# M4 Ultra - MacRumors Buying Guide

The Apple M4 Ultra represents a significant leap forward in Apple's silicon technology, particularly in terms of AI capabilities and performance metrics.

#### Performance Capabilities

The M4 Ultra demonstrates remarkable improvements over its predecessors, with single-core performance showing 14-21% faster speeds compared to the M3 series

Early benchmarks suggest groundbreaking potential in gaming performance:

* The M4 Ultra could potentially outperform NVIDIA's RTX 4090, which is currently the leading consumer graphics card
    
* Features an improved hardware-accelerated ray-tracing engine that makes games like Control look more compelling
    
* The GPU architecture builds on previous generations with faster cores and a 2x faster ray-tracing engine
    

#### Technical Advantages

**Memory and Bandwidth**

* Supports high-speed unified memory with significantly increased bandwidth
    
* Features up to 546GB/s of memory bandwidth in the M4 Max configuration
    
* Enhanced display engine supporting multiple external displays
    

**Architecture Improvements**

* Includes up to 40 GPU cores in the Max configuration, delivering up to 4x faster performance than competing AI PC chips
    
* Supports Thunderbolt 5 with up to 120Gb/s data transfer capability
    

#### Release Timeline

The M4 Ultra is anticipated to debut in 2025 as part of Apple's AI-focused strategy. Notably, Apple appears to be skipping the M3 Ultra generation entirely for the Mac Pro, moving directly to the M4 series.

#### Expected Implementation

**Mac Pro Integration** The M4 Ultra will be featured in the upcoming Mac Pro, positioning it as a potential AI development workstation. The base configuration is expected to maintain similar pricing to current models, which start at $6,999 for the Tower version and $7,499 for the Rack version.

**AI Capabilities** The chip comes with an improved Neural Engine specifically designed for AI features, though specific details about these enhancements are expected to be revealed at WWDC.

### How does the M4 Ultra compare to the M2 Ultra in terms of performance

#### CPU Performance

The M4 architecture shows significant improvements in processing power:

* Single-core performance is approximately 42% faster than the M2 Ultra (3810 vs 2685 points in Geekbench v6)
    
* The M4 Max alone achieves up to 25% higher multi-core performance than the M2 Ultra, despite having fewer cores
    

#### Memory Architecture

**M2 Ultra Advantages**

* Supports up to 192GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM
    
* Offers significantly higher memory bandwidth at 800 GB/s
    

#### Technical Architecture

**M4 Improvements**

* Built on a more advanced 3nm manufacturing process (vs 5nm for M2 Ultra)
    
* Features enhanced power efficiency
    
* Includes an improved Neural Engine with double the performance
    

#### GPU Performance

The M4 architecture shows promising graphics capabilities:

* Early benchmarks suggest the M4 Ultra could potentially outperform NVIDIA's RTX 4090
    
* The M2 Ultra with 76 GPU cores currently achieves around 230,000 GB Metal performance
    

#### Professional Applications

For video editing and professional workloads:

* The M2 Ultra currently maintains an advantage in GPU-intensive tasks due to its 76 GPU cores
    
* The M4 architecture shows superior single-core performance, beneficial for many professional applications
    
* Additional media encoders in the M2 Ultra provide better performance for multiple simultaneous video streams
    

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### How might the M4 Ultra impact the gaming market

#### Market Impact

The M4 Ultra's capabilities could reshape the gaming landscape:

* Macs may finally become viable competitors to traditional gaming laptops and gaming PCs
    
* The improved graphics performance could attract more game developers to the macOS platform
    
* The combination of power efficiency and high performance could make MacBooks attractive to mobile gamers
    

#### Developer Support

The platform offers several advantages for game developers:

* Enhanced capabilities for building and testing apps across multiple simulators
    
* Improved performance for real-time rendering and graphics processing
    
* Better support for modern gaming technologies like ray tracing