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Apple M3 Ultra benchmark seen on Geekbench — beats M4 Max in multi-core, but not single-core
Apple just launched a new generation of the Mac Studio, which is now powered by either an M4 Max or M3 Ultra chip. Both versions are now up for pre-order, but they won’t start shipping until March 12. Despite that, it seems that one benchmark result has appeared on Geekbench, as shared by X user @jimmyjames_tech, and the numbers seem quite impressive. According to the Geekbench 6.4.0 for macOS AArch64 test, the Mac running an Apple M3 Ultra chip equipped with 256 GB of memory hit a single-core score of 3,221 and a multi-core score of 27,749. Treat the scores with some skepticism for now.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
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Apple Silicon Geekbench 6 Results
Chip
Single-Core Score
Multi-Core Score
Apple M3 Ultra
3221
27749
Apple M4 Max
3925
25647
Apple M4 Pro
3846
22361
Apple M2 Ultra
2777
21371
Apple M3 Max
3131
20949
Apple M1 Ultra
2395
18367
Apple M3 Pro
3103
15262
Apple M4
3798
14705
The single-core score is not as impressive, especially as the newer Apple M4 chips could hit higher scores. The top-end M4 Max hit 3,925 points in single-core, with even the entry-level M4 attached to an iMac beat the M3 Ultra with a score of 3,699. That is to be expected, of course, especially given that the Apple M4 has a higher frequency.
However, the M3 Ultra blows away the competition in multi-core operation with its massive 32-core CPU with up to 24 performance cores. It beat the M4 Max’s 25,647 score by about 2,102 points in the multi-core test on Geekbench, giving it a performance uplift of around 8% over the newer-generation chip.
The M3 Ultra is bound to defeat the M4 Max in multi-core performance, especially as it’s the equivalent of two M3 Max chips connected together via an interposer. Apple did not announce an M4 Ultra SoC, but developing these two-in-one chips takes time. The company usually launches the top-end version some time after the arrival of the base variant. Furthermore, Apple said that not every Apple Silicon generation will get an Ultra variant, although it hasn’t skipped one yet. So, only time will tell if we’ll get an M4 Ultra chip.
The new Mac Studio is set to be made publicly available from March 12, and in the days after we will see a slew of benchmarks appear. Right now these numbers seem to track with Apple’s announcements. But, if you want to be sure that the new Mac Studios are worth upgrading to, you should wait a few days for before making an informed purchase.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
That's a pretty small win in MC and a much bigger loss in SC. I'm sure some people will have a workload which justifies it, but that's gotta be a hard sell for many.
Be nice if they brought the ultras out at the same time as the rest wouldn't it?
Sure in Geekbench the M4 Max and M3 Ultra are close. I would be more curious how it stacks up in Passmark or Cinebench. Who well Geekbench truly scales is at least an open question since it's largely a black box.
Sure in Geekbench the M4 Max and M3 Ultra are close. I would be more curious how it stacks up in Passmark or Cinebench. Who well Geekbench truly scales is at least an open question since it's largely a black box.
Agreed.
And then there's the GPU - The compute benchmarks here, and ML performance will be interesting to see.
