M4 Ultra Designed For The Mac Pro Has Been Hinted To Feature Up To An 80-Core GPU, As Apple Said To Be In A Better Position To Enter The Mainstream Gaming Market

Apple is officially done with launching its trio of M4 chipsets, which includes the top-end M4 Max, and it is an exceptional performer. Just recently, it became the fastest CPU in Geekbench 6’s single-core tests, and extended the lead against Intel’s heavy-hitting 24-core Ultra 9 285K and AMD’s blazing-fast Ryzen 9 9950X by a decent margin in the multi-core score.

If you thought this would be the end of the lineup, think again because Apple has yet to unveil the M4 Ultra, which is scheduled to arrive in an updated Mac Pro next year. While discussing the Cupertino behemoth’s position in the gaming market, a report states that Apple is now in a better shape to take on the industry, as its upcoming SoC is said to be equipped with up to 80 GPU cores and is expected to deliver a respectable framerate in AAA titles.

Apple already offers 16GB unified RAM as standard for all M4 Mac models, giving game developers access to a sufficient amount of framebuffer to port the newer titles to the platform

With the unified RAM architecture, Apple allows programs to obtain access to memory from the same resource pool, and with the new M4 Macs featuring 16GB as the bare minimum, game developers will have access to a large VRAM window to bring forth both visual and performance improvements to their games. This would explain why Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is arriving to the Mac in 2025, and best of all, path tracing and Frame Generation will be baked into the port.

In Mark Gurman’s latest ‘Power On’ newsletter, the Bloomberg correspondent talks about Apple’s in-house chipsets being in a much more improved state to play graphically demanding titles, but the exciting bit is when the company will unveil the M4 Ultra next year when it announces the Mac Pro. Interestingly, the Mac Studio was not mentioned to be a part of the lineup, but Gurman talked about Apple unveiling both workstations in mid-2025.

As for the specifications, the M4 Ultra will ‘probably’ boast up to 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores, though the number of performance and efficiency cores were not mentioned by Gurman. He states that the upcoming Apple Silicon would make the Mac Pro one of the most powerful mainstream systems in the market. The technology giant has also done a phenomenal job with its pricing structure for the base models to make its machines more accessible to the masses.

To penetrate the gaming market with a purpose and to take on bigger players, a wider adoption of Macs and other devices is crucial, which is why the base M4 Mac mini starts from just $599, while the base M4 MacBook Pro starts from $1,599. The company has retained the same price while offering double the unified RAM in its entry-level models, making it less costly for when buyers want to up that number.

Perhaps the only deterrent left for Apple to combat is convincing developers to port their titles to the platform. Capcom has already joined forces, and so has Ubisoft, but there needs to be a myriad of games available for consumers to find incentive to pick up the more expensive machines.