The new Mac Pro and Mac Studio recently announced offer the possibility of fitting the M2 Ultra variantwith a 24-core processor and 76-core GPU. However, despite its larger size and superior cooling system, leaked benchmark data calls into question the performance of Apple’s Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro in test under Geekbench, is this the beginning of the end for this model?
According to the latest leaked information, the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra (identified by the unique identifier Mac14,14) could offer better sustained performance than the Mac Pro (identified as Mac14,8). Certain specifications, such as the massive cooler used, identical to that of Intel’s Xeon workstations found in previous models, could give the Mac Studio an edge in terms of performance, at least according to Geekbench 6 results.
However, Geekbench 6 tests show that the Mac Pro doesn’t push the M2 Ultra’s performance any further, with respective scores of 2,794 single-core and 21,453 multi-core. Although this specific Mac Pro configuration features 64GB of unified RAM, it’s unlikely that memory will have a significant impact on either single-core or multi-core performance.
These results underline the fact that the Mac Studio offers a best value for money than the Mac Pro, since it comes with the same hardware configuration, but at a price $3,000 lower.
However, it should be noted that the Mac Studio is less extensible than the Mac Pro, which offers a total of seven PCIe slots. The Mac Proon the other hand, does not support AMD Radeon or Nvidia GPUs, which limits expansion options to high-speed network cards or PCIe storage devices. The same applies to RAM, which is unified at the heart of the M2 Ultra. The appeal of an Apple tower is reduced by its lower modularity, as are its update options.
It’s also interesting to note that at the WWDC 2023 keynote, Apple devoted less than three minutes to the official announcement of the Mac Pro, suggesting that the company may focus more on more compact, portable machines in the future, at the expense of oversized computers.