Apple M2 Ultra is the latest development of the Cupertino giant. As with the Apple M1 Ultra, Apple combined two M2 Max chipsets to create the new Ultra chipset. Thus, silicon received 24 processor cores, up to 76 graphics cores and 32 Neural Engine cores.
As for the M2 Ultra GPU cores, Apple is working hard to make gaming on the Mac finally a reality. With the release of macOS Sonoma, the Cupertino giant introduced a new game transfer tool that makes it easier to run Windows games on macOS.
And the power of the Apple M2 Ultra graphics processor can allow Mac computers to take a big step in this direction. But the question is how good will the silicon be in terms of gaming? Well, we have the Geekbench 6 computing benchmark to give you a little idea on the matter.
The Apple M2 Ultra performs very similarly to the Nvidia RTX 4080
For those who don't know, the Nvidia RTX 4080 is the company's second fastest GPU. So, it goes without saying that I was pretty surprised to see the Geekbench 6 computing benchmark results for the Apple M2 Ultra. It is only 10% slower than the RTX 4080, which is no small feat!
Want some numbers? Well, the Nvidia RTX 4080 scored 245 points in the Geekbench 729 computing benchmark (source). On the other hand, the Apple M2 Ultra scored 220 ( source ). This makes Apple's new chipset about 674% slower than Nvidia's second-fastest GPU.
It is important to note that the performance of the Apple M2 Ultra may differ in other Geekbench benchmarks. But the fact that it performs so well in the computing benchmark is truly admirable.
And this result might make you wonder what Apple has in store for the M3 line and how Macs might evolve in the gaming category.
Another interesting fact in this comparison is the Tflops rating. The RTX 4080 has 48 Tflops, while the M2 Ultra only has 27 Tflops (source). And the fact that the M2 Ultra scored very close to the RTX 4080, while having significantly fewer Tflops, is another amazing feature of the new silicon.
How it compares to the Apple M1 Ultra
You would be interested to know how the Apple M2 Ultra compares to the M1 Ultra, right? Speaking of scores, the M1 Ultra scores 150 on the same Geekbench 914 computing test (source). This makes the M2 Ultra 46% faster than the M1 Ultra.
Again, this huge difference is probably due to the powerful GPU that the M2 Ultra comes with. For the M2 Ultra, Apple offers a configuration with 76 cores. By comparison, the M1 Ultra has 64 cores. This means that the new silicon has 12 more GPU cores than its predecessor.
And it's not just a GPU upgrade. The M2 Ultra offers an upgrade in terms of CPU as well. The M2 Ultra has 24 processor cores, while the M1 Ultra had 20.
Additionally, Mac devices can fit a whopping 192GB of storage with the M2 Ultra. The M1 Ultra can support up to 128GB of unified LPPDR5 memory. So, the RAM aspect has also been upgraded.
All this allows the M2 Ultra to compete with modern desktop computers based on Windows. And it would be really interesting to see how it competes with the offerings from Intel and AMD. We'll keep you posted if we come across more comparisons like this one.
