Apple’s charts set the M1 Ultra up for an RTX 3090 fight it could never win

Image: Apple

When Apple introduced the M1 Ultra, the most powerful in-house processor yet, and the crown jewel of its brand new Mac Studio, it did so with charts boasting that the Ultra could beat out Intel. Apple doesn't tell us what specific tests it runs to arrive at the numbers it uses on the charts.

Now that we have a Mac studio, we can say that the M1 Ultra isn't as fast as Apple would like it to be.

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To hear Apple tell it, the M1 Ultra is a miracle of Silicon, one that combines the hardware of two M1 Max processors for a single chipset that is nothing less than the most powerful chip for a personal computer.

The M1 Ultra beats out the RTX 3090 system in terms of performance and power draw. It is a great achievement.

Apple's chart is for lack of a better term. The company only shows the head to head for the areas where the M1 Ultra and the RTX 3090 are competitive against each other, and it's true that you'll get more bang for your buck with the M1 Ultra.

The chart doesn't show that the M1 Ultra has a lot more power than the RTX 3090, just take a quick look at some of the benchmarks.

Image: The Verge

Image: The Verge

As you can see, the M1 Ultra is an impressive piece of Silicon, it beats the Mac Pro or Apple's most powerful laptop with ease. It seems that Apple isn't showing the full performance of the competitor it's chasing here.

It's like saying that your electric car can use less fuel when driving at 80 miles per hour than a Lambo, without mentioning that the Lambo can still go twice as fast.

It is very impressive that Apple is doing so much with so little power. Apple's chart shows that the M1 Ultra does better than the RTX 3090 at relative power and performance levels. The 3090 line shoots past the M1 Ultra while using far more power.

It feels like the chart should look like this.

Apple didn't need to do all this chart chicanery, the M1 Ultra is something to brag about, and the fact that Apple has successfully merged two disparate chips into a single unit is an impressive feat.

Apple's UltraFusion technology does what it says on the tin and offers nearly double the M1 Max in performance tests. The M1 Max chips were duct-taped together by Apple and they got twice the performance of the M1 Max. This is the only chipmaker that has ever pulled this off.

That's fantastic and a far more impressive and interesting thing for Apple to have spent time showcasing than its best, most-bleeding edge chip beating out aged Intel processors from computers that have sat out the last several generations of chip design or fudged charts that set the M.

Apple's latest chip can beat out the most powerful dedicated graphics card on the planet. The 3090 is nearly the size of an entire Mac Studio all on its own and costs almost a third as much as Apple's most powerful machine. I wish Apple would focus on accurately showing to customers the M1 Ultra's actual strengths, benefits, and triumphs instead of making charts that have us chasing after benchmarks that are deep inside. At least not yet.