Apple M2 vs Apple M1 Ultra: Is the newer better?
Apple finally officially announced the M2 chipset at WWDC 2022, but how does it compare to the high-end M1 chipset?
Apple released its second generation of chips with the M2 processor, now available in both the 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 2022 MacBook Air.
But which is the best chip option for you? Keep reading to find out how the M2 compares to the M1 Ultra.
In this section:
Release date
The M1 Ultra is the fourth most powerful chip in the Apple Silicon M1 series. The M1 Ultra chip is found in the Mac Studio, which is a workstation PC similar in design to the Mac Mini.
The M2 is the newest in the M line, announced at WWDC 2022. As mentioned earlier, it is found in the 2022 MacBook Air and 13 2022-inch MacBook Pro and is not currently featured in any Apple desktop devices. .
Pricing
Since the chips are not sold individually, the price will depend on the laptop they are housed in.
The cheapest laptop with the M2 chip is the 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro, which has a starting price of $1299 / £1349.
Looking at the M1 Ultra, the only place it can be found is the Mac Studio, which has a starting price of $3999/£3999.
Considering the Ultra is only available on a desktop computer, it's not too surprising that it costs significantly more, even if that means you'll have to spend a lot if you want to stick with the M1 processor. the most powerful.
Specifications
The M1 Ultra is built on the first-generation Apple Silicon architecture, using a 5nm process from TSMC and featuring 114 billion transistors. The Ultra was made by connecting two M1 Max dies together using the UltraFusion packaging architecture, allowing it to pack so many transistors and cores.
The M2 chip, meanwhile, was built on second-generation Apple Silicon which uses a similar 5nm process from TSMC but with 4 billion more transistors than the M1 family.
| Apple M2 | Apple M1Ultra | |
| Process node | 5nm | 5nm |
| Transistors | 20 billion | 114 billion |
| Processor cores | 8 | 20 |
| GPU cores | dix | 64 |
However, as you can see from the table above, the M1 Ultra chip contains significantly more transistors than the M2 chip, with a whopping 114 billion. This high transistor count explains how the Ultra chip can handle 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores, which is the highest core count of any M-series processor.
Since higher transistor count will generally result in better performance, it seems the Ultra is the more powerful of the two processors.
The surprisingly high core count for the CPU and GPU count also suggests that the M1 Ultra will be more competent when it comes to graphics performance, making it the best choice for media professionals. We'll confirm this when we have the new laptops running for testing.
Performance
As we have not been able to test the M2 chip, we cannot yet comment definitively on performance. However, Apple has provided its own benchmark results, which should give us an idea of just how powerful this new chip is.
It's important to note that Apple hasn't directly compared the two chips, although we can gauge the difference with what we know of the two chips.
We know that the M1 Ultra chip is about twice as fast as the M1 Max chip, which is the second most powerful processor in the M1 series. It is also about three times more powerful than the vanilla M1 chip.
Apple also claimed that the M2 chip had an 18% increase in CPU performance over the M1, with the GPU getting a 35% increase.
So while the M2 chip is more powerful than the original M1 chip, it doesn't seem to come close to the M1 Ultra. That's not too surprising since the Ultra is designed to work in a desktop computer, which will be able to deliver more power than a traditional laptop with improved cooling systems and continuous power from an outlet.
Also, because the M1 Ultra is in a desktop computer, it doesn't have the same battery restrictions as the M2, with Apple citing it as having 17 hours of battery life when browsing the web on the MacBook Pro 13. inches.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the M1 Ultra chip packs a lot more power than the M2, however, at the time of writing their use cases are very different and they are not housed in the same type of PC device, which makes them difficult. compare.
Be sure to check back with Trusted Reviews soon, as we'll check the M2 chip's SKUs and power once we have a supported laptop for testing.
