It's still a shame Apple marketing doesn't make the product differences clear for the Studio, so that the must buy target is clear. E.g. film/video users are key for the Studio but none of their marcom stats included performance benefits for the main NLEs. So most of us potential buyers remain skeptical and have to wait until real world user community testing results come out. Given how long it's been since the last Studio it would be nice if Apple just answered the top questions most prospects have.
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M3 Ultra Chip is Only 10% Faster Than M4 Max in Benchmark Results
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It is actually MacRumours’ language that is not accurate.
Apple said the the M3Ultra delivers “up to 1.5x the performance of M2 Ultra, and up to 1.8x that of M1 Ultra”, which makes complete sense.
Apple reveals M3 Ultra, taking Apple silicon to a new extreme
Apple today announced M3 Ultra, offering the most powerful CPU and GPU in a Mac.
www.apple.com
Maybe for not that specific quote, but Apple often writes say "2X faster" when it means "1X faster".It is actually MacRumours’ language that is not accurate.
Apple said the the M3Ultra delivers “up to 1.5x the performance of M2 Ultra, and up to 1.8x that of M1 Ultra”, which makes complete sense.
Apple reveals M3 Ultra, taking Apple silicon to a new extreme
Apple today announced M3 Ultra, offering the most powerful CPU and GPU in a Mac.www.apple.com
The faster the machine, the more "work" it does per cycle. The more work it does per cycle means that your boss will extract more from you at the same time for the same rate.
No thanks.
No thanks.
well if you go by all these negative M3 Ultra threads and posts here, I'd be surprised if they sell any more than the one that I'm buying. Seems people here just hate the whole idea of it.
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To be honest I also start from M3 Ultra but downgraded to M4 Max 128 GB, it just seems like better deal if you don't need 512 GBwell if you go by all these negative M3 Ultra threads and posts here, I'd be surprised if they sell any more than the one that I'm buying. Seems people here just hate the whole idea of it.
Don't know where you're working but you have to change that job immediately.
Interesting price comparison with military discount.
M4 Pro Mini with 14-core CPU, 20 core GPU, 16 Core Neural engine, 64GB Ram, 10 Gb ethernet and 8TB SSD is $4,229.
Mac Studio M4 Max with 16 core CPU, 40 core GPU, 16 core Neural engine, 64 GB Ram and 8 TB SSD costs $4,589.
The $360 difference provides two more CPU cores, double the GPU Cores along with more ports. The single core speeds are virtually identical. There were not these two choices in December when I ordered two M4 Pro mini units.
I have the M1 Ultra Mac Studio (128GB ram and 8 TB SDD) at my desk I can put my 16" M4 Max Mac Book Pro (128GB ram and 8TB SSD) in front the Audio and it's two Studio Displays. The display image speed difference comes out in the single core stuff but multicore not so much.
So if one has a smaller desk and a Studio Display one can add a 12 South shelf to the back of the display stand and place the Mini on the shelf leaving the desk less cluttered. A bigger desk allows the Mac Studio to sit under the display.
The desk space at my summer workspace in the mountains is very constrained so the large foot print of a Mac Studio would be undesirable.
M4 Pro Mini with 14-core CPU, 20 core GPU, 16 Core Neural engine, 64GB Ram, 10 Gb ethernet and 8TB SSD is $4,229.
Mac Studio M4 Max with 16 core CPU, 40 core GPU, 16 core Neural engine, 64 GB Ram and 8 TB SSD costs $4,589.
The $360 difference provides two more CPU cores, double the GPU Cores along with more ports. The single core speeds are virtually identical. There were not these two choices in December when I ordered two M4 Pro mini units.
I have the M1 Ultra Mac Studio (128GB ram and 8 TB SDD) at my desk I can put my 16" M4 Max Mac Book Pro (128GB ram and 8TB SSD) in front the Audio and it's two Studio Displays. The display image speed difference comes out in the single core stuff but multicore not so much.
So if one has a smaller desk and a Studio Display one can add a 12 South shelf to the back of the display stand and place the Mini on the shelf leaving the desk less cluttered. A bigger desk allows the Mac Studio to sit under the display.
The desk space at my summer workspace in the mountains is very constrained so the large foot print of a Mac Studio would be undesirable.
I think the wording makes a difference. 1.5x "as fast" is 50% faster. But 1.5x "faster" is 150% faster.
2X faster literally should mean 200% faster, or 3X as fast.
I know many people would understand from context, but the usage is imprecise. It's always been a pet peeve of mine for Apple's advertising.
Any diagrams or details on how the M3 Ultra is made? They must have changed the original design of the M3 Max somehow because even two M3 max added together would not add up to 512 GB RAM. And somehow they added Thunderbolt 5 to the machine (M3 Max chip only did Thunderbolt 4) - either on the die OR they had to use a separate controller chip off the die to add Thunderbolt 5. I am just curious the extent of redesign needed beyond just fusing two M3 Max together.
Must not be a monolithic die after all...
The first alleged benchmark result for Apple's new M3 Ultra chip has surfaced in the Geekbench 6 database tonight, allowing for more performance comparisons. The high-end chip is available in the new Mac Studio, introduced earlier this week.
Apple said the M3 Ultra chip is the "highest-performing chip it has ever created," and the unverified benchmark result seems to confirm that. In the single result, the 32-core M3 Ultra chip achieved a multi-core CPU score of 27,749, which makes it around 8% faster than the 16-core M4 Max chip that previously held the performance record. The result also reveals that the M3 Ultra chip is up to 30% faster than the 24-core M2 Ultra chip.
As expected, the M4 Max chip tops the M3 Ultra chip in terms of single-core CPU performance by nearly 20%, according to the result. This is due in part to the M4 Max chip being manufactured with TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, whereas the M3 Ultra is likely based on TSMC's first-generation 3nm process.
We now await additional M3 Ultra benchmark results to see if these scores are accurate, as they seem to be on the lower side compared to what was expected. For example, Apple advertised the M3 Ultra chip as being up to 1.5x faster than the M2 Ultra chip, so that 30% increase mentioned above should seemingly be closer to the 50% mark. Apple never said how the M3 Ultra chip's performance compares to the M4 Max chip, though.
As always, real-world performance may vary somewhat, but synthetic benchmark tools like Geekbench 6 provide a useful baseline for comparisons.
Watch this space, as we would not be surprised if additional Geekbench 6 results for the M3 Ultra chip end up having higher performance scores.
The benchmark was spotted by @jimmyjames_tech and shared by Vadim Yuryev.
Update: Three more M3 Ultra results have surfaced in the Geekbench 6 database, and the average multi-core CPU score has increased to 28,160. This means the M3 Ultra chip is around 10% faster than the M4 Max chip, up from the original 8% figure. Overall, it looks like the M3 Ultra chip is indeed not much faster than the M4 Max.
Article Link: M3 Ultra Chip is Only 10% Faster Than M4 Max in Benchmark Results
I think Apple said in the press release that the M3 Ultra is the fusion of two M3 Max chips. But there is more going on than just that due to increased RAM ceiling and Thunderbolt 5 so it makes me wonder what and how they accomplished these design changes.
The really point of the Ultra is the double media encoders and the extra GPU performance. It’s like essentially building a PC with a much beefier graphics card.
To be fair Intel Xeons were always a few generations behind the desktop chips. What made them faster were the extra cores. In this case the M4 is just that much faster than the M3 across the board. So the multi core Geekbench score isn’t all that much faster. Some applications will make better use of more cores however to distribute the load.
Like I said the real advantage of the Ultra however is the added GPU power and the double media encoders which help render video that much faster. Given many of the use cases for buying an Ultra will be GPU intensive and media handling focused we will see some great advantages there.
The M2 Ultra on paper and Geekbench look worse until you actually work with rendering complex video effects and then the true advantage comes out.
Geekbench is a pretty generic and rather pointless benchmark these days. It exists mainly for articles like this and YouTube reviews to have something to talk about. It has almost zero real world reflection of how people use these high end machines.
To be fair Intel Xeons were always a few generations behind the desktop chips. What made them faster were the extra cores. In this case the M4 is just that much faster than the M3 across the board. So the multi core Geekbench score isn’t all that much faster. Some applications will make better use of more cores however to distribute the load.
Like I said the real advantage of the Ultra however is the added GPU power and the double media encoders which help render video that much faster. Given many of the use cases for buying an Ultra will be GPU intensive and media handling focused we will see some great advantages there.
The M2 Ultra on paper and Geekbench look worse until you actually work with rendering complex video effects and then the true advantage comes out.
Geekbench is a pretty generic and rather pointless benchmark these days. It exists mainly for articles like this and YouTube reviews to have something to talk about. It has almost zero real world reflection of how people use these high end machines.
The most plausible theory so far concerning those two "breakthroughs":
512GB RAM: they started sourcing 64GB DRAM module which is an industry first, doubling the density without changing the trace.
Thunderbolt5: the actual TB5 capable logic is already present on the M3 Max SoC, but due to limited available PCIe lanes, they are disabled / taped out and be limited TB4 spec, especially the 40Gbps bandwidth. With the Ultra this limit is unlocked.
That's the problem with the lineup, if you stay at 64GB the M4 Max is a good price. but + 1000 to go from 64 -> 128gb is just insane, and kind of kills the Q/P ratio. Similarly, the cost of upgrading the Ultra from 96gb to 256gb is also insane (because there is no longer 128gb).
The performance are barely the same than the M2 Ultra for video editing in the apple official benchmark.
The funny thing is, I don't think it's “voluntary”. In the sense that they merge two chips that have the media encoder, so they have two. I'm not at all sure they'd keep two if they made one monolithic chip.
That's a pretty small win in multicore for the M3 Ultra and a much bigger loss in single-core, compared to the M4 Max. I'm sure some people will have a workload which justifies it, but that's gotta be a hard sell for many.
Be nice if they brought the ultras out at the same time as the rest wouldn't it?
Be nice if they brought the ultras out at the same time as the rest wouldn't it?
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