Mac Studio reviews reveal lower than expected M1 Ultra GPU performance

When Apple announced the M1 Ultra chip, the company implied the GPU of its flagship SoC would perform similarly to the highest-end discrete GPU while being more efficient. However, that's far from the truth, as the first reviews of the M1 Ultra-Mac Studio have shown.

Reading the small letters of the charts shown by Apple, the company clearly stated it was referring to the Nvidia RTX 3090 when talking about the “highest-end discrete GPU”. The bold claim that the M1 Ultra GPU could perform similarly in “industry-standard” benchmarks while consuming 200W less than the RTX 3090 was ambitious but new user benchmarks have now revealed the full picture.

The first reviews of the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra SoC have now gone live. The Verge was able to get their hands on an M1 Ultra-powered Mac Studio and for a £5,800 system, performance leaves something to be desired. As you may have guessed, the GPU in particular is far from matching an RTX 3090.

The media outlet tested the Mac Studio system on Geekbench OpenCL and Metal benchmarks, as well as Shadow of the Tomb Raider in various resolutions. Compared to their RTX 3090-based system, the Mac Studio scored over 60% lower than an RTX 3090 system. Gaming performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider was decent, netting close to 100FPS on average at 1440p, but this is still around 20% behind an RTX 3090 running the game.

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KitGuru says: It seems the instances where the M1 Ultra GPU can match up to Nvidia's top-end are few and far between. 

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