Watch out, Nvidia - new benchmarks suggest Apple M4 Ultra could beat the mighty RTX 4090

(Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol)

A new benchmark for the M4 Max suggests the M4 Ultra could surpass the RTX 4090
This could strengthen Apple’s position within the gaming market
Cyberpunk 2077 is a strong indication of the M4 family’s power and performance

Apple’s lineup of M4 chips is expected to significantly enhance performance across all Macs, and the M4 Ultra could take the lead by a landslide - as new rumors suggest it could even outperform the RTX 4090 GPU - the most powerful consumer graphics card in the world.

As noted by Wccftech, this comes from Yadim Yuryev (from Max Tech on YouTube), who shares his expectation of the M4 Ultra scoring ‘330,000’ on the Geekbench 6 test using the OpenCL API. This beats the RTX 4090’s current OpenCL score of 317,379, with the M4 Max sitting at 192,812.

Based on rumors of the M4 Ultra doubling the M4 Max’s GPU cores, Yuryev’s projection appears plausible, at least for both Vulkan and OpenCL APIs which are responsible for 3D graphics rendering allowing developers to optimize games for different GPU hardware. He claims ‘the GPU scaling from the leaked M4 Pro score to M4 Max is 78% higher performance’, with a safe bet of the M4 Ultra maintaining ‘worse scaling at 70% higher performance’ with the estimated 330,000 score.

This could place the M4 Ultra above Nvidia’s flagship GPU if accurate, but it’s important to note that this wouldn’t be across the board - this is an early benchmark test, after all, and the M4 Ultra hasn’t even been announced by Apple, so this performance claim is based on extrapolating M4 Max results, which obviously isn’t an exact science.

While Apple continues to work on expanding the Mac gaming library, there are still far too many popular games that aren’t available on the platform, but this is a step in the right direction for the Cupertino company.

An imagined RTX 4090 against a black background — (Image credit: Nvidia/Future)

What could this mean for Apple’s place within the gaming market?

Considering the rumors regarding specifications, it’s clear that Apple is packing some serious power with the M4 chips. The projected M4 Ultra performance in the aforementioned APIs could finally allow Macs to compete with the best gaming laptops and gaming PCs.

Should we be surprised? I don’t think so - especially after CD Projekt Red’s announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 making its way over to the platform. It’s one of the most demanding games in this generation in terms of system requirements, so I think that alone should act as a strong indication of just how powerful the M4 chips could be (specifically the M4 Ultra) - and how confident Apple is about the gaming performance of its latest devices.

Defeating Nvidia’s RTX 4090 in graphical performance (even if by a little) is a feat that must not be understated, and this could be the time for Apple fans to ramp up excitement levels…

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Isaiah is a Staff Writer for the Computing channel at TechRadar. He's spent over two years writing about all things tech, specifically games on PC, consoles, and handhelds. He started off at GameRant in 2022 after graduating from Birmingham City University in the same year, before writing at PC Guide which included work on deals articles, reviews, and news on PC products such as GPUs, CPUs, monitors, and more. He spends most of his time finding out about the exciting new features of upcoming GPUs, and is passionate about new game releases on PC, hoping that the ports aren't a complete mess.