Apple officially announced the M2 Ultra chip as part of the WWDC 2023 keynote on Monday. On paper, the new chip offers a considerable performance improvement over its M1 Ultra predecessor while maintaining industry-leading power efficiency.
As the dust settles following Apple’s jam-packed event, more and more is being learned about the new M2 Ultra. Below, we cover the most notable tech specs differences between Apple’s highest-end M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra chips.
| CPU | GPU | Unified memory | Transistors count | Neural Engine | |
| M1 Ultra | 20-core, 16 high-performance and four high-efficiency cores | Up to 64 cores | Up to 128GB | 114 billion | 32-core, 22 trillion operations per second |
| M2 Ultra | 24-core, 18-high performance and six high-efficiency cores | Up to 76 cores | Up to 192GB | 134 billion | 32-core, 31.6 trillion operations per second |
M2 Ultra massively improves external display support over the M1 Ultra, with support for 8K monitors for the first time. Here’s a table of how the chips compare for display support and specifications.
| Maximum simultaneous displays | 4K resolution | 6K resolution | 8K resolution | HDMI output | |
| M1 Ultra | Up to five monitors | Five 4K displays at 60Hz | Four 6K displays at 60Hz | — | One 4K display at 60Hz |
| M2 Ultra | Up to eight monitors | Eight 4K displays at 60Hz | Six 6K displays at 60Hz | Three 8K displays at 60Hz | One display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or 4K resolution at 240Hz |
The new M2 Ultra chip powers the high-end configuration of the refreshed Mac Studio and the first Mac Pro with Apple silicon. Both the updated Mac Studio and Mac Pro are available to order now from Apple’s online store, with orders to ship beginning on Tuesday, June 13.
