acceptable like say gaming but the Ultra was never positioned for that. Apple took 3 years to get Game Porting Toolkit (GPT) out... that's how serious they are with gaming on the Mac.
False information.

You can easily cool a i9-13900 and a 4090 with just air cooling. Noctua CPU coolers and fans are fantastic. It will be very quit as well until you hammer it and even then not annoying loud. If gaming you will not hear it at all, unless you mute the gaming audio.
 
I think all of the Intel and AMD comparisons are irrelevant. If you want the fastest Windows machine in a very large form factor, by all means get an Intel or AMD-based computer. If you want something the size of the Mac Studio, you get the Mac Studio. There will be NOTHING from AMD or Intel with that form factor that even comes close to the performance of the Studio. Also, people buy Apple to do real work. They know what they need, and Apple (for the most part) provides it. If you want a gaming machine, by all means, get a Windows box. I use both MacOS and Windows on a daily basis, and MacOS is just a better OS. Period. Linux is a different story. I'll leave that to others to discuss.
Once you go stationary desktop how much does size really matter?

My gaming tower is under my desk on a rolling stand. I never see it unless go out of my way to look at it.
 
False information.

You can easily cool a i9-13900 and a 4090 with just air cooling. Noctua CPU coolers and fans are fantastic. It will be very quit as well until you hammer it and even then not annoying loud. If gaming you will not hear it at all, unless you mute the gaming audio.
Ok Mister Schrute
 
People who like apples to apples comparison or whats closest to it.
Desktop to desktop. Simple. Not like we are comparing a thin and light notebook to a desktop. That's apples to apples. might as well compare real apples to apples and use the same price points! The PC would just crush the M chipped desktops.
 
These comparisons based on benchmarks are STUPID - it’s like comparing apples are oranges.

I have a Mac Studio M1 Max and a Mac Pro Intel 3.2GHz, and I can tell you that for real work, the Mac Studio is my favourite computer to work on. It is quieter, it is faster in absolutely most workflows, and it feels more ”fluid” to work on.

Set up a few specific tasks and see what is faster… Import 350 RAW files into Lightroom, render a large 4K video file in Premier, or create a complex character in Maya. Set it up on a few computers; a Mac Studio M2 Ultra, a Mac Pro M2 Ultra, an Intel i9, and a Ryzen 9, and see who does it the fastest.

Someone hopefully will do that soon, so we don’t have to listen/read you dorks arguing apples or oranges…
 
Isn't that a bit of a waste? I can buy Mac Pro but what for if I don't utilise it? I'm just wasting resources
@Feek
 
So we are comparing an M2 Ultra with Intel 28 Core unit from 2016, which seems unfair.
These days Intel and AMD have CPUs with 56 and 64 cores with access to 4TB of RAM.

The most significant benefit of the M processors is power consumption, but workstation has fewer restrictions and needs to deliver raw power.

I would love to see a comparison with the newer CPUs from AMD and Intel.

Apple is not even in the first 100 when it comes to raw power
Sorry, but you are wrong, Mac Pro with 28 cores came in 2019 and not in 2016 as you wrote :) but it's OK
 
The video I posted does just that. and the hackintosh smokes the M1 pro studio. As I mentioned, that's not even the most powerful PC system available.

For sure, your Hackintosh is fastest in some tasks, even beating the M1 Max, but not beating the M1 Ultra consistently - it certainly does not "smoke" the M1 Ultra. There is a BIG difference between an M1 Pro, an M1 Max, and an M1 Ultra, not to mention the difference between them and an M2 Ultra. The architecture is faster, and they can carry much more RAM. Not to mention your storage configuration makes a big difference in many of your tests.

But, I agree wholeheartedly with you at the end of your video (which, by the way, is very good); it comes down to how much you weigh "off-the-shelf" vs. "self-built."
 
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hardcore gamers - maybe.

Apples problem is more to get critical user mass to justify the incremental effort to port to Mac.
With the performance of Apple Silicon and the porting toolkit they might finally get there.
Yes of course the critical mass plays a role but you need a critical mass of gamers not just users. And there is no reasons to buy a Mac for gaming since you get much less performance (for gaming) for a higher price. But let’s see, I would love to be proven wrong.
 
For sure, your Hackintosh is fastest in some tasks, even beating the M1 Max, but not beating the M1 Ultra consistently - it certainly does not "smoke" the M1 Ultra. There is a BIG difference between an M1 Pro, an M1 Max, and an M1 Ultra, not to mention the difference between them and an M2 Ultra. The architecture is faster, and they can carry much more RAM. Not to mention your storage configuration makes a big difference in many of your tests.

And, I agree wholeheartedly with you at the end of your video (which, by the way, is very good); it comes down to how much you weigh "off-the-shelf" vs. "self-built."
BTW that's not the most powerful set of PC components. That's mid range parts. Dollar vs. Dollar the PC will, indeed SMOKE the studio no matter what configuration.
 
Intel chips have come a far way since the old intel Mac Pro and the 13900k is faster than the m2 ultra . So is ryzen 7950x. Also, the x86 workstation class chips like sapphire rapids and Genoa blow the m2 ultra away in terms of multithreading. Of course apple leads in terms of performance per watt.

I think the m2 ultra is fine in the Mac Studio but the Mac Pro, with all the extra room, is underpowered. And it’s still using pcie4 with pcie switches and lane sharing, whereas sapphire rapids and Genoa use pcie 5 and have a ton of lanes available. Much more flexible and can access more RAM.

Faster x86 chips are coming: arrow lake, zen 5, granite rapids Xeons.

Unless apple creates a workstation class chip I think apple will lead in notebook perf per watt, but when it comes to workstation and desktop, x86 will pull ahead.

But regardless of all that, competition is great for consumers. And I am glad to see apple start to embrace gaming on the Macintosh. Maybe apple has some wild ambitions in terms of GPU performance and is now laying the groundwork to introduce high performance gaming hardware…
This.
I was just speaking to a friend about this exactly, x86 will be ahead in higher end workstations, and Mac Pro wall fall off again.

Apple Silicon is obviously great for mobile where we need performance per watt, and I love my MacBook Pro 14" (best computer I've ever owned by far).
But there's absolutely no reason to put mobile chips in a desktop workstation where the actual Pros need it. Not to mention Intel & AMD are playing "catch up" and are ahead in areas still, and will do everything to beat the Apple Silicon.

You can't have one division within one company supplying all these mobile chips for first off iOS devices, MacBooks, desktop Macs (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio) and then have an appropriate chip for a proper Pro workstation like the Mac Pro.
Unless Apple can make some big leaps and create special high end chip/s for the Mac Pro then they may either have to discontinue when sales drop or revert to x86 for that platform.
No GPU support & upgradeable ram is a big thing in that area and will also be another hit for high end users.
 
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The point is: nobody is virtualizing MacOS on PCs thus talking about superiority of MacOS is pure rubbish. No PC user is missing MacOS and market share of Windows dwarfs that of MacOS.
sorry, I can't agree with you. Many years I help to people virtualize macOS on PC hardware. Thousands and thousands of people are running it so...
 
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And it's around 250% slower than the RTX 4090 in its best-case-scenario synthetic app LOL
OMG why the hell so many people compare AS compute tasks on OPENCL which was deprecated on macOS many years ago????? It's dead for macOS for ages. macOS now has Metal 3 and other Metal APIs so you should compare those and not stupid ancient OpenCL
 
How big is the actual AAA game market? How many people spend thousands on pimped out gaming machines? And how much do the software companies make on sales to those people?
Every time Apple makes a machine I always hear that it can't do AAA games etc.. and I'm always wondering how big that market actually is? If it was such a big market why would Apple not cater to it?
My suspicion is that it's very niche and wouldn't move the needle at all for Apple in terms of profits.

Am I wrong?

I don't want to go off topic too much, but I think this is interesting in the general sense also in relation to Apple and the M2.

The whole gaming market was around 235 billon USD in 2022, 167 billion is social/mobile gaming (where Apple is well established), 35 billion is "PC", 29.2 billon is console. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/gaming-pandemic-lockdowns-pwc-growth/)

The PC gaming market is not only the dudes with the high end RTX 4090 cards and the colourful rigs, that's just a very vocal minority, if you look in surveys, for example https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ most of the "common gaming machine" specs are quite modest. Most common GPU is GTX 1650 from 2019.

The current gen consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X/S) use AMD RDNA 2 GPU tech from 2020, Zen2 CPUs from 2019.

AAA games like Assassins Creed, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty and so on run on all these platforms/specs because the developers and publishers of course want to cater to the complete market (PC and console) and not only to the roughly 0,8% of all Steam users that own a 4080/4090 graphics card and a corresponding CPU.

If we look at the benchmark results of the M2 Ultra, that chip can EASILY handle AAA games. Not necessarily 60 FPS in 4K, but it should be enough. Especially if you have something properly ported like No Man's Sky or Resident Evil Village.

So why does the new Diablo 4 not run on MacOS despite Blizzard being a long term Mac supporter and the hardware can handle it (as proven in several videos on reddit, running it with the new Game Porting Toolkit)? My guess: Too much development effort in comparison to the potential user base. It's not so much about "not good enough" and more about "not enough money to be earned".

Why should and does Apple care? Not because it sells more Mac Pros or Mac Studios, they can/could run the games but you could have a nice gaming setup for a fraction of the price, with an infinite amount of games to choose from (operating system ideologies aside). Right now you can have a better gaming experience on a 500$ console.

My bet is on Vision Pro and what's down the road. Everything they were introducing over the last couple of years, Apple Silicon (and no I don't think they just switched because of the headset), with the excellent performance per watt, Metal 3, Metal FX. It screams high portability, efficiency, performance. And they don't need that stuff primarily for the games right now, they need it for rendering the 3D interfaces, the sensors, the realtime video streams etc. They want this device to stay, they bet a lot on it and it will sit in the living room and at work, literally everywhere. It might replace the smart phones and laptops as we know them today, or at least be something like a standard household device (I'm not talking next year, more like in 5–10 years.) and a big part of the daily usage is entertainment and so is gaming.

If they want it to succeed, they need the games.

And they care, they put a lot of effort in the hardware but also in software to make it more attractive to bring games into their ecosystem.
 
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There’s no such thing as Extreme, there never was. And, there won’t be. Because, Apple’s the only game in town if someone wants macOS. As a result, there’s no need to create a one-off “Extreme”, whatever they ship will be the fastest macOS system with (Mac Pro) or without (Mac Studio) PCIe slots.

Fortunately, for folks that depend on Intel and Nvidia workflows, there’s a wide selection of systems to choose from.
There isn't an extreme TODAY.
You seriously, after being surprised by the Pro/Max, then again by the Ultra, want to go out on a limb and say that Apple will NEVER create a design based on 4 chiplets?
Well, good luck, it's your reputation...
 
I don't want to go off topic too much, but I think this is interesting in the general sense also in relation to Apple and the M2.

The whole gaming market was around 235 billon USD in 2022, 167 billion is social/mobile gaming (where Apple is well established), 35 billion is "PC", 29.2 billon is console. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/gaming-pandemic-lockdowns-pwc-growth/)

The PC gaming market is not only the dudes with the high end RTX 4090 cards and the colourful rigs, that's just a very vocal minority, if you look in surveys, for example https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ most of the "common gaming machine" specs are quite modest. Most common GPU is GTX 1650 from 2019.

The current gen consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X/S) use AMD RDNA 2 GPU tech from 2020, Zen2 CPUs from 2019.

AAA games like Assassins Creed, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty and so on run on all these platforms/specs because the developers and publishers of course want to cater to the complete market (PC and console) and not only to the roughly 0,8% of all Steam users that own a 4080/4090 graphics card and a corresponding CPU.

If we look at the benchmark results of the M2 Ultra, that chip can EASILY handle AAA games. Not necessarily 60 FPS in 4K, but it should be enough. Especially if you have something properly ported like No Man's Sky or Resident Evil Village.

So why does the new Diablo 4 not run on MacOS despite Blizzard being a long term Mac supporter and the hardware can handle it (as proven in several videos on reddit, running it with the new Game Porting Toolkit)? My guess: Too much development effort in comparison to the potential user base. It's not so much about "not good enough" and more about "not enough money to be earned".

Why should and does Apple care? Not because it sells more Mac Pros or Mac Studios, they can/could run the games but you could have a nice gaming setup for a fraction of the price, with an infinite amount of games to choose from (operating system ideologies aside). Right now you can have a better gaming experience on a 500$ console.

My bet is on Vision Pro and what's down the road. Everything they were introducing over the last couple of years, Apple Silicon (and no I don't think they just switched because of the headset), with the excellent performance per watt, Metal 3, Metal FX. It screams high portability, efficiency, performance. And they don't need that stuff primarily for the games right now, they need it for rendering the 3D interfaces, the sensors, the realtime video streams etc. They want this device to stay, they bet a lot on it and it will sit in the living room and at work, literally everywhere. It might replace the smart phones and laptops as we know them today, or at least be something like a standard household device (I'm not talking next year, more like in 5–10 years.) and a big part of the daily usage is entertainment and so is gaming.

If they want it to succeed, they need the games.

And they care, they put a lot of effort in the hardware but also in software to make it more attractive to bring games into their ecosystem.
So of a 35b pc game market under 1% would run a machine with a very powerful GPU to play AAA games that people on forums moan about the Mac Pro not being able to play?

If apple were to get 50% of that market that’s half of 350m, 175m…

So some people on these forums would rather apple re engineer the whole apple Silicon platform to allow for PCI GPU’s for under 1% of people. And cater for players that spent 175m on AAA games .. lol.. people are tripping.

I do get that people feel that if they spend 6 grand on a PC it should do what other 6 grand machines can do. But when you buy a mac you’re not buying a windows or Linux PC. You are buying a mac. It’s different for a reason. Otherwise why would they make it?
 
Yes, my M2 Pro Mac Mini has HDMI 2.1
Have you tried it? And does it work?
When I connected it to my TV, the TV couldn't handle it (kept flashing the screen) and I was forced to downgrade that TV port to 1.4.

I've no idea who's at fault here, Apple or LG, and it may be fixed in future SW. But for now, my experience anyway, is that even if HDMI 2.1 is claimed, it is "iffy".
 
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