Little by little the house of cards built by Apple to justify the abandonment of the use of Intel processors to its own with ISA ARM is crumbling. At least in terms of performance. And it is that when comparing the M1 Ultra and an AMD Threadripper, it seems that the processor for PC-based workstations has to teach the Apple a few things.
Let’s be objective, Apple does not sell its Mac Studio as a conventional walking computer, but as a workstation that has been launched to replace its Mac Pro. That is, unless you are a creator of multimedia or audiovisual content that it requires one of those processors called HEDT that are just the same for servers, but embedded in a PC. Well, it is clear that the expensive Apple computer is not going to interest you at all.
However, one thing that Apple has done is to compare its processors for workstations with those that are designed for a high-end PC and it can be said that in that, the Cupertino have cheated a bit. Although of course, that is nuanced.
Can Apple’s M1 Ultra With AMD’s Threadripper 5995WX?
The M1 Ultra is the central unit of Apple’s Mac Studio, which is made up of two M1 Pro chips for a total of 20 processing coresr, 4 of which are designed to be efficient and the other 8 are designed to get the most performance per clock cycle. It is the same configuration as the M1 Pro, but with higher memory bandwidth and much more powerful integrated graphics. By contrast, equivalent processors from Intel and AMD do not dedicate any chip real estate to the GPU on those types of processors.
Well, in a comparison with the AMD Threadripper Pro 5995X it has been possible to see how the Zen-based processor beats the Apple processor without problems and with an advantage of more than 2.5 times. Especially in Passmark’s multicore performance test, where the M1 Ultra scored 41,306 points in the multithread test vs. 108,822 points of the 5995WX. Although we cannot forget that we are comparing a 20 core cpu against a 64 core. So it is not a fair comparison in that regard.
Instead, in the same benchmark test for a single core, it can be seen that the architecture of the Apple M1 is on par, at least according to Passmark, with the Intel Core 12 from Intel. And let’s not forget that those from Cupertino make their own processor designs and right now under the ISA ARM they have the most powerful of all of them, even surpassing those of Qualcomm. Although let’s not forget that the great advantage of the M1 Ultra is in the support processors such as its integrated GPU, the Neural Engine and a closed ecosystem where they have an absolute monopoly. This allows them to better optimize their applications.
Honestly, we’d like to see an AMD chip that will combine dozens of Zen 4 cores and a high-caliber GPU with as much or more power than current consoles. Since it would be ideal for multimedia workstations. Is it possible that inadvertently those from Cupertino have opened the possibility to a new type of processor? Who knows, only time will tell.
