M1 Ultra did benchmark close to 3090 in some synthetic gaming tests. The claim was not outlandish, just largely irrelevant for any reasonable purpose.
Apple does usually explain their testing methodology and they don’t cheat on benchmarks like some other companies. It’s just that the results are still marketing and should be treated as such.
Outlandish claims notwithstanding, I don’t think anyone can deny the progress they achieved with their CPU and especially GPU IP. Improving performance on complex workloads by 30–50% in a single year is very impressive.
It did not get anywhere close to a 3090 in any test when the 3090 was running at full power. They were only comparable at specific power usage thresholds.
Different chips are generally compared at similar power levels, ime. If you ran 400 watts through an M1 Ultra and somehow avoid instantly vaporizing the chip in the process, I'm sure it wouldn't be far behind the 3090.
Ok but that doesn't matter if you can't actually run 400 watts through an M1 Ultra. If you wanna compare how efficient a chip is, sure, that's a great way to test. But you can't make the claim that your chip is as good as a 3090 if the end user is never going to see the performance of an actual 3090
Apple does usually explain their testing methodology and they don’t cheat on benchmarks like some other companies. It’s just that the results are still marketing and should be treated as such.
Outlandish claims notwithstanding, I don’t think anyone can deny the progress they achieved with their CPU and especially GPU IP. Improving performance on complex workloads by 30–50% in a single year is very impressive.