M3 Ultra’s Top-End Configuration With A 32-Core CPU Gets Spotted In First Benchmark Run; 29 Percent Faster Than M2 Ultra, But Registers Just Single-Digit Improvement Over M4 Max

Apple might not have introduced its latest M4 Ultra, but it has delivered the next best thing in the form of the M3 Ultra, which now boasts the highest CPU and GPU core count for any of the company’s silicon to date. While the graphics capabilities of the SoC have yet to be revealed, the updated Mac Studio was recently spotted in the latest single-core and multi-core benchmark runs, cementing itself as the fastest Apple Silicon by maintaining a near-30 percent lead against the M2 Ultra. Unfortunately, the scores obtained by the chipset are not exceptionally high when compared with the M4 Max.

M4 Max reigns as the single-core king for any Apple Silicon; new results show that the M3 Ultra is only 7 percent faster in the multi-core category

The Mac Studio is identified with its Mac15,14 designation, with Geekbench 6’s benchmark leak showing that the 32-core cluster was tested, which sports 24 performance and 8 efficiency cores. The unified RAM count is 256GB, with the highest frequency recorded as 4.05GHz. The combination of these specifications allows the M3 Ultra to register a single-core and multi-core score of 3,221 and 27,749, respectively.

In the multi-threaded category, Apple’s fastest SoC obtains a 29 percent uplift against the M2 Ultra, while the single-core story shows a 13 percent performance difference. What is highly surprising about these results is the small delta between the M3 Ultra and M4 Max, because despite the latter sporting a 16-core CPU, it is just 7 percent slower, but obtains a comprehensive 20.5 percent lead in the single-core results.

The single-threaded figures have puzzled us the most, because the clock speeds of the M3 Ultra and M4 Max are barely different from one another, operating at 4.05GHz and 4.14GHz, respectively. Our only guess is that, since the entire M4 series supports ARM’s Scalable Matrix Extension (SME), it allows the M4 Max to tackle complex workloads more efficiently, leading to better scores in Geekbench 6.

We will look into these results with an eagle eye, but as far as direct comparisons go, the M3 Ultra might be crowned the fastest Apple Silicon to be released so far, but that difference is not that pronounced.

News Source: Geekbench 6