The Apple M2 Ultra is the latest in-house silicon from the Cupertino giant. And like the Apple M1 Ultra, Apple has interconnected two M2 Max chipsets to bring out the new Ultra chipset. That makes the silicon get 24 total CPU cores, up to 76 GPU cores, and 32 Neural Engine cores.
Regarding the M2 Ultra’s GPU cores, Apple has been pushing towards making Mac gaming finally a thing. With the release of macOS Sonoma, the Cupertino giant introduced a new Game Porting Tool, which makes it easier to make Windows games run on MacOS.
And the GPU prowess of the Apple M2 Ultra can allow Macs to make a big push in this regard. But the question is, how good will silicon be in terms of gaming? Well, we’ve got a Geekbench 6 compute benchmark to offer you a little idea in that regard.
Apple M2 Ultra Performs Very Similarly to Nvidia RTX 4080
For those who do not know, the Nvidia RTX 4080 is the second-fastest GPU from the company. So, it goes without saying that I was pretty amazed to see the Geekbench 6 compute benchmark of the Apple M2 Ultra. It’s just 10% slower than the RTX 4080, which is not a small deal at all!
Want some numbers? Well, the Nvidia RTX 4080 scores 245,729 in the Geekbench 6 compute benchmark (source). On the other hand, the Apple M2 Ultra has achieved a score of 220,674 (source). That makes the new chipset from Apple around 10% slower than the second-fastest GPU from Nvidia.
It’s important to note that the Apple M2 Ultra’s performance may differ in other Geekbench benchmarks. But the fact that it performs so well in the compute benchmark is truly admirable.
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And this score can really make you wonder what Apple has in store for the M3 lineup and how Macs can evolve in the gaming category.
Another interesting fact about this comparison is the Tflops rating. The RTX 4080 has 48 Tflops, while the M2 Ultra has only 27 Tflops (source). And the fact that M2 Ultra got a very close score to RTX 4080 while having considerably fewer Tflops is another amazing thing about the new silicon.
How Does It Compare Against Apple M1 Ultra
You would be interested to learn how the Apple M2 Ultra compares against the M1 Ultra, right? If you talk about scores, the M1 Ultra obtains 150,914 in the same Geekbench 6 compute benchmark (source). That makes the M2 Ultra 46% faster than the M1 Ultra.
Again, this massive difference is likely due to the powerful GPU that the M2 Ultra comes with. For the M2 Ultra, Apple offers up to a 76-core configuration. In comparison, the M1 Ultra tops out at 64 cores. That makes the new silicon get up to 12 more GPU cores than the predecessor.
And it’s not just the GPU that saw an upgrade. The M2 Ultra offers an upgrade in terms of CPU as well. The M2 Ultra has 24 CPU cores, whereas the M1 Ultra topped out at 20.
In addition, Mac devices can accommodate a whopping 192GB of memory with the M2 Ultra. The M1 Ultra could support up to 128GB of LPPDR5 unified memory. So, the RAM aspect also saw an upgrade.
All of this makes the M2 Ultra trade blow with the current Windows desktop computers. And it would be really interesting to see how it compares with the offerings from Intel and AMD. We will keep you updated if we encounter more comparisons like this one.