Apple has announced a new generation of Mac Studio with two different chip families: M3 Ultra and M4 Max. Apple says the M3 Ultra is up to twice as fast as the M4 Max in some workloads. However, benchmark tests show that the CPU performance difference between the two chips is not as big as Apple claims. This M4 Max vs M3 Ultra Benchmark comparison aims to shed light on the performance differences.
Recent Geekbench 6 tests reveal that the M3 Ultra with a 32-core CPU scored 3221 in single-core and 27749 in multi-core performance. The M4 Max with a 16-core CPU scored 3921 in single-core and 25650 in multi-core performance. This means the M4 Max actually outperforms the M3 Ultra in single-core performance, the M3 Ultra has only a slight 8% advantage in multi-core performance.
The M3 series is based on the first-generation 3nm architecture, which is less efficient than the second-generation used in M4 and A18 chips. This may explain why the M3 Ultra has lower single-core performance than the M4 Max.
It’s important to note that these tests only measure CPU performance. The M3 Ultra can have up to 80 GPU cores, compared to the M4 Max’s 40 cores. This may result in big performance differences for graphics-intensive tasks. The M3 Ultra also has higher memory bandwidth at 800GB/s, compared to the M4 Max’s 500GB/s.
For customers, this means that users who need a fast computer for tasks that don’t rely heavily on the GPU can buy the M4 Max Mac Studio, which starts at $1,999, and still get CPU performance similar to the more expensive M3 Ultra version, which starts at $3,999.
Some think Apple may be saving the Ultra variant of the M4 series for a new generation of the Mac Pro, to make it stand out more from the Mac Studio.
The new Mac Studio is now available for pre-order. It will be officially launched on March 12, 2025.
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