The new Mac Studio could be an incredible PC, easily outperforming Apple’s most powerful (and expensive) Mac Pro, if leaked benchmarks are accurate.
As MacRumors reports, benchmark results for the Geekbench 5 software, which tests the capabilities of a PC’s processor, shows a Mac Studio with a 20-core M1 Ultra scoring 1,793 in the single-core tests, and 24,055 in the multi-core ones.
These are impressive numbers, especially when pitted against the Mac Pro with a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor, which scores 11,52 and 19,951 in the same tests.
These scores suggest that the M1 Ultra is 21% faster in multicore, and a whopping 56% faster in single-core performance, compared to the 28-core Mac Pro.
The single-core performance means that the M1 Ultra is faster than the Xeon W, despite having fewer cores overall.
The Intel Xeon W is a powerful professional-grade processor that’s designed for very heavy workloads, so the fact that Apple has come out with chips that can outperform it, is extremely impressive, especially considering the lower power consumption of the M1 Ultra.
Analysis: Did Apple just make a Mac Pro killer?
While these benchmark results aren’t verified, they look realistic, and correspond to the kind of performance improvements Apple was throwing around at its March Event, where both the Mac Studio and the M1 Ultra were unveiled.
The M1 Ultra looks set to be a very impressive bit of kit, essentially made up of two M1 Max chips connected together and acting as one giant, super-powerful, SoC (System-on-Chip).
The Mac Studio will be the first device to use the M1 Ultra, so the fact that it offers this level of performance in a compact design that’s not much bigger than a Mac mini means some people may feel that the Mac Pro, with an aging Intel Xeon processor, is now obsolete.
While at the moment that certainly seems the case – and if you want a super-powerful Mac for intensive creative workloads, the Mac Studio is the better buy – Apple has hinted that a new Mac Pro is also on the way.
The mention of a Mac Pro was incredibly brief – at the end of the March Event, CEO Tim Cook said that the Mac Studio would fit between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro when it comes to power, while also acknowledging that the Mac Pro is now the last of the company’s Macs that hasn’t moved over to Apple M1-based chips.
So, while the Mac Studio currently looks like a Mac Pro killer at the moment, we’ll likely see a new Mac Pro with even more powerful M1 chips (maybe two M1 Ultras connected together?) sometime this year as well. Hopefully, it will also include some degree of modularity or upgradability, like the previous Mac Pro, which will give it an edge over the Mac Studio.
Regardless of what happens, it seems Apple has fallen back in love with making powerful creative workstation PCs, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.
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