Geekbench reveals M2 Ultra chip's massive performance leap

Geekbench has revealed performance statistics for the M2 Ultra chip inside the 2023 Mac Pro and it has over double the performance of the older Intel-based machine.

During the WWDC event on June 5, Apple introduced the New Mac Pro along with the M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips, as well as an enhanced version of the Mac Studio. While there are currently no benchmarks available for the new Mac Studio, Geekbench has recently published specifications for the 2023 Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra.

The benchmark reveals a single-core score of 2,794 and a multi-core score of 21,453 for the 2023 Mac Pro, in contrast to the highest-end Intel-based Mac Pro equipped with a 28-core Xeon W processor, which scored 1,378 in single-core and 10,390 in multi-core performance. As a result, the new Mac Pro offers more than double the speed of the fastest Intel-based model and at a significantly lower price.

As well as performance increases, the most recent Mac Pro also brings PCIe expansion to Apple Silicon. The new Mac Pro has seven PCIe expansion slots, and six support gen 4 — meaning this two sees a doubling of speed compared to previous models.

Apple highlights this expandability of the new Mac Pro, featuring dual 10Gb Ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, and the capacity to support up to six Pro Display XDR monitors. In this case, the new Mac Pro boasts up to twice the speed of the fastest Intel-based Mac Pro and up to seven times the speed of the base configuration of the Intel-based Mac Pro.

However, the latest Mac Pro no longer offers support for graphics cards. Consequently, the PCIe slots are limited to options such as extra storage, rather than giving the ability to install and use high-performance graphics cards for gaming, rendering software, or other demanding tasks.

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31 Comments

newisneverenough 46 comments · 6 Years

About 1 year ago

I’d love to see some write ups of sets of actual buy-able options for this machine. For instance, I do a lot of audio and video, often max-info out my current equipment. What can be actually set up to make my tasks super fast?

waveparticle 1497 comments · 3 Years

This is amazing!

mikethemartian 1485 comments · 18 Years

I would like to see a comparison where someone performs the same physics 3D simulation with a dataset larger than 192GB with a maxed out 2023 Mac Pro vs a maxed out 2019. Based on past experience I would expect the 2023 to crash once the memory usage gets close to the max.

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

mikethemartian said:

I would like to see a comparison where someone performs the same physics 3D simulation with a dataset larger than 192GB with a maxed out 2023 Mac Pro vs a maxed out 2019. Based on past experience I would expect the 2023 to crash once the memory usage gets close to the max.

Maybe, maybe not. I suggest asking Apple directly to benchmark your physics 3D simulation. With Apple’s unified memory there’s the possibility of lots more memory-storage, which might be faster than the RAM in the Intel Mac Pro. If barefeats.com Rob hadn’t passed away last year I’m sure he would have been able to run the comparison.

Another issue could be with the Intel binaries used on the old Mac Pro. I’d suggest having someone try and convert, if possible, the old binaries into Apple Silicon native code. Once this is done, find any M-series Macs and see what happens.

twolf2919 144 comments · 2 Years

mikethemartian said:

I would like to see a comparison where someone performs the same physics 3D simulation with a dataset larger than 192GB with a maxed out 2023 Mac Pro vs a maxed out 2019. Based on past experience I would expect the 2023 to crash once the memory usage gets close to the max.

Count me naive, but I'd love to know what single simulation requires an in-memory dataset that large. Not saying they don't exist - I'm just interested in what they are. And whether they're typically done on a desk-side machine vs. on a supercomputer (e.g. weather modeling).

In general, I think I agree with analysts/posters who think Apple lost sight of who the prime users for their Mac Pro are: video/CGI folks who use the Mac to make movies, ads, etc. Those folks, I imagine, don't care too much about the base price of the Mac Pros they buy - they care they can get ever more photorealistic CGI done quickly. I'm pretty sure they bought plenty of external graphics cards to go into their Pros. But now they can't. They either make do with what's in the new Pro - or find an alternative.