The first benchmark for Apple's M1 Ultra chip popped up on Geekbench following today's event, confirming that the doubled-up M1 Max is indeed able to outperform the highest-end Mac Pro as Apple claims. Labeled Mac13,2, the Mac Studio with 20-core M1 Ultra that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1793 and a multi-core score of 24055.

Comparatively, the highest-end Mac Pro with 28-core Intel Xeon W chip has a single-core score of 1152 and a multi-core score of 19951, so the M1 Ultra is 21 percent faster in this particular benchmark comparison when it comes to multi-core performance. As for single-core performance, the M1 Ultra is 56 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro. Apple has claimed that the M1 Ultra is up to 60 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro when it comes to CPU performance, so Apple may be referencing single-core differences in the metrics that it shared during today's event. This is just one benchmark, so we could see the M1 Ultra performing better in additional benchmarks following the March 18 release of the Mac Studio.

(Thanks, Dion!)

Article Link: M1 Ultra Outperforms 28-Core Intel Mac Pro in First Leaked Benchmark

slap four M1MAXs together and call it the Ultra Instinct

This is so exciting. If I hadn’t spent $4000 building my hackintosh (using that same 10-core Intel CPU they’re comparing it to!) I’d love to have gotten a M1 Ultra Mac Studio…

Yeah because the M1 max just isn’t enough power

Kylo83 said:

Yeah because the M1 max just isn’t enough power

If you need a scientific or engineering workstation, or are working with video editing or CGI or the like, then, no, the M1 max wasn’t “enough,” because you’ll take every ounce of power you can get.

cloudphrenia said:

slap four M1MAXs together and call it the Ultra Instinct

Ultraaaaaaa Combooooooooo!!!! 🤣🤣

MacRumors said:

This is just one benchmark...

No, it's at least two. The single-core score was 56% faster, so that's quite close to the claimed 60%, and much higher than the 21% mentioned in the "article", which only attempted to compare the multi-core benchmarks. However, since it was 20 cores vs. 28, each M1 core was actually performing 69% faster than each intel core.

That's some great reporting there, MR

Kylo83 said:

Yeah because the M1 max just isn’t enough power

It seems it’s never enough power

cloudphrenia said:

slap four M1MAXs together and call it the Ultra Instinct

M1 Supreme

That would make it roughly 40% faster than the fastest Intel Alder Lake desktop CPU (i9-12900K), which scores about 17000.

Edit: and almost as fast as the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X which scores about 25000.

So better than 12900K multicore performance at maybe 60-65W instead of over 200W. Heh.

So if you extrapolate the multi-core per-core performance out, an M1 28 core chip could potentially score around 29,500. Pretty freaking stout!

cloudphrenia said:

slap four M1MAXs together and call it the Ultra Instinct

Autonomous Ultra instinct mastered

Kinda obvious what the Apple Silicon Mac Pro would be. M1 Ultra as base, then double and quadruple the SoC at the high en.

MacRumors said:

The first benchmark for Apple's M1 Ultra chip popped up on Geekbench following today's event, confirming that the doubled-up M1 Max is indeed able to outperform the highest-end Mac Pro as Apple claims.


Labeled Mac13,2, the Mac Studio with 20-core M1 Ultra that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1793 and a multi-core score of 24055.

Comparatively, the highest-end Mac Pro with 28-core Intel Xeon W chip has a single-core score of 1152 and a multi-core score of 19951, so the M1 Ultra is 21 percent faster in this particular benchmark comparison when it comes to multi-core performance. As for single-core performance, the M1 Ultra is 56 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro.


Apple has claimed that the M1 Ultra is up to 60 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro when it comes to CPU performance, so Apple may be referencing single-core differences in the metrics that it shared during today's event. This is just one benchmark, so we could see the M1 Ultra performing better in additional benchmarks following the March 18 release of the Mac Studio.

(Thanks, Dion!)

Article Link: M1 Ultra Outperforms 28-Core Intel Mac Pro in First Leaked Benchmark

Click to expand...

I already ordered my Ultra. Vectorworks is finally going to fly. Does anyone need a Razor eGPU with an AMD Radeon Pro X 7100? I have one I need that needs to move on by the first of April.

cmaier said:

If you need a scientific or engineering workstation, or are working with video editing or CGI or the like, then, no, the M1 max wasn’t “enough,” because you’ll take every ounce of power you can get.

And this is why I have ordered an ultra.

Kylo83 said:

Yeah because the M1 max just isn’t enough power

My Macintosh IIfx was wicked fast!

Unfortunately most things are still going through Rosetta… i’ll see how things look on the software side when the silicon Pro comes out..

Given the performance of the M1 Max, this result is right around where you'd expect it to be, so seems completely believable. The only interesting bit is that performance per-core scales linearly. Which is great, but not surprising given the incredible thermal profile of the chip.

With the caveat that, yes, Geekbench is a synthetic benchmark, this thing appears to be significantly outperforming the top-of-line, just-launched 12th-gen i9 desktop parts. Given that the i9-12900K has a DTP of 125W and turbo power rating of 240W, and this thing fits in a compact desktop, I would be feeling more than a little nervous if I were Intel.

The M1 Ultra is even competitive with all but the most extreme big-iron many-core Xeon and Threadripper CPUs, and the entire computer costs less than many of those chips (its also probably smaller than the CPU cooler on some of them)... but it doesn't have 1TB+ of ECC RAM or some of the other features big-iron desktops have.

Which is why I'd be even more nervous, if I were Intel, that Apple hasn't put their own silicon in the Mac Pro yet. That's a pretty strong indication that Apple has something even-higher-end in the pipeline.

So it's NOT faster than the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X.
It would then be the 2nd best consumer processor in the world.
The entire computer is less expensive than the Threadripper though.

But I don't care, wow... what are people going to do with such a monster of performance... ?
I remember a few people in the cinema industry left Macs because FCPX lacked features when it was released. Are they going to come back ?! Will game developers finally consider the Mac? (the best Mac Studio is 2X as powerful as the PS5)

ok... pro, pro max, pro ultra bionic max 2x... but where are the apps?

PsykX said:

So it's NOT faster than the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X.
It would then be the 2nd best consumer processor in the world.
The entire computer is less expensive than the Threadripper though.

But I don't care, wow... what are people going to do with such a monster of performance... ?
I remember a few people in the cinema industry left Macs because FCPX lacked features when it was released. Are they going to come back ?! Will game developers finally consider the Mac? (the best Mac Studio is 2X as powerful as the PS5)

Click to expand...

I am going to chime in here.

Apps I use max out the GPU. The more I add into the 3D model the more RAM it uses plus FPS drop [geometry and textures]. This is gaming engine software.
My 3080ti is already maxed in RAM on my PC, and I am totally over the heat and noise from it.

It simply is insane what apps can use these days in terms of resources and power, and personally I never want my computer to restrict my work in any way.
We get paid a lot of money to be able to deliver good quality design work, quickly. This machine is still actually less than the app subscriptions used on it, believe it or not.

I actually believe the studio is well priced for what it delivers [or at least what I expect it to].

PsykX said:

So it's NOT faster than the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X.
It would then be the 2nd best consumer processor in the world.
The entire computer is less expensive than the Threadripper though.

But I don't care, wow... what are people going to do with such a monster of performance... ?
I remember a few people in the cinema industry left Macs because FCPX lacked features when it was released. Are they going to come back ?! Will game developers finally consider the Mac? (the best Mac Studio is 2X as powerful as the PS5)

Click to expand...

It also absolutely smokes the Threadripper in single core performance while also almost being as fast in multi core... usually it's one or the other