Apple's Fastest Mac vs My $4396 PC

Are Macs finally powerful enough that they can now compete with powerful PC systems or are they just a big shiny waste of money? Well, that is kind of

what I wanted to find out in this video.

And this is my M3 Ultra Mac Studio. It

has a 28 core CPU, 60 core GPU, 96 GB of unified memory, and I paid extra for the 2 TB SSD upgrade. So, in total, it cost me around $4,400

before taxes for my PC. Here it is on PC part picker at the time I bought it which was roughly June 2025. So I did get some really good end of financial year discounts. Now most of my budget

year discounts. Now most of my budget went into the CPU which is the Ryzen 9 99950X3D and of course the GPU which is the Asus

Tough RTX 5090. After taxes and a few miscellaneous items like additional fans and thermal paste etc. I came out to almost exactly the same price as the Mac

Studio. And in this video, I don't want

Studio. And in this video, I don't want to do a, you know, full-on comprehensive comparison where I compare every single difference in workflow. Uh, I just want to focus on a few things. For example,

how the CPUs or the GPUs compare and their performance if gaming on a Mac is maybe finally catching up to the PC and some other little observations that I've

noticed. First up, I was really curious

noticed. First up, I was really curious about how the CPU performance compared.

Now, there are obviously quite a few differences between the M3 Ultra and the 9950 X3D. Uh, you know, things like core

9950 X3D. Uh, you know, things like core count, frequency, uh, one being ARMbased versus X86. But all that really matters

versus X86. But all that really matters at the end of the day is the performance. And surprisingly, the M3

performance. And surprisingly, the M3 Ultra performed better when it came to typical multi-core and single core processors. But pure performance is not

processors. But pure performance is not the whole picture. So, I wanted to take a look at efficiency as well. Now, I

maxed out both CPUs at 100% utilization doing a CPU inensive workload like encoding in Handbreak. The AMD CPU was pulling roughly 200 W versus the M3

Ultra which was around 76 W. So, looking

at performance from a performance per watt perspective, again, the M3 Ultra comes out ahead. But to be fair, these are, you know, desktop systems at the end of the day. They're not laptops. So,

I think efficiency is less important.

And at this price range and performance level, I doubt many people are worried about their power bill. Uh unless of course, you know, maybe you have 10 of these big things in a room for a whole

team of video editors or something. Note

that the AMD CPU is not overclocked and I haven't really changed much of the default BIOS settings apart from turning on expo and some minor fan curve tweaks.

Taking a look at creative workflows, for example, anything involving the Adobe apps. This is where Apple usually

apps. This is where Apple usually performs strongly, but it is not enough to beat out the PC. So, despite the M3 Ultra having, you know, faster single core performance, which typically

impacts workflows that mostly rely on individual cores, like Photoshop, for example, the 9950 X3D still beats it.

That being said, I use Photoshop a lot, and I didn't notice any major performance differences in real life.

During tasks like video editing, overall, they were roughly equal. Uh,

but again, delving in deeper, a lot of this is due to the M3 Ultra's built-in hardware encoders and decoders doing a lot of the heavy lifting during timeline

playback and, of course, rendering. Now,

I use Da Vinci Resolve frequently, and one thing that really hammers the M3 Ultra is real-time playback of footage that I've applied temporal noise reduction to. And when moving to the PC,

reduction to. And when moving to the PC, I almost doubled the amount of frames per second I was getting. Same with

anything involving GPU effects. The

RTX5090 is just a beast. Moving to After Effects, it looks like the M3 Ultra is roughly half as powerful, but this is a little misleading because the M3 Ultra is actually slightly better in some

areas like tracking and anything involving 2D. But as soon as I moved

involving 2D. But as soon as I moved into anything involving 3D, the PC just destroyed the Mac and it wasn't even close. And because After Effects is

close. And because After Effects is heavily skewed towards those 3D tasks, that has a big impact on the overall comparison. And note that while the M3

comparison. And note that while the M3 Ultra has 96 GB of unified memory or RAM, my PC only has 64 GB. So, ideally,

I would have more than that if I was using After Effects heavily. Now, this

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moving into 3D workflows, there is just no comparison here. And in all honesty, there hasn't been for pretty much the entire time Apple Silicon has existed.

Now, Nvidia GPUs with all the ray tracing and CUDA cores and just, you know, sheer amount of wattage that's pumped into them, plus all of the existing software support for them, uh,

Apple just got left behind a long time ago. That being said, I've been

ago. That being said, I've been comparing Nvidia GPUs to Apple silicon GPUs for a few years now, and I have noticed that the 3D performance gap

between the two is closing. So, back in I think early 2022, uh I did a similar video to this one and the PC was roughly five times more powerful than the Mac

versus now in late 2025. Uh that has actually reduced to roughly 2.5 times faster. Now, a lot of that is going to

faster. Now, a lot of that is going to be due to ray tracing being introduced on Apple silicon. Uh but still, I think the PC is going to be vastly superior here for at least the foreseeable

future. This includes gaming too. I

future. This includes gaming too. I

remember at the same time ray tracing was announced, Apple had this, you know, big exciting media release where they featured a Mac OS optimized version of Resident Evil and, you know, all these

other games in the pipeline for Mac OS.

And I did think for just a second, maybe one day gaming on a Mac might finally get some attention. Fast forward to today, uh, yeah, no, I think Apple just

completely gave up on it. Right now,

most games use APIs like OpenGL, Vulcan, or you know, DirectX12. Uh, none of which Apple supports natively. Apple

actually uses an API called Metal, which is actually really quite good. Uh, when

implemented correctly, its performance is a little bit more comparable to DirectX12. The problem though is that

DirectX12. The problem though is that game developers currently have almost zero motivation to support or develop games for Apple silicon because Windows is still by far the most popular

platform for PC gaming. Notable mention

here is Assassin's Creed Shadows. Uh it

was actually supposedly optimized for Mac OS using the Metal API, but its release was a complete dumpster fire.

But I thought it would be an interesting comparison against the PC because even though it's not the best running and optimized game on either system to be fair, uh it is still a recent Mac OS

release and it shares a lot of similarities to the PC version. So I ran the Assassin's Creed Shadows benchmark on both systems with all settings the

same, but of course using Metal FX as the upscaler for the Mac and DLSS for the PC. And yeah, the PC was

the PC. And yeah, the PC was significantly better. Not only that, but

significantly better. Not only that, but there is just less screen tearing and dropped frames overall. Uh even if I drop the settings down on the Mac to pump up the FPS. Now, don't get me

wrong, you can still do some gaming on the Mac. You know, there are some games

the Mac. You know, there are some games that are fully optimized and actually run really well, but the overall gaming experience is just so vastly better on

the PC that it's just not really comparable. So, moving on to some areas

comparable. So, moving on to some areas where the Mac performs really well.

Firstly, and most obviously, the physical size. I mean, look at this

physical size. I mean, look at this thing. It is tiny. Uh the M3 Ultra Max

thing. It is tiny. Uh the M3 Ultra Max Studio is just super small. You know, it fits anywhere on my desk and takes up almost no room. In comparison, you know,

PC sizing obviously does vary. Uh I'm

currently using a midtower ATX case, the H6 Flow from NZXT, and it is absolutely huge in comparison. Now, my previous Intel and RTX3090

build was a small form factor PC in a smaller NR200P case from Cooler Master, but SFFF cases are more difficult to build in uh and are still much bigger

than the Mac Studio. Fan noise is another area where the Mac is just in a class of its own. Uh I don't think I've ever heard the fan. It's dead silent.

Even under full load, it only goes up to about a thousand RPM versus the PC, which is much louder and very distracting unless I'm wearing closedback headphones. Here is a noise

closedback headphones. Here is a noise sample.

When idling, the PC is of course much quieter, but still significantly louder than the Mac, even when I tweak the fan curves to make it as silent as possible.

And you know, if there's a reason why the PC is not currently on right now, so I can show off my really cool, you know, RGB and all that kind of stuff, it's because this microphone here is just

going to pick up all of that really loud fan noise and mess up the audio. And

then, of course, which I've already briefly touched on. So, I loaded up both systems with a really demanding task to stress both the CPU and the GPU, but

mostly the GPU, and the PC was sucking up almost 1,000 W versus the Mac, which was much less power hungry. I also

checked power draw and both systems were idling. Uh, the PC used about 240 W

idling. Uh, the PC used about 240 W versus about 33 W on the Mac. But again,

desktop systems, not a portable laptop.

So, power draw and efficiency is less relevant. So, overall, I guess I wasn't

relevant. So, overall, I guess I wasn't really surprised by the results in this video. You know, both systems have their

video. You know, both systems have their pros and cons, and the differences between them haven't really changed that much in the last couple of years. You

know, Mac, uh, super power efficient and quiet, comparable or occasionally better performance in some specific areas.

talking about Apple silicon specifically here by the way. Uh the PC, you know, shreds the Mac in anything 3D related and I can replace or upgrade individual components as well, which is really

nice. Now, I personally use both. Uh, I

nice. Now, I personally use both. Uh, I

actually prefer using my Mac and Mac OS for my 9 to5 work stuff and just, you know, everyday tasks, but I'm also a gamer and you just can't beat a beefy PC

system when it comes to that. Especially

the RTX 5090. It is absolutely insane when it comes to performance. In fact, I did a video on a 4K ultrawide monitor from LG that also blew me out of the

water and I use this PC to run it in that video. So, if you want to check

that video. So, if you want to check that out, click the link. I'll put it up here or down in the description. And

thanks for watching.