Apple’s most powerful chip ever is the M3 Ultra, which is currently exclusive to the 2025 Mac Studio. With up to an 80-core GPU, twice what’s available on the M4 Max, this chipset is a beast for graphics performance. However, how much better is it really than the M4 Max and the previous M2 Ultra?
In a Geekbench 6 result that surfaced on the web and that was spotted by MacRumors, the top-end M3 Ultra with an 80-core GPU had a Metal score of 259,668, up from 222,582 with the M2 Ultra processor with a 76-core GPU. If you do the maths, it gives up to 16% faster graphic performance than the previous iteration.
While the result may vary a little, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Max and a 40-core GPU has a Metal score of 187,460, which means the graphic performance between the M4 Max Mac Studio and M3 Ultra Mac Studio could be around 38%.
A CPU performance test revealed that the M3 Ultra is up to 10% faster than the M4 chip, so users upgrading to this more expensive Mac should know that the M3 Ultra’s benefits lie in the GPU performance.
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Apple says this chip has been built using the company’s “innovative UltraFusion packaging architecture, which links two M3 Max dies over 10,000 high-speed connections that offer low latency and high bandwidth.”
Officially, Cupertino states the M3 Ultra provides the most performance of any Mac chip while still delivering “exceptional power efficiency” thanks to its silicon. It features up to a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, up to 1.5x the performance of the M2 Ultra and 1.8x of the M1 Ultra. Its GPU makes it perform up to 2x faster than the M2 Ultra and 2.6x faster than the M1 Ultra.
Apple says the M3 Ultra provides the most performance of any Mac chip while still delivering exceptional power efficiency thanks to its silicon. It features up to a 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, up to 1.5x the performance of the M2 Ultra and 1.8x of the M1 Ultra. It also has the largest GPU in any Apple chip, with up to 80 graphics cores, making it up to 2x faster performance than the M2 Ultra and 2.6x than the M1 Ultra.
The new Mac Studio starts with 96GB of RAM, but thanks to the M3 Ultra chip, this is the first Apple Silicon Mac to feature up to 512GB of RAM. Apple says this spec removes limitations for ”pro workloads that demand large amounts of graphics memory like 3D rendering, visual effects, and AI.”
The M3 Ultra Mac Studio will be available in stores starting March 12.
