M3 ultra is the more capable chip by quite a bit. For instance: 80 GPU cores versus 10 in the m4.
Twice the memory bandwidth, twice the CPU core count... It's really wacky how they've decided to name things
Twice the memory bandwidth, twice the CPU core count... It's really wacky how they've decided to name things
The Ultra is a pair of Max chips. While the core counts didn't increase from M3 to M4 Max, overall performance is in the neighborhood of 5-25% better. Which still puts the M3 Ultra as Apple's top end chip, and the M5 Max might not dethrone it either.
The uplift in IPC and core counts means that my M1 Max MBP has a similar amount of CPU performance as my M3 iPad Air.
Of course, each generation has some single-core improvements and eventually that could catch up, but it can take a while to catch up to… twice as much silicon.