The newly announced M1 Ultra is now Apple's fastest Apple silicon chip, unseating the M1 Max as the top-of-the-line option. With the power of the updated chip, the new Mac Studio is able to outperform not only the high-end prior-generation 27-inch iMac, but also the top-of-the-line 28-core Mac Pro.
The M1 Ultra chip offers a 20-core CPU with 16 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores, a 64-core GPU, 128GB Unified Memory, a 2x more powerful media engine, and 800GB/s memory bandwidth.
When it comes to CPU performance, the M1 Ultra is 3.8x faster than the highest-end Intel Core i9 iMac (which has now been discontinued), and 60 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro with Intel Xeon W processor.
As for the GPU, the M1 Ultra is 4.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac and an impressive 80 percent faster than the highest-end Mac Pro with AMD Radeon Pro W6900X graphics. Apple touted the Mac Studio as "up to 80 percent faster" than the fastest Mac Pro during today's event.
The M1 Ultra supports 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video, which Apple says no other computer in the world is able to do.
All of Apple's silicon chips offer incredible power efficiency, and the M1 Ultra is no exception. According to Apple, the M1 Ultra is able to offer 90 percent higher performance than the fastest 16-core PC CPU within the same power envelope, and it can deliver the PC chip's peak performance using 100W less power.
It offers similar performance to "one of the most popular discrete GPUs" while using 1/3 as much power, and it provides faster performance than the highest end discrete GPU using 200W less power.
The Mac Studio with M1 Ultra chip is priced starting at $4,000, and it is available for order as of today.
