Apple on Tuesday (March 8, 2022) introduced latest and the world’s most powerful Apple M1 Ultra single-chip processor. This innovative step is changing the rules of the game, as it is strongly superseding its predecessors. Let us compare it with Intel 12900K Chip.
First, we understand the technology behind both the processors.
M1 Ultra Chip: Helping Apple in incredible performance
This most capable chip, M1 Ultra is the next giant leap for the Apple Silicon and the Mac. Featuring UltraFusion, M1 Ultra is delivering breathtaking computing power to the freshly introduced Mac studio. It is also the leading industry performer to Watt.
Elaborating Ultra Fusion, it is Apple’s innovative packaging that is used to interconnect two M1 Max chips to create a system on a chip (SoC). This enhances the performance and the capability to unprecedented levels. The new SoC consists of the transistors, most ever in a personal computer chip. The chip boasts of 114 billion transistors, the highest number in the history of the industry.
Undoubtedly, M1 Ultra is the ultimate game changer that is not only surprising but shocking the whole PC industry. For the developers, who are compiling codes, it is giving astonishing performance. The innovation is also surprising artists who are working in huge 3D environment – that was hitherto impossible to render – and also video professionals, who are now allowed to transcode video to ProRes that is up to 5.6x faster as compared to previous performers. Thus, this all-time high-end processor aims to bring next level experience and the performance, particularly to creative professionals. The processor, the biggest ever built in the industry, is allowing Apple to reach an incredible level of performance without any compromise with the efficiency.
The massive M1 Ultra chip has a GPU with 8,192 execution units. Just like other members of the family, this chip is a system-on-a-chip design, and this means that the CPU, GPU, RAM, storage and media engine are all included in one big chip.
Intel 12900K Chip: Hard time to compete newly introduced Apple’s processor
Intel has a hard time now competing the new innovative Apple processor. The performance crown of the company has been taken away now. The Intel processor seems to be lackluster. The company definitely needs to take firm and strong measures to close the gap. However, the processor helps windows to offload backround tasks and allows better performance for the more demanding tasks.
According to Intel, it’s a new generation chip that helps in better management of various tasks. Intel’s Core i9-12900K has a total of 16 cores and Intel has split them into eight performance P-cores and eight efficient E-cores. There are 24 threads in total based on two threads per P-core and one thread for each E-core. The processor also includes Dynamic Memory Boost, which enables desktop PCs to automatically switch between faster XMP settings and a slower mode with less power consumption. With this processor, a variety of workloads were tested across both Windows 10 and Windows 11 and the results were very similar, with no visible improvement. In gaming as well, frame rates were unchanged in both the Windows
There are bound to be improvements with Intel’s processor as the problems are more visible and noticeable when you’re running a lot of background tasks or even just in regular day-to-day usage. However, the Core i9-12900K delivers big improvements on multi-core performance for benchmarks. It is true that the 12900K is a big improvement over the 11th Gen 11900K, in both productivity workloads and gaming. But with the Apple’s challenge, Intel needs to do much so as to fill the gap.
Comparison between Apple M1 Ultra and Intel 12900K
M1 Ultra is simply more powerful
The newly introduced processor from Apple, M1 Ultra features a 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Processor. In simple words, the Apple M1 Ultra is more powerful than the Intel Core i9-12900K. The Apple M1 Ultra offers 90% faster performance for the same power consumption when compared with the Intel Core i9-12900K. Importantly, it matches Intel’s peak performance while consuming 100W less power. Technically speaking, the Apple M1 Ultra is two M1 Max chips fused together with a new UltraFusion. Overall, this reduces latency and throughput issues compared to two separate chips connected via the motherboard.
In GPU performance, M1 Ultra impressively outperforms others
The memory bandwidth on the latest and one-of-its-kind M1 Ultra is also higher when compared with the previous models of Apple. Also, the M1 Ultra can be configured with up to 128GB of unified memory. In terms of GPU performance, the 64-core model draws 200W less than the competitors at peak performance.
Enhances the display quality manifold
The newly launched platform has the ability to play up to 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video simultaneously. The innovative and freshly launched Apple M1 Ultra also has the ability of up to five displays, four of which can be 6K Pro Display XDR along with a fifth 4K display. This way, it is outperforming Intel’s processor.
Conclusion
With the introduction of this newest chip, Apple has been able to scale the company to unprecedented new levels. With its massive GPU, powerful CPU, ProRes hardware acceleration, incredible Neural Engine, and huge amount of unified memory, this chip completes the M1 family. It is now the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer. The groundbreaking Architecture includes the foundation of the extremely powerful and power-efficient M1 Max. The technology of this chip enables M1 Ultra to behave and be recognised by software as one chip, so developers don’t need to rewrite code. The deep integration between hardware and software has always been at the heart of the Mac experience. And this reflects in this newly launched PC as well.
