Apple has just added a new member to its Apple M1 family - M1 Ultra, the most powerful processor that Apple has to offer. To help users get a better understanding of M1 Ultra’s extreme levels of performance, here we’re going to compare Apple M1 Ultra against M1 Max, Pro, M1, and also include an M1 Ultra vs Intel vs 3090 face off.
Apple M1 Ultra vs M1 Max vs M1 Pro vs M1: Specs Comparison
Here is a handy cheat sheet for Apple M1 Ultra, M1 Max, M1 Pro, and M1 specs comparison. With the M1 Ultra doubling the numbers of the M1 Max, we can expect a huge difference between the M1 Ultra, M1 Max and earlier M1 chipsets.
| NO | Apple M1 Ultra | Apple M1 Max | Apple M1 Pro | Apple M1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total CPU cores | 20 | 10 | 8 or 10 | 8 |
| Performance cores | 16 | 8 | 6 or 8 | 4 |
| Efficiency cores | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| GPU cores | 48 | 24 or 32 | 14 or 16 | 7 or 8 |
| Neural engine cores | 32 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Maximum memory (UMA) | 128GB | 64GB | 32GB | 16GB |
| Peak memory bandwidth (GBps) | 800 | 400 | 200 | N/A |
| ProRes accelerators | 4 | 2 | 1 | None |
| Available in | Mac Studio | MacBook Pro 14, MacBook Pro 16 (2021), Mac Studio | MacBook Pro 14, MacBook Pro 16 (2021) | MacBook Air, iPad Pro (5th gen), iMac 24 (2021), Mac Mini |
Price and availability
The M1 Ultra is impressively powerful, super-fast, and also super-costly. While MacBook Pro with M1 Max/Pro is not affordable for most of us, M1 Ultra comes with a much bigger price tag. The same is the case with the M1 Max-powered Mac Studio vs M1 Ultra-powered Mac Studio. The Mac Studio with M1 Ultra starts at a whopping $3,999 — a considerable jump from the same machine with an M1 Max, which starts at $1,999. And you will need to pay an extra of $1,599 for the Apple Studio display.
Apple M1 Max and Pro
- 14-inch MacBook Pro 2021 — starting from $1,999
- 16-inch MacBook Pro 2021 — starting from $2,499
- Mac Studio (M1 Max) — $1,999
Apple M1 Ultra
- Mac Studio (M1 Ultra) — $3,999
M1 Ultra vs M1 Max – Design
As the physical limitations to creating chips larger than the M1 Max, Apple combines two M1 Max processors to create a system on a chip to build M1 Ultra via an interposer architecture called UltraFusion. According to the company, this interconnect is able to shuttle data around the chip at 2.5TB/sec of low latency, inter-processor bandwidth. Therefore, compared to Apple M1 Max, M1 Ultra doubles everything in M1 Max, such as two Thunderbolt controllers and two memory controllers.
Moreover, M1 Ultra is a full two pounds heavier than the M1 Max. This is because the M1 Ultra double the GPU/CPU cores as well as the computing power of the M1 Max, M1 Ultra uses a larger copper them module while the M1 Max has an aluminum heatsink.
Related reading: Apple Mac Studio vs Intel Mac Pro
M1 Ultra vs M1 Max – CPU
Featuring 114 billion transistors and an extraordinarily powerful 20-core CPU with 16 high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, we can see big difference between the M1 Ultra and M1 Max, which packs 57 billion transistors and 10 total cores, including 8 performance and 2 efficiency cores.
According to Apple, when it comes to CPU performance:
- The M1 Ultra is 3.8x faster than the highest-end Intel Core i9 iMac.
- The M1 Ultra is 60% faster than the 28-core Mac Pro with Intel Xeon W processor.
- The M1 Ultra delivers 90% higher multi-threaded performance than the fastest available 16-core PC desktop chip in the same power envelope and is able to offer the PC chip’s peak performance using 100 watts less power.
M1 Ultra vs M1 Max - GPU
The M1 Ultra comes with a 64 core GPU which doubles the 32 GPU cores in M1 Max, and is 8 times more than the original M1 chip. The M1 Ultra offers HEVC, ProRes encoding and decoding, ProRes RAW support with 2 video decoders, 4 video encoders, and 4 encoder/decoder engines, as well as hardware-accelerated H.264.
According to Apple, when it comes to GPU performance:
- The M1 Ultra is 4.5x faster than the Intel-powered 27-inch iMac.
- The M1 Ultra is 80% faster than the highest-end Mac Pro with AMD Radeon Pro W6900X graphics.
- It delivers faster performance than even "highest-end discrete GPU" while using less than 200 watts less power.
The company also says that M1 Ultra is the first computer that supports 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video. This make Mac Studio with M1 Ultra the ultimate creative desktop for intensive tasks, such as 3D rendering and video editing.
Summary
With UltraFusion combining two M1 Max chips into the M1 Ultra, nobody can deny that M1 Ultra will be a game-changer which is able to scale Apple silicon to unprecedented new heights. In terms of performance, M1 Ultra is a winner indeed in the M1 Ultra vs M1 Max/Pro battle. It's even more powerful than the high-end computers like Intel I9 and rtx 3090.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will need to get the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio for $3,999 right away. M1 Ultra is an actually designed for purpose workstation CPU/GPU for professionals. Most regular users will not be able to utilize the full power of the M1 Ultra chip. Therefore, unless you need the absolute best-performing silicon from Apple for really heavy tasks such as 8K video editing, the M1 Max or even the M1 Pro is a great option to consider.
