At 2:00 a.m. Beijing time on March 9, Apple's spring conference was held as scheduled. At the press conference, a total of six new products appeared, and I believe that what can make people shout "WOW" is definitely the newly released M1 Ultra chip, and the first Mac Studio series models equipped with M1 Ultra chips that are also the new product line of Mac.
Although before the press conference, many media speculated that the M2 chip with improved performance would be released. But those people only guessed the beginning, the naming of M1 Ultra and the UltraFusion architecture (simply looking at the two M1 Max chips seamlessly), making everyone more looking forward to the M2 chip.
Judging from the press conference, through the custom packaging architecture of UltraFusion, two M1 Max chip molds can behave like a single chip in the software (they will not be alarmed by being mistaken for two chips). The M1 Ultra, which nearly doubles the performance of the M1 Max, supports 20-core CPUs (16 high-performance cores + 4 efficiency cores), supports 64-core GPUs, which is 7 times faster than the M1, and supports 128GB of unified memory. At the same time, the memory bandwidth increased to 800GB/s, which is more than 8 times that of the PC desktop.
Since the M1 Ultra is so strong in terms of data performance, what is the actual performance? Next, Apple released the benchmarking Intel processor link, which is Intel's latest 12th generation Core i9-12900K.
From the previous M1 Pro/Mac chip energy consumption ratio, it can be seen that strong performance + low power consumption is its biggest feature. From Apple's official chart information, it can be seen that when the performance peak of the 16-core desktop processor is reached, the M1 Ultra consumes nearly 100W lower.
However, desktop processors and mobile processors have different power consumption and thermal requirements. Seeing this, Xiaobian inevitably wants to put out the performance chart of the previous Intel mobile processor against the M1 Max. It can be seen that at that time, the M1 Max was more than the i9-11980HK with only 8 cores and 16 threads, but it was still difficult to chase the 12th generation mobile flagship i9-12900HK. Now the M1 Ultra has 2 times the performance parameters of the M1 Max, and the M1 Ultra is positioned in the desktop series, so we have to leave the expectation to the various performance performances of the actual M1 Ultra.
For desktop computers, users' desire for graphics performance is endless. This time, Apple also graphically compared the computer performance of the M1 Ultra with the i9-12900K+RTX3090 combination.
With up to 64 core graphics processors (up to 8 times the M1), the M1 Ultra runs at 200W less power than the highest-spec combination pc described above. Of course, at this time, some netizens will ask why it makes more sense not to run a few top games to test? But maybe the fruit powder itself will jump out and say, who uses a Mac to play games?
But the data that follows shows the M1 Ultra's strength, which is that mac Studio equipped with M1 Ultra can play up to 18 8K ProRes 422 video streams simultaneously.
See here, is it that users with heavy video editing and rendering needs should start saving money to replace this Mac Studio starting from 29999 yuan? In fact, the editor is still thinking about several things, that is, once the Mac Studio goes on sale, how will the other Mac product lines respond?
First and foremost is Apple's desktop overlord, the Mac Pro
Mac Pro, which still uses Intel processors, can be called performance and high price flying together, if the processor, graphics card, memory, hard disk are the top of the custom version, the price is about 380,000 yuan, amazing. However, the user base that intends to buy Mac Pro should also look down on the hardware performance after the 2 high-end mobile M1 Max chips are combined.
With the end of Apple's spring conference yesterday, Apple's official website launched the Radeon Pro W6600X graphics card option for mac Pro, which needs to be increased by 2250 yuan. However, Apple has also confirmed that they are working on a version of the Mac Pro based on Apple Silicon, which will transition from Intel chips and AMD graphics, but the release time is yet to be determined.
A Mac mini that's cut in half
At present, apple's official website's Mac mini product line has M1 chips and Intel chip models to choose from. The price of M1 is from 5299 yuan, and the Intel chip is from 8299 yuan. As a mini host, Mac mini shape is stylish and simple, sex can be used, many users use it as a living room computer, usually connected to the TV to watch movies, or connect monitors to do daily office is a good choice. Therefore, mac Studio for medium and heavy video clip positioning is also not an option for the mini-host user base.
Other high-performance hosting products
Indeed, the 19.7cm x 9.5cm square footprint makes it difficult to connect mac Studio to the tall, bulky, high-performance consoles commonly found on the market. But even the M1 Max chip model is from 14999 yuan, and I believe that this price has dissuaded quite a few users. Therefore, friends who have purchased high-performance hosts but budget less than 10,000 yuan will not be disturbed by the release of Mac Studio.
Finally, I want to talk about this M1 Ultra chip. It has to be mentioned that the road of Apple's self-developed chips is getting wider and wider, and it is getting more and more expensive; but Apple has always taken the road of high-end flagship chips. The four M series chips that have been released have all taken the position of active discourse power on the listing. Another major advantage of insisting on the route of developing high-end chips is that the new models are released, and the old chips are successfully used in the low-end product line, eliminating the need for research and development costs and stable performance + inventory clearance, which makes users feel that science and technology are inclusive.
So, Apple is the most profitable technology company, no one should object, right?!