Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Dopemaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2022
29
17
Someone has got their hands on a M2 Ultra earlier than the rest of us.

220,000 in Geekbench 6 Metal is a big uptick from the M1 Ultra (150,000). It puts the Metal performance at 10% lower than a RTX4080, with 2.5x less power consumption. Seems as though those scaling issues may have been dealt with. Fairly impressive IMO.

 
Last edited:

cpnotebook80

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2007
1,227
550
Toronto
While numbers are great, it should not be the only standard for performance. I'm more looking forward to the real world performance comparisons in video editing, topaz AI and other heavy memory and gpu intensive software. But it seems the scalings have been fixed a bit and hoping more software optimizations from thirdparty software will boost the m2 ultra. The less power consumption and running cool is big deal as always.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LeeW

Longplays

Suspended
May 30, 2023
1,308
1,158
Someone has got their hands on a M2 Ultra earlier than the rest of us.

220,000 in Geekbench 6 Metal is a big uptick from the M1 Ultra (150,000). It puts the Metal performance at 10% lower than a RTX4080, with 2.5 less power consumption. Seems as though those scaling issues may have been dealt with. Fairly impressive IMO.

Didn't r/Apple or r/hardware ban URLs to wccftech for clickbait?

I'd wait for Anandtech, ArsTechnica or other more reputable reviewers to talk about the benchmark scores.
 

Dopemaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2022
29
17
While numbers are great, it should not be the only standard for performance. I'm more looking forward to the real world performance comparisons in video editing, topaz AI and other heavy memory and gpu intensive software. But it seems the scalings have been fixed a bit and hoping more software optimizations from thirdparty software will boost the m2 ultra. The less power consumption and running cool is big deal as always.
Agreed. I’m mostly interested in Davinci Resolve performance given that’s where all my heavy lifting is, but promising numbers regardless, and a decent guide until we get real world stress tests in a few days time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chfilm

Matty_TypeR

macrumors 6502a
Oct 1, 2016
641
555
UK
It’s still slower than a 6900xt. which I have. And is a sad old card at this point. But it is good progress and if the extreme M3 continues to scale well, that may bode well *if* they can put out an upgrade in 1 year.
The thing is by the time the M3 turns up the NV 5090 RT King will arrive along with AMD RDNA-4 which i expect will blow any M3 away. The Mac pro 8.1 is only released to put a time frame on Mac pro 7.1 support so they can develop for AS only and finally close the door on the Apple ecosphere, your either in or your out. it will also put and end to hackintosh machines with out intel support and mean the end of opencore.
 

prefuse07

Suspended
Jan 27, 2020
895
1,073
San Francisco, CA
The thing is by the time the M3 turns up the NV 5090 RT King will arrive along with AMD RDNA-4 which i expect will blow any M3 away. The Mac pro 8.1 is only released to put a time frame on Mac pro 7.1 support so they can develop for AS only and finally close the door on the Apple ecosphere, your either in or your out. it will also put and end to hackintosh machines with out intel support and mean the end of opencore.

Unfortunately, this is 100% spot on. A truly sad time in computer science history...
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
2,389
Portland, Ore.
Those are interesting benchmark scores.

For Geekbench 6 the M2 Ultra excels over my W6900X except in Stereo Matching and Particle Physics were it falls short, and also about even with Horizon Detection. It has a tiny lead with Feature Matching and Edge Detection, but mostly a toss up. Face Detection is really the only part of the test the M2 Ultra really triumphs, and a little with Background Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Metal scores: M2 Ultra 223927 vs. W6900X 175792

For Geekbench 5 the M2 Ultra falls far behind in everything except SFFT, Face Detection, and Feature Matching. The tests it's worst at are Depth of Field and Histogram Equalization.
Metal scores: M2 Ultra 136494 vs. W6900X 162853

The OpenCL scores show something a little different. The M2 Ultra falls short in Face Detection, Feature Matching, and Stereo Matching. (Geekbench 6)
M2 Ultra 129302 vs. W6900X 109704

For Geekbench 5 in OpenCL the M2 Ultra only leads in Sobel, Canny, Face Detection, and SFFT. Particle Physics and Stereo Matching are about even.
M2 Ultra 121938 vs W6900X 115917

The M2 Ultra falls short of the new W7900 in everything with OpenCL (Geekbench 6), except Edge Detection which is about even.
M2 Ultra 129302 vs W7900 202451

The W7900 is also better than W6900X in every test (OpenCL Geekbench 6). Twice as fast in several areas.
W7900 202451 vs. W6900X 109704

It will be interesting to see reviews of how the performance compares in the real world.
 
Last edited:

ZombiePhysicist

Suspended
May 22, 2014
2,884
2,793
Those are interesting benchmark scores.

For Geekbench 6 the M2 Ultra excels over my W6900X except in Stereo Matching and Particle Physics were it falls short, and also about even with Horizon Detection. It has a tiny lead with Feature Matching and Edge Detection, but mostly a toss up. Face Detection is really the only part of the test the M2 Ultra really triumphs, and a little with Background Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Metal scores: M2 Ultra 223927 vs. W6900X 175792

For Geekbench 5 the M2 Ultra falls far behind in everything except SFFT, Face Detection, and Feature Matching. The tests it's worst at are Depth of Field and Histogram Equalization.
Metal scores: M2 Ultra 136494 vs. W6900X 162853

The OpenCL scores show something a little different. The M2 Ultra falls short in Face Detection, Feature Matching, and Stereo Matching. (Geekbench 6)
M2 Ultra 129302 vs. W6900X 109704

For Geekbench 5 in OpenCL the M2 Ultra only leads in Sobel, Canny, Face Detection, and SFFT. Particle Physics and Stereo Matching are about even.
M2 Ultra 121938 vs W6900X 115917

The M2 Ultra falls short of the new W7900 in everything with OpenCL (Geekbench 6), except Edge Detection which is about even.
M2 Ultra 129302 vs W7900 202451

The W7900 is also better than W6900X in every test (OpenCL Geekbench 6). Twice as fast in several areas.
W7900 202451 vs. W6900X 109704

It will be interesting to see reviews of how the performance compares in the real world.

It’s more interesting to me at least that the regular cheap 6900xt does better than the m2 ultra. Metal score around 235000 (some show over 240000) in the now old and cheap 6900xt vs 220000 of the ultra. Not sure what’s going on with apples w version, but my cheap and now old 6900xt still tops the m2 ultra.
 

Dopemaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2022
29
17
Impossible to say given GB compute doesn’t identify GPU core count in the Ultras, but seems as though the 220K may be the base Ultra models arriving early, and the 76 core configs may be hitting up to 280K. V impressive scaling if so:

IMG_0093.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: ZombiePhysicist

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,316
2,998
Just to add - Geekbench has been updated to V6.1 along this this note:

Thanks to these changes, Geekbench 6.1 single-core scores are up to 5% higher, and multi-core scores are up to 10% higher than Geekbench 6.0 scores. As a result of these methodological differences, which have a non-trivial impact on scores, we recommend users not compare Geekbench 6.1 scores against Geekbench 6.0 scores.

Geekbench 6.1 is a recommended update for all Geekbench 6 users.


Lou
 

prefuse07

Suspended
Jan 27, 2020
895
1,073
San Francisco, CA
Just gonna leave this here, to show that the scores in the screenshots above, for the RX6800XT, are incorrect:

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 7.46.18 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 7.46.26 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 7.46.32 PM.png


Back to Lou's point about not cross-comparing GB versions -- Under GB5 this is equally hilarious, this is my 2009 cMP vs the M2 Ultra:

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 8.16.15 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 8.16.32 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 8.16.47 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 8.16.58 PM.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ZombiePhysicist

Dopemaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2022
29
17
Just gonna leave this here, to show that the scores in the screenshots above, for the RX6800XT, are incorrect:

View attachment 2216295
View attachment 2216296
View attachment 2216297

Back to Lou's point about not cross-comparing GB versions -- Under GB5 this is equally hilarious, this is my 2009 cMP vs the M2 Ultra:

View attachment 2216325
View attachment 2216326
View attachment 2216327
View attachment 2216329
Not necessarily incorrect, just averages of multiple cards across multiple system configs, so there will naturally be variation which will bring down the overall average.
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
2,389
Portland, Ore.
I think Geekbench scores in general need to be taken with a grain of salt. The chart data is wrong. There are only 4 results for M2 Ultra on Geekbench 6 Metal and none of them are as high as the chart shows. The figure for W6900X on the chart is wrong also. Most of the results are from Hackintoshs with spoofed GPUs. I'm guessing probably mostly RX 6900 XT and RX 6950 XT.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mode11

Dopemaster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2022
29
17
The other consideration is that raw compute scores only tell part of the story for media pros who these systems are geared towards.

Editing/VFX/colour grading feature films will be more performant in some cases with the on-chip accelerators than GPUs with higher compute benchmarks.

Interested to see real-world comparisons in software like Davinci Resolve, which should start coming out in the next few days.
 
Last edited:

ZombiePhysicist

Suspended
May 22, 2014
2,884
2,793

The CPU managed to post a single-core score of up to 2809 points in single-core and 21,531 points in the multi-core tests. For comparison, the Intel Core i9-13900KS scores 3083 points while AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X scores 2875 points. In multi-threaded benchmarks, the same chips score 21665 and 19342 points, respectively. So as you can see, the workstation-grade Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn't faster than the mainstream CPU offerings from Intel and AMD.

Wow. If those numbers are accurate it makes the Mac ‘doh look like a real rip off sad sack. Those are for middling machines. Not high end! and that’s just for the regular cpu, forget the spanking it takes on its gpu… Wow. And they have the gall to charge $7k for this mess.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.