First Alleged Benchmark Result for Apple’s M3 Ultra Chip Surfaces

Apple’s new M3 Ultra chip, featured in the recently introduced Mac Studio, is making headlines as its first alleged benchmark result appears in the Geekbench 6 database. This gives us our first glimpse at the chip’s performance, and the numbers are worth discussing.

Performance Highlights

Apple has called the M3 Ultra chip the “highest-performing chip it has ever created,” and the benchmark seems to back up the claim. The 32-core M3 Ultra achieved an impressive multi-core CPU score of 27,749 in this initial test. Here’s how it stacks up:

• 8% faster than the 16-core M4 Max chip, which previously held the performance crown.
• Up to 30% faster than the 24-core M2 Ultra chip, highlighting a solid generational leap.

Interestingly, the M4 Max chip still outperforms the M3 Ultra in single-core performance, beating it by nearly 20%, according to the results.

Mixed Expectations for the M3 Ultra

While these numbers confirm significant performance improvements, there are some discrepancies. Apple had advertised that the M3 Ultra would be up to 1.5x faster than the M2 Ultra, suggesting a 50% performance boost. However, the observed 30% increase in this benchmark falls short of that expectation. It’s important to note that Apple has not directly compared the M3 Ultra with the M4 Max chip, so those differences remain unexplained.

As always, these synthetic benchmarks may not fully reflect real-world performance. Tools like Geekbench 6 offer a helpful baseline, but actual usage might deliver different results.

What’s Next?

This is just the first benchmark result, and more tests are likely to follow. Additional Geekbench 6 results could reveal higher scores, aligning more closely with Apple’s claims. We’ll keep an eye out for more data to see if these early numbers hold up.

The result was spotted by @jimmyjames_tech and shared by Vadim Yuryev.