Home > CPU Comparison > M2 Ultra or Apple M1: what's better?

Apple M2 Ultra vs Apple M1

79 out of 100
Apple M2 Ultra
VS
53 out of 100
Apple M1
Apple M2 Ultra
Apple M1

We compared two laptop CPUs: the 3.5 GHz Apple M2 Ultra with 24-cores against the 3.2 GHz Apple M1 with 8-cores. On this page, you'll find out which processor has better performance in benchmarks, games and other useful information.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Performance
  4. Specs
  5. Comments

Review

General overview and comparison of the processors
Single-Core Performance
Performance in single-threaded apps and benchmarks
Multi-Core Performance
Measure performance when all cores are involved
Power Efficiency
The efficiency score of power consumption
NanoReview Final Score
Choose your main usage scenario to recalculate the Final Score and see which CPU suits your needs.
πŸ”Œ Usage Scenario:

Key Differences

What are the key differences between M1 and Ultra
Advantages of Apple M2 Ultra
  • Supports up to 192 GB LPDDR5-6400 RAM
  • Around 750.95 GB/s (1100%) higher theoretical memory bandwidth
  • Has 16 more physical cores
  • Newer - released 2 years and 5 months later
  • 11% faster in a single-core Geekbench v6 test - 2685 vs 2410 points

Test in Benchmarks

Comparing the performance of CPUs across various tasks
CPU:
M2 Ultra
vs
Apple M1

Cinebench

Reputable cross-platform benchmark for high-performance processors
Cinebench 2024 (Single)
M2 Ultra +14%
125
Apple M1
110
Cinebench 2024 (Multi)
M2 Ultra +270%
1941
Apple M1
525
Cinebench 2026 (Multi) 7481 -
Cinebench Scores (#31st place)
Submit your benchmark results

GeekBench v6

The new version of this benchmark emulates common operations often used in real-world apps
Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)
M2 Ultra +11%
2685
Apple M1
2410
Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)
M2 Ultra +150%
21387
Apple M1
8547
File compression 2140 MB/sec 941 MB/sec
Clang compilation 226.4 Klines/sec 68.2 Klines/sec
HTML 5 Browser 569.8 pages/sec 192.4 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 603.6 Mpixels/sec 211.9 Mpixels/sec
Text processing 272.4 pages/sec 250.8 pages/sec
Background blur 56.5 images/sec 34.1 images/sec
Photo processing 170.7 images/sec 60.9 images/sec
Ray tracing 33.8 Mpixels/sec 9.74 Mpixels/sec
Sources: GeekBench [1], [2] – 728 & 760 samples

PassMark

Synthetic test that focuses on raw computational performance for low-level functions
Passmark CPU (Single-Core)
M2 Ultra +15%
4208
Apple M1
3673
Passmark CPU (Multi-Core)
M2 Ultra +261%
50945
Apple M1
14123
Integer math 117.4 GOps/sec 33.2 GOps/sec
Floating point math 148.9 GOps/sec 35.5 GOps/sec
Find prime numbers 712M Primes/sec 141M Primes/sec
Random string sorting 83.7M Strings/sec 21M Strings/sec
Data encryption 32 GBytes/sec 8.5 GBytes/sec
Data compression 682.7 MBytes/sec 168 MBytes/sec
Physics 7650 Frames/sec 1359 Frames/sec
Extended instructions 33.2B Matrices/sec 7B Matrices/sec
Sources: PassMark [3], [4] – 201 & 10702 samples

Blender

3D rendering test that measures CPU performance in 3D modeling tasks (uses all cores)
Blender CPU
M2 Ultra +427%
501.6
Apple M1
95.27

Performance Per Watt

Shows the score you get per each watt of PL1 TDP
Cinebench 2024 / Watt 24.3 PPW 37.5 PPW
Geekbench 6 Multi / Watt 267.3 PPW 610.5 PPW
Passmark CPU Mark / Watt 636.8 PPW 1008.8 PPW
Blender / Watt 6.27 PPW 6.81 PPW
These are rough calculations, as most CPUs surpass PL1 TDP wattage even in multicore workloads.

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Apple M2 Ultra
No benchmark results yet
Add
Apple M1
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-25 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2273 / 7967
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-24 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2420 / 8793
πŸ“˜ 2026-03-06 (gaR)Geekbench 6 CPU2396 / 8763
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)Geekbench 6 CPU2395 / 8820
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)Cinebench 2024110 / 465
Add View all (8)

Specifications

Full technical specification of Apple M2 Ultra and Apple M1

General

Vendor Apple Apple
Released May 5, 2023 November 20, 2020
Type Laptop Laptop
Instruction Set ARMv8 ARMv8
Codename Apple M2 Apple M1
Integrated GPU Apple M2 Ultra GPU (76-core) Apple M1 GPU
Successor - Apple M4 Ultra - Apple M5 (10-Core)

CPU

Performance Cores
P-Cores 16 4
P-Threads 16 4
Base Frequency (P) 3.5 GHz 3.2 GHz
Efficient Cores
E-Cores 8 4
E-Threads 8 4
Base Frequency (E) 2.4 GHz 2.1 GHz
Total
Total Cores 24 8
Total Threads 24 8
Multiplier 35x -
L1 Cache 192K (per core) 192K (per core)
L2 Cache 64MB (shared) 12MB (shared)
Unlocked Multiplier No No

Package

Transistors 134 billions 16 billions
Fabrication Process 5 nm 5 nm
TDP (PL1) 80 W 14 W
Socket Apple M-Socket Apple M-Socket
Peak Temperature 100Β°C -
Laptop processors ranking (24th and 172nd place)

iGPU

Integrated Graphics Apple M2 Ultra GPU (76-core) Apple M1 GPU
GPU Base Clock - 450 MHz
GPU Boost Clock 1398 MHz 1278 MHz
Shading Units - 1024
TMUs - 64
ROPs - 32
Execution Units - 128
TGP - 15 W
iGPU FLOPS
M2 Ultra
n/a
Apple M1
2.6 TFLOPS
See: Apple M1 GPU (8-core) benchmarks

Memory Support

Memory Types - LPDDR5-6400 - LPDDR4X-4266
Max. Memory Size 192 GB 16 GB
Memory Channels 8 8
Max. Memory Bandwidth 819.2 GB/s 68.25 GB/s
ECC Support No No

Misc

PCI Express Version 4.0 4.0

Cast your vote

Choose between two processors
7 (53.8%)
6 (46.2%)
Total votes: 13

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7. Apple M2 Ultra vs Apple M3 Ultra
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Comments

So which CPU will you choose: Apple M1 or M2 Ultra?
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