First M4 Max benchmark tears apart the M2 Ultra Mac Studio

AppleInsider

The M4 Max is the most powerful chip in Apple's collection, with an early benchmark showing the MacBook Pro leaving the Mac Studio or Mac Pro with M2 Ultra in its dust.

The MacBook Pro line now includes M4 Max chips

Late on Thursday, supposed benchmarks for the M4 Pro surfaced on Geekbench, seemingly showing that the M4 Pro is an extremely powerful chip. On Friday, benchmarks for the M4 Max have practically cemented the M4 range's status as the most powerful chips Apple's ever made.

The benchmark for the Mac16,5, a 16-inch MacBook Pro, appeared in the Geekbench results browser early on Friday morning. The listing states it uses an M4 Max chip with 16 cores, divided into 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, and a clock speed of 1.5GHz.

The main figures for the listing say the Mac scored 4,060 for Geekbench's single-core test, and 26,675 for the multi-core version.

Initial Geekbench scores for the M4 Pro and M4 Max against the M2 Ultra

By comparison, the early M4 Pro results scored the single-core test at 3,925 and the multi-core at 22,669.

Both of these results are much higher than the 2023 Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra. That model is listed with 2,777 for the single-core test and 21,351 for the multi-core, even though the model tested had 24 CPU cores.

As early benchmarks for models that have yet to be released to the public, the figures should be considered with trepidation. It is entirely possible that the numbers are faked or wrong.

That said, they do seem to be fairly realistic and in line with the performance claims Apple has made in its announcements.

As reviewers and other early users get to try out the new Mac models, the multitude of benchmarks will offer a true view of performance improvements.

It does, however, tease at what an M4 Ultra chip could be like. Effectively two M4 Max chips with an interconnect and therefore double the cores, the score should also be about twice as high as the M4 Max.



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gwmac

If this is true I may reconsider waiting for the Studio next summer and just get a maxed out Mini instead. I have a feeling a lot of 5K iMac owners like me are coming to the realization that a larger 32 inch M4 iMac is just not in the cards. 

Galfan

My god…..I was thinking when I purchased my M1 Max 16 inch I would be fine for 4-5 years but this might consider me upgrading this year….also because I noticed the GPU is hitting the limit sometimes but also that with my new function I need more headroom for bigger projects with the CPU. I do wonder how the thermals will be. M3 max is a powerhouse but pushed even the 16 inch starts to become loud. But since a18 pro and M4 have proven they run cooler and energy efficient, I will wait for the reviews coming out

tht

Cool to see 4000 single GB6 scores.

foregoneconclusion

Memory bandwidth:

M4 Max = 546 GB/s
M4 Pro = 273 GB/s
M2 Ultra = 800 GB/s

Sail_No_55

Nearing time to replace my work 10 Core Xeon iMac Pro I guess, I had to ditch my really old home iMac (graphics died) for an M2-Pro 16GB Mini last year, and I'm impressed with how speedy it is for basic applications. I'll probably wait for the Studio in the summer too... I had already asked my IT guy to include me in the budget when the our windows machine upgrades happen next year.  Hopefully we can get some M4 Pro/Max comparisons with the iMac Pro not just the i3 iMac and also with Parallels since in my case I need the power for a graphics intensive Windows app.

blastdoor

Effectively two M4 Max chips with an interconnect and therefore double the cores, the score should also be about twice as high as the M4 Max.

This is almost certainly wrong. Many of the sub-tests in geekbench do not scale well across cores (though some do). If you look at M2 Max vs ultra, you don’t see a doubling of the overall score.

That’s appropriate for many users whose workloads don’t scale well with more cores. But people buying an Ultra presumably do have workloads that scale well with more cores, so the headline GB score isn’t helpful for them.

lordjohnwhorfin

How does this compare to what’s available in the PC world, whether Intel/AMD or the more comparable ARM based Snapdragon?

Spencer314

lordjohnwhorfin said:

How does this compare to what’s available in the PC world, whether Intel/AMD or the more comparable ARM based Snapdragon?

The M4 Max score is quite a bit ahead of Intel CPUs on both single and multi-core performance on Geek Bench 6. 

https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

I'm sure NVIDIA GPUs are still faster, but it's a bit more difficult comparing them since they don't really run the same benchmarks. It's also pretty hard to compare AI engines for the same reason. 

sunman42

Have you also compared graphics performance? My Geekbench 6 score with an M2 Ultra (16 performance, 8 efficiency CPU cores, 60 graphics cores) Studio is a hair over 200,000. 

9secondkox2

Daaaaang, sucka!

the Mac mini is now more powerful than the studio?

whaaaaat?

Galfan

sunman42 said:

Have you also compared graphics performance? My Geekbench 6 score with an M2 Ultra (16 performance, 8 efficiency CPU cores, 60 graphics cores) Studio is a hair over 200,000. 

So far the highest score of M4 Max on metal test is 192532 so it’s very close to the gpu performance of M2 Ultra with 60 gpu cores which is wild!

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/compute/3038340

Marvin

Spencer314 said:

lordjohnwhorfin said:

How does this compare to what’s available in the PC world, whether Intel/AMD or the more comparable ARM based Snapdragon?

The M4 Max score is quite a bit ahead of Intel CPUs on both single and multi-core performance on Geek Bench 6. 

https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

I'm sure NVIDIA GPUs are still faster, but it's a bit more difficult comparing them since they don't really run the same benchmarks. It's also pretty hard to compare AI engines for the same reason. 

In a few tests, the M4 Max is measuring around half of an Nvidia 4090:

https://browser.geekbench.com/ai/v1/27706
https://browser.geekbench.com/ai/v1/94340

If M4 Ultra doubles the Max and effectively matches a 4090 alongside the fastest CPU and a large pool of high bandwidth memory, the M4 Ultra Studio will be the most powerful lunchbox in the world and pretty competitively priced at $4k.

gatorguy

Now I'm glad I've wavered on the Mac Studio. It wasn't a "need to" purchase, but a want-to one. I'll wait on some Mini reviews from graphics pros and go from there. 

CheeseFreeze

Question:

Why is a 1tb, 48gb M4 Pro Mac Mini more expensive than the baseline price of a current Mac Studio M3 Max (assuming Apple will keep the price the same for M4 Max)?

Because just the difference in RAM but a much more specced enclosure and better chip doesn’t make sense to me.

9secondkox2

CheeseFreeze said:

Question:

Why is a 1tb, 48gb M4 Pro Mac Mini more expensive than the baseline price of a current Mac Studio M3 Max (assuming Apple will keep the price the same for M4 Max)?

Because just the difference in RAM but a much more specced enclosure and better chip doesn’t make sense to me.

There is no m3 max Mac Studio. It’s stuck on m2 generation for now. 

And that m4 pro Mac mini will tear the m2 max a new one. Heck, it whoops the m2 ultra also - at least in cpu. Waiting on GPU scores. 

9secondkox2

Whether the next ultra chip is m4 or m5, if it’s a monolithic die, it’s going to seriously hurt some feelings. 

Calamander

Galfan said:

My god…..I was thinking when I purchased my M1 Max 16 inch I would be fine for 4-5 years but this might consider me upgrading this year….also because I noticed the GPU is hitting the limit sometimes but also that with my new function I need more headroom for bigger projects with the CPU. I do wonder how the thermals will be. M3 max is a powerhouse but pushed even the 16 inch starts to become loud. But since a18 pro and M4 have proven they run cooler and energy efficient, I will wait for the reviews coming out

There is a significant battery life difference between M4 Pro and M4 Max which tells me M4 Max is going to get a lot hotter than the Pro, too. 

Enough for me to decide on getting the Pro - while I like the RAM options on the Max, I really love all day battery life. 

In addition to that, a cooler laptop also lasts longer, heat kills electronics over time & I live in a hot country too. 

My 16" M1 Pro is running fine but I will upgrade to the M4 in the next few months when it becomes available here in SE Asia. 

CheeseFreeze

9secondkox2 said:

CheeseFreeze said:

Question:

Why is a 1tb, 48gb M4 Pro Mac Mini more expensive than the baseline price of a current Mac Studio M3 Max (assuming Apple will keep the price the same for M4 Max)?

Because just the difference in RAM but a much more specced enclosure and better chip doesn’t make sense to me.

There is no m3 max Mac Studio. It’s stuck on m2 generation for now. 

And that m4 pro Mac mini will tear the m2 max a new one. Heck, it whoops the m2 ultra also - at least in cpu. Waiting on GPU scores. 

Apologies, I meant M2.
But my question remains - why is the M4 Pro purchase price as mentioned more expensive as what will be the base Mac Studio?

blastdoor

Spencer314 said:

lordjohnwhorfin said:

How does this compare to what’s available in the PC world, whether Intel/AMD or the more comparable ARM based Snapdragon?

The M4 Max score is quite a bit ahead of Intel CPUs on both single and multi-core performance on Geek Bench 6. 

https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks

I'm sure NVIDIA GPUs are still faster, but it's a bit more difficult comparing them since they don't really run the same benchmarks. It's also pretty hard to compare AI engines for the same reason. 

It’s also ahead of the fastest non-server AMD chip, the 9950x:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8593852?baseline=8608283

the only sub-test where the 9950x wins is ray-tracing, because the 9950x has 32 logical (16 physical) cores, and ray tracing scales incredibly well with more threads. But ray tracing is an outlier in that regard. Otherwise, the m4 max wins big.

note that for multithreaded workloads that scale well, AMD’s threadripper and Epyc products are far ahead of Apple because they have a ton of cores. But they are also incredibly expensive and use a lot of power. For example: 

https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-mega-r3-n2/configure

you can easily configure a system that costs over $20k with a 96 core cpu. 

Sequoia.Vagrant

9secondkox2 said:

Daaaaang, sucka!

the Mac mini is now more powerful than the studio?

whaaaaat?

There is no M4 Max mac mini. Mac mini omly goes to M4 Pro but I see it’s still faster