Mac vs PC, with Core i9 12900K and RTX 3090 in the mix.
Apple designs its own GPUs, its own CPUs, and handles SoC design and integration.
Which brings us to the M1 Ultra.
The M1 Ultra isn’t really its own unique chip, however.
It’s actually two M1 Max SoCs connected over a high-bandwidth 2.5TB/s interposer.
So let’s move on and actually measure how fast this machine is.
We’re going to start off with gaming tests before closing with productivity benchmarks and synthetics.
Is this machine truly as fast as a high end desktop PC - or possibly even faster?
But we do have a few titles here - and the results are intriguing.
Looking atShadow of the Tomb Raider.
M1 Ultra is far behind the 3090 here and barely keeps pace with a high-end gaming laptop.
Perhaps this can be chalked up to a sub-optimal port, or problems with the Rosetta translation.
But what about native Apple Silicon games?
There is one prominent game that we can test across platforms though - World of Warcraft.
The Max is borderline unplayable while the 3080M hovers around 30fps.
Scaling from the M1 Max is reasonable, but not perfect.
Typically, you should expect a 60-70 percent performance improvement over the single-chip option.
Very few games actually end up on Mac and the ports are often low quality.
I tested Blender, Geekbench, Cinebench and Handbrake - and the Ultra’s results are compelling.
We’ve swapped the GP66 for my desktop computer here, which packs a Core i9 10850K.
Think of this as Core i9 10900K with a barely perceptible clock-speed reduction.
Across these tests, the 12900K and M1 Ultra prove very comparable.
The 10850K and M1 Max are closely matched as well.
The scaling from M1 Max to M1 Ultra is close-to-linear across these runs, unlike our graphics benchmarks.
On average, M1 Ultra is 88 percent faster, with some results approaching 100%.
The results are very curious in Final Cut.
While both M1 machines trounce the Intel-based MacBook, export times are virtually identical across the M1s.
So what’s going on?
Even then it would be hard to see a large difference.
Topaz AI is much more straightforward.
Both machines crush the 2019 MacBook Pro, as expected.
It’s power consumption.
The Mac Studio itself only pulls about 200W when fully loaded, and usually draws much less.
So, why is the M1 Ultra so much more efficient than comparable PC designs?
Firstly, Apple has a considerable process node advantage over its competitors.
Secondly, Apple is simply throwing way more silicon at the problem.
The extremely high density of TSMC 5nm helps a lot here.
Lastly, Apple’s CPU and GPU architectures play a significant role here.
These are designs that are primarily designed for iPhones and other low-power applications.
Generally the answer is no, at least not at the moment.
There are two major problems here.
The things that make Apple’s designs effective aren’t specific to the ARM instruction set license they use.
The second problem is the lack of an effective translation layer for x86 code.
The M1 Ultra is an extremely impressive processor.
There’s simply nothing else like it.
For users already in the Mac ecosystem, this is a great buy if you have demanding workflows.
For PC users, however, I don’t think this particular Apple system should be particularly tempting.
That said, the M1 Ultra is a one-of-a-kind solution.
You won’t find this kind of raw performance in a computer this small anywhere else.
