News Apple's M2 Ultra Powers a New Mac Studio

[Admin]

Apple introduced the M2 Ultra system on a chip at WWDC23, which will power a new Mac Studio alongside the M2 Max.

Apple's M2 Ultra Powers a New Mac Studio : Read more

 

[bit_user]

The M2 Ultra chip will have 24 CPU cores ... for 20% faster performance than M1 Ultra ... which offered 20 CPU

For single-threaded, 20% is great. For multi-threaded, it's exactly equivalent to their core-count increase, meaning virtually no IPC or clockspeed improvement. I'm guessing the CPU cores are the same as the baseline M2, so we should have some idea about the answer... I just haven't looked it up, yet.

Also, does anyone know the M2 Ultra's memory speed?

 

[SSGBryan]

The specs are now live.

It is worse than I thought it would be.

 

[bit_user]

The specs are now live.

It is worse than I thought it would be.

Care to enlighten us? In what respects are you disappointed?

 

[Sippincider]

Wonder if they refreshed the Studio's case to cure the whistling.

Guess we'll find out soon enough.

 

[JamesJones44]

Also, does anyone know the M2 Ultra's memory speed?

From what I've seen the M2 line uses the same LPDDR5-6400 as the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra. I'm guessing they doubled the channels to get the 2x memory bandwidth over their M1 siblings, but that's only a guess.

 

[bit_user]

I'm guessing they doubled the channels to get the 2x memory bandwidth over their M1 siblings, but that's only a guess.

I highly doubt that. The M1 series' memory bus was already scaled up to crazy widths.

Variant	Memory data bus width (bits)
M1	128
M1 Pro	256
M1 Max	512
M1 Ultra	1024

According to this the M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max all have the same width as their M1 counterparts.

Apple unveils M2 Pro and M2 Max: next-generation chips for next-level workflows

Supercharging MacBook Pro and Mac mini, M2 Pro and M2 Max feature a more powerful CPU and GPU, up to 96GB of unified memory, and power efficiency.

www.apple.com

 

[JamesJones44]

I highly doubt that. The M1 series' memory bus was already scaled up to crazy widths.

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Variant	Memory data bus width (bits)
M1	128
M1 Pro	256
M1 Max	512
M1 Ultra	1024

According to this the M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max all have the same width as their M1 counterparts.

​

Apple unveils M2 Pro and M2 Max: next-generation chips for next-level workflows

Supercharging MacBook Pro and Mac mini, M2 Pro and M2 Max feature a more powerful CPU and GPU, up to 96GB of unified memory, and power efficiency.

www.apple.com

​

I think I mess read somewhere that they had double memory bandwidth with the M2 line, but a quick check shows the base M2 is the only one that got a memory bandwidth bump (100 GB/s vs 66.7 GB/s). Would make sense if they are using the same LPDDR5-6400 and same bus width.

 

[bit_user]

a quick check shows the base M2 is the only one that got a memory bandwidth bump (100 GB/s vs 66.7 GB/s). Would make sense if they are using the same LPDDR5-6400 and same bus width.

The base M1 used LPDDR4. All of the other M1s used LPDDR5. So, that should explain why the base M2 got a speed increase (i.e. from switching to LPDDR5).

 

[SSGBryan]

Care to enlighten us? In what respects are you disappointed?

16 big/8 little CPU cores

No H.265, No AV1 encoding

2 x16 PCIe 4 slots; 4 x8 PCIe 4 slots

1 PCIe 3.0 slot X4 for I/O

This is a $7,000 machine, not a $2,000 machine

 

[bit_user]

No H.265, No AV1 encoding

Source?

2 x16 PCIe 4 slots; 4 x8 PCIe 4 slots

I agree that I/O is a sore spot. However, other than a few SSDs, there's not really any PCIe 5.0 device out there. Plus, there's such limited selection of cards you can put in a Mac.