The 2025-tittering of the MAC study marks a new era in personal computing for Apple as it pushes the limits of what can be achieved, using what is essentially a larger version of Intels now closed next unit unit (NUC).
I got its fully greasy, top-end version, M3 Ultra with a 16TB SSD and 512 GB RAM against the competition to get a rough idea of how good an apartment purchase it is. It is not surprising that it is easily competing against some of the best PCs in the workstation in the world.
There is a trio of Tretripper -Rig, seven Xeon work stations (across three generations) and to a good scale, Nvidia’s magnificent digits and three of Apple’s own PCs, Mac Mini (M4 Pro), Mac Pro (M2 Ultra) and a less skilled version of Mac Studio (M4 Max).
The entire table is at the end of this article. Note that some cells are empty because I simply do not have the information available (eg size of some workstations, digits, etc.).
Credit where credit is due to Apple managed to deliver something that I did not expect it to do anytime soon: 512 GB of Unified Memory on a computer.
This brilliant battle meant moving the comparison with Intel Xeon and AMD Threadripper Pro Systems, far more expensive professional platforms compared to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core.
In addition to resetting WorkStation Vertical, it also signals fixed Apple’s ambitions to be an important player in the red-hot local AI-Hardware market.
(Worth checking my article published in June 2023 where I suggested that the Mac study would replace Mac Pro (and make PC suppliers nervous).
I analyzed the prices of these systems (using the most updated data I could find) and there are no two way to put them.
A $ 14,000 apartment purchase if you’re after memory
Apple Mac Studio Ultra, even for more than $ 14,000 is an apartment purchase if you are looking for as much system memory as possible, for $ 28 per day. GB.
It’s a little smaller than Puget Systems and almost a third of what you would pay for a MAXED-OUT MAC Mini (or half of the Apple Mac Pro with its Puny 192 GB RAM).
The most important thing is that it is far, far cheaper than those like Dell or HP; It turns out that Windows Workstations with half a terabyte RAM did not come cheaply.
Remember that Apple uses overall memory that has a much higher bandwidth (800 GB/s) than DDR5 memory (even across eight memory modules).
It delivers the type of performance you would expect from an integrated GPU; seam Servethehomes Patrick Kennedy Puts it, “The costs are high in the context of a workstation, but it is cheap when you compare it to Nvidia’s costs per GB memory”.
Also remember that I have configured this workstation with a 16TB on board storage; No other major player has access to that kind of storage unless you go to RAID-0 across several much smaller SSDs.
There is also the fact that it comes with 10GBE LAN by default as well as Thunderbolt 5, a data transfer technology that is not available to any other workstation at the time of writing that will pave the way for innovative external peripheral devices.
I also looked at 3 other composite measurements, all of which looked at processor performance (based on the popular Geekbench 6*) and not surprising, Apple excelled in all three: Geekbench points per day. Dollar, geekbench point per Kerne and Geekbench points per Volume.
The M4 units (MAC Mini and Mac Studio) had the cheapest performance per day. $, To about $ 0.20, that’s almost 1/8 of the most expensive (HP G4).
It also had the highest benefit per day. Kerne (1623, 5x faster than the slowest processor, an Intel Xeon) and the highest performance per Unit volume (more than 140x compared to the worst post).
GPU — details remain a mystery
The big unknown remains the official GPU measurements as it is difficult to measure Apple’s graphics performance across different systems-on-chip as Apple does not reveal additional data beyond core numbers.
For simplicity, I chose the NVIDIA RTX 2000 ADA generation as a standard card – where possible – as it was the cheapest professional graphics card that came with 16 GB of RAM. Only one entry used the more expensive RTX 4000 ADA generation with 20 GB of RAM.
Technical publication, TechPowerupEstimates that the RTX 2000 AG should be a little slower than a RTX 3060.
Apple M3 Ultra scores just under 130,000 brands on Popular OpenCl Geekbench -TestsIt is 50% faster than the RTX 2000 AG, so for a more balanced comparison, readers may want to replace a more powerful (and expensive) card like NVIDIA RTX 5000 ADA generation.
* Geekbench 6 items are unfortunately not average. So I chose what I considered to be the median on the first page of each CPU. Your mileage may vary.
Header Cell – Column 0 |
Price |
CPU |
Geekbench 6 |
GPU |
OpenCl |
RAM (GB) |
Storage (TB) |
Thunderbolt |
Loan |
Height (mm) |
Width (MM) |
Depth (MM) |
Volume Il |
Weight (kg) |
Price per GB/RAM |
RAM/L. |
GB6/$ |
GB6/Core |
GB6/L. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Avadirect Xeon Gold 6338 |
$ 9,587 |
32 |
10419 |
RTX2000E AG |
75949 |
512 |
16 |
4 |
10 |
Row 0 – cell 10 | Row 0 – cell 11 | Row 0 – Cell 12 | Row 0 – Cell 13 |
? |
$ 19 |
Row 0 – Cell 16 |
$ 0.92 |
326 |
#Div/0! |
Avadirect Xeon Gold 6414U |
$ 10.171 |
32 |
13062 |
RTX2000E AG |
75949 |
512 |
16 |
4 |
10 |
Row 1 – Cell 10 | Row 1 – Cell 11 | Row 1 – Cell 12 | Row 1 – Cell 13 |
? |
$ 20 |
Row 1 – Cell 16 |
$ 0.78 |
408 |
#Div/0! |
Titan W24 Octane W7-2495X |
$ 10,419 |
24 |
13470 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
8 |
0 |
10 |
527 |
229 |
540 |
65.03 |
? |
$ 20 |
8 |
$ 0.77 |
561 |
207 |
Nvidia -digit |
$ 3,000 |
20 |
Row 3 – cell 3 | Row 3 – cell 4 | Row 3 – cell 5 |
128 |
4 |
Row 3 – cell 8 | Row 3 – Cell 9 |
40 |
135 |
89 |
0.48 |
1 |
$ 23 |
266 |
#Div/0! |
0 |
Row 3 – cell 19 |
Lenovo P620 5965WX |
$ 12,921 |
24 |
19935 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
4 |
0 |
1 |
440 |
165 |
460 |
33.40 |
24 |
$ 25 |
15 |
$ 0.65 |
831 |
597 |
Bizon G3000 W7-2595X |
$ 13,573 |
26 |
15738 |
RTX4000 AG |
261357 |
512 |
15 |
4 |
10 |
580 |
240 |
560 |
77.95 |
24.5 |
$ 27 |
7 |
$ 0.86 |
605 |
202 |
Apple Mac Studio Ultra |
$ 14,219 |
32 |
28485 |
80 |
126747 |
512 |
16 |
5 |
10 |
95 |
197 |
197 |
3.69 |
3.64 |
$ 28 |
139 |
$ 0.50 |
890 |
7726 |
Puget 7970x |
$ 14,337 |
32 |
22977 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
16 |
3 |
10 |
546 |
239 |
475 |
61.93 |
? |
$ 28 |
8 |
$ 0.62 |
718 |
371 |
Dell Precision 5860 W7-2595X |
$ 15,522 |
26 |
15738 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
8 |
4 |
10 |
418 |
177 |
452 |
33.44 |
21.7 |
$ 30 |
15 |
$ 0.99 |
605 |
471 |
Thinkmate 7975WX |
$ 15,781 |
32 |
24423 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
15 |
3 |
10 |
175 |
438 |
680 |
52.11 |
? |
$ 31 |
10 |
$ 0.65 |
763 |
469 |
Lenovo P5 W7-2595X |
$ 17,416 |
26 |
15738 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
8 |
0 |
1 |
440 |
165 |
453 |
32.89 |
19 |
$ 34 |
16 |
$ 1.11 |
605 |
479 |
Apple Mac Studio Max |
$ 5,899 |
16 |
26010 |
40 |
110342 |
128 |
8 |
5 |
10 |
95 |
197 |
197 |
3.69 |
2.74 |
$ 46 |
35 |
$ 0.23 |
1626 |
7055 |
HP G4 W7-2595X |
$ 24,643 |
26 |
15738 |
RTX2000 AG |
85825 |
512 |
8 |
4 |
10 |
386 |
169 |
445 |
29.03 |
10 |
$ 48 |
18 |
$ 1.57 |
605 |
542 |
Apple Mac Pro |
$ 11,799 |
24 |
21502 |
76 |
119712 |
192 |
8 |
4 |
10 |
529 |
218 |
450 |
51.89 |
17 |
$ 61 |
4 |
$ 0.55 |
896 |
414 |
Apple Mac Mini 4 Pro |
$ 4,699 |
14 |
22715 |
20 |
65512 |
64 |
8 |
5 |
10 |
50 |
127 |
127 |
0.81 |
0.73 |
$ 73 |
79 |
$ 0.21 |
1623 |
28167 |