Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra test: the great feats of Apple – Les Numériques

The finishes of the Mac Studio are exemplary. The Mac Studio is an almost identical copy of the Mac Mini in terms of design, even if it is obviously higher in order to integrate the M1 Ultra chip and a new ventilation system. We find the anodized aluminum frame with rounded edges, overhung by the apple logo. The build quality and finishes are, as always with Apple, impeccable. This Mac Studio weighs 3.6 kg with an M1 Ultra and 2.7 kg with an M1 Max; it therefore remains completely transportable. At just 9.5 cm high and 19.7 cm sides, it can be slipped into a bag without problem and it takes up much less space on (or under) a desk than a classic PC case. Studio is much thicker than the Mac Mini. The connectors are also somewhat different since there is an SDXC card reader (UHS II) and two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the M1 Ultra version at the front, compared to two USB ports- C 3.2 classics for the M1 Max version. On the back, this time there are four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a very high speed 10 Gb / s Ethernet port, two USB-A 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port and a headphone output. Finally, we connect to the networks thanks to wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0. The connection at the back. The front of the computer. enlarge Under the casing sits an air vent which serves as an air intake for ventilation, the flow of which is rejected at the back, above the connectors. Apple is again a master in managing the temperatures and silence of its computers. The ventilation is inaudible in office automation and we had to launch several resource-intensive software simultaneously for it to really start. Even then, the result is impressive, as we only picked up 33.7 dB with our sound level meter (50 cm from the computer), which is barely perceptible. Unlike the Mac Mini, it appears very difficult to open the Mac M1 yourself. Anyway, we can not upgrade the computer since everything is welded to the motherboard, RAM and SSD included. We know Apple’s reluctance to let users (and unofficial repairers) tweak its computers – too bad for the repairability of the machine. It is undoubtedly this component that everyone was waiting for after the bombastic remarks from the manufacturer during its presentation of the Mac Studio and their M1 Ultra. It must be said that the M1 Max have convinced us in the frankly successful portable machines that are the MacBook Pro 14 and 16. Here, however, the challenge is not the same since Apple comes to rub shoulders with dedicated processors and graphics cards desktop computers, much more efficient and not limited by battery use. Our Mac Studio test is a very high-end model that features an M1 Ultra with 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores (there is a version with 48 GPU cores, as a reminder), an impressive 128 GB of unified memory and a SSD of 2 TB. In fact, the results are good, but maybe not as much as one would hope. We tested this new chip on the same software as our processor test procedure with photo and video processing in Photoshop, Premiere and HandBrake, as well as 3D rendering with Blender. According to our tests, the M1 Ultra is more efficient than Intel’s most powerful 11th Gen processors and sits between AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 9 5900X. Overall, we can remember that the M1 Ultra offers performance equivalent to an Intel Core i5-12600K, even if the results are very variable depending on the application. The M1 Ultra delivers an excellent score under Cinebench R23, for example, much higher than that of this Core i5 processor (24,218 against 17,211), and remains notably faster under Blender, but the other tests are in favor of this Intel .The whole point of the SoC M1 lies in the fact that it is also made up of GPU cores which allow it to speed up the processing times of certain compatible applications. Blender has just been updated to version 3.1 and therefore now takes into account the hardware acceleration of the M1s. In this software, the M1 Ultra lags behind Nvidia’s GeForce RTX graphics cards. Under Adobe Premiere, it was a little slower than an RTX 3060 Ti and at the level of an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. Under Photoshop, however, it is much faster than its competitors. We were also able to take control of the Mac Studio in Lightroom, which is then perfectly fluid, while a video editing project (demo) in Final Cut with 18 8K video streams launched simultaneously is also completely fluid. .A question of optimization? It should be noted, however, that not all applications are yet optimized to take into account the enormous amount of CPU cores of the M1 Ultra. It will probably take a few weeks or months before this is the case, and the results could then change significantly. Also, we do not test Apple’s own software such as Logic Pro or Final Cut, which cannot be tested on PCs, and it is impossible for us to evaluate the performance of this M1 Ultra against the M1 Pro and Max, for example. . It is undoubtedly particularly well optimized for this software and users who work in the Apple ecosystem will be able to take advantage of the gains made by this chip. Apple offers here a much more compact computer than the majority of PC cases, with particularly quiet operation. Added to this is a much more limited energy consumption: in intensive CPU use under Blender, our power meter indicates a consumption of around 83 W and 125 W by activating the GPU part. Suffice to say that we are very far from the 232 W of the Ryzen 7 5800X from AMD, or worse, from the 320 W delivered by the Core i5-12600K from Intel, especially if we had to add the consumption of a dedicated graphics card. ! Strengths Exemplary finishes. Good performance overall. Compact housing. Ultra quiet. Low energy consumption. Complete connection. Excellent quality headphone output. Weaknesses Raw performance lags behind high-end competitive CPUs and GPUs. Difficult to dismantle and not scalable. Conclusion How does scoring work? With the Mac Studio and its M1 Ultra, Apple still signs a particularly interesting machine. Its performance is good, especially with hardware-accelerated applications, although the high-end AMD and Intel latest generation processors and Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards are generally faster. Future optimization of 3D rendering and video post-production software could, however, reduce the current gap. The feat is mainly to be found in its compact format, its silent operation and its controlled consumption, for the moment unequaled. Sub-Notes Construction Performance