The Apple M1 Ultra chip is no better than the NVIDIA RTX 3090. It falls short when it comes to graphics performance.
When Apple officially announced the Mac Studio, the Cupertino-based company took the opportunity to introduce a new variant of the M1 chip called the M1 Ultra. To summarize, this is a combination of two M1 Max chips using UltraFusion technology. The Apple brand has also made certain claims about the performance of this chip.
Apple M1 Ultra chip no better than NVIDIA RTX 3090
During the presentation, Apple showed a rather fuzzy graph indicating that the graphics performance of this M1 Ultra chip was on par, yet more efficient than the “highest performing discrete graphics card”currently featured by the NVIDIA RTX 3090. However, according to tests conducted by The Verge, this is not really the case.
It doesn’t compare when it comes to graphics performance
When we test the computer and the M1 Ultra chip with various applications and tests, it turns out that the M1 Ultra chip is far from the RTX 3090. It is not even close enough to think that this is a small mistake. For example, using Geekbench 5 Compute, the RTX 3090 scores 215,034 points while the M1 Ultra scores 83,121. Tested on games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the RTX 3090 hits 142fps at 1080p while the M1 Ultra is pleased 108 fps.
This isn’t to say that the M1 Ultra chip is a bad chip, other tests also showed it performed much better than Intel’s most expensive Mac Pro in terms of processor. This means that despite the M1 Ultra being one of Apple’s most powerful chipsets to date, these third-party benchmarks should be considered if you’re considering buying a new Mac Studio.