Many gamers regard Nvidia’s GeForce RTX line as the gold standard of GPUs. While some have criticized the GeForce RTX 3090 as overpriced, it’s still the fastest graphics card currently on the market.

“Currently” is the operative word there, as Apple claims it has Nvidia beat. Recently, the company announced its new M1 Ultra chip during its event on March 8th. Apple claims that its new CPU is faster than even Nvidia’s most powerful graphics card.

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The new M1 Ultra is essentially two interconnected M1 Max chips and thus uses the same basic ARM architecture as previous Macintosh CPUs. The Ultra boasts 20 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores, 128GB of unified memory, and up to 2.5TB/s of bandwidth. According to Apple, this allows the M1 Ultra to slightly outperform the RTX 3090 while consuming 200 watts less power.

Apple M1 Ultra chipset

Of course, it is worth noting that Apple was a little vague about the specifics of its internal testing. The company did not provide a list of applications or processes, simply stating that it tested the M1 Ultra on “select industry‑standard benchmarks.” It’s also reportedly about two pounds heavier than the M1 Max due to the Ultra’s larger copper heat sink.

Granted, the GeForce RTX 3090 still has the advantage of modularity. Unlike Nvidia’s hardware, the M1 Ultra is only available in Apple’s upcoming Mac Studio PC. Thus, it will not compete directly with the top-tier Intel or AMD Ryzen gaming CPUs. However, it’s still a major boon for anyone looking at the Mac Studio for the computer’s video editing and 3D modeling capabilities. People might even end up using the M1 Ultra for making games as much or more than for playing them.

Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU cropped

Apple intended to launch the Mac Studio on March 18th. However, the ongoing chip shortage, which Intel expects to last until 2023, forced the company to delay it until March 23rd for the M1 Max system and April for the M1 Ultra version. The latter variant retails for about $4,000 and comes with 64GB memory and 1TB of storage. Meanwhile, the less powerful Max version starts at $2,000 and comes with 32GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Customers can also upgrade the RAM and SSD for added cost at the time of purchase.

Either way, it’s clear that the M1 Ultra’s performance doesn’t come cheap. Then again, the GeForce RTX 3090 starts at $1,500, and GPUs generally go for well over MSRP due to the above-mentioned chip shortage. As is typically the case, gamers will have to decide for themselves if maximizing performance is worth breaking the bank.

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Source: Apple