Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

mac studio: which M3 Max features are worth waiting for?

M

monoduster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 9, 2023
7
3
Other than the performance boost, what features might make the M3 Max mac studio worth waiting for?

The two obvious potential ones are ray tracing and AVI decoding.

Is ray tracing support useful beyond 3D modelling and gaming?

Will hardware AVI decoding be expected for a good experience in 3-5 years?

Are there any other differences between M2/M3 Max that might be worth waiting for?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Andrey84
D

drrich2

macrumors regular
Jan 11, 2005
233
137
Some things may not technically be a matter of the M3 Max chip, but may yet be features of the M3 Max Studio. While neither of these is a guarantee, 2 new technologies in the process of rolling out might be useful over time, especially for people who keep and use their Mac for 7+ years.

1.) Wifi 7.
2.) Thunderbolt 5.

A big question with Thunderbolt 5 is how fast will external SSDs made for it be when hooked up this way? And will that performance difference vs TB 3 & 4 be practically useful and noticeable?

How heavy is your Mac's wifi usage load? How much do you do that could benefit from greater bandwidth? If the FCC gives the go-ahead to increase power and range in the 6-GHz spectrum, will that let Wifi 7 routers offer greater 6-Gz range than current 6E routers do?

Today, these questions may be intellectually interesting but of little real value, and that might be the case in 2025 and 2026. But come 2028, are you likely to wish you had those? What about 2030?

It's my understanding once a Mac is released, there's a set number of years Apple provides compatibility with new OS releases, and another set number for security updates. If so, the M3 Max Studio gains another year over the M2 Max Studio.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: colodane and monoduster
R

Rnd-chars

macrumors regular
Apr 4, 2023
247
232
monoduster said:
anyone want to chime in on how important ray tracing or AVI support will be?
Click to expand...
For a machine that’s plugged in all the time? Very little.

Generally hardware decoding for AV1 (or any codec) means that a task can be performed using less energy/CPU resources than trying to do the same thing using software. This would have a more significant impact if you were using the M3 Max in a MacBook Pro on battery and streamed a lot of AV1 content, but you’d likely never notice it in a desktop machine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: monoduster
xraydoc

xraydoc

Contributor
Oct 9, 2005
10,799
5,264
192.168.1.1
I'm planning on buying an M3 Max Mac Studio when the come out (reportedly this summer). And while I'm not holding out hope of TB5 support (though perhaps that's why they're delayed until summer), I am going to enjoy the M2 Ultra-equivalent performance for the price of the lower Max unit.

Not too worried about wifi 7 on a desktop Mac personally. I'll be plugging mine into my ethernet network.

The M3's GPU memory optimization is something I'm looking forward to, if I've been reading about it correctly. I'm anticipating buying either 36GB or 48GB, much less likely a 64GB model, depending on how they're configured, so a little GPU memory savings will be a welcomed feature.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cl516
C

Chancha

macrumors 68020
Mar 19, 2014
2,095
1,897
As for AV1, you can already test this on a M3 based MacBook, say watching a 8k60p HDR video on YouTube, the CPU consumption goes from 700% to 70% with AV1 encoding enabled. This of course is very meaningful when on battery, since it translates into uptime, but like the above poster noted it is probably of no use for a desktop. But if the video spec is so demanding that software decoding alone can't even play it without dropping frames, then the hardware decoding becomes a prerequisite to even begin to play it; but the content space has a long way to go before reaching that point, at least for a single video, unless you are on the cutting edge in authoring / editing. The only practical possibility right now is a ZOOM call with like 25+ streams on screen since ZOOM now uses AV1, but even then it is a stretch.

Ray tracing is too new on macOS to be relevant any time soon. Some already released games are starting to add back hardware RT, but quite notably the AAA titles that even Apple helps advertise, namely Resident Evils and Death Stranding etc, they are released after M3 was announced but they didn't have time to including ray tracing (yet). As of this moment only experimental 3D work can make use of the cores and see meaningful cut off time in rendering.

WiFi 7, TB5, Bluetooth or Apple in-house modem etc, these sort of hardware advances typically only come with a new generation of chip hardware, meaning soonest is M4. Like the MBP 14" 16", the M2 Pro / Max gen already got updated WiFi etc where the M3 gen just inherits them, can see the same with the Mac Studio.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drrich2
Pressure

Pressure

macrumors 603
May 30, 2006
5,066
1,400
Denmark
socialwill said:
Thunderbolt 5 will open up the gate for a new Pro Display XDR with ProMotion. Right now TB4 is a bandwidth limit on what it can pass, TB5 will give it a lot more headroom.
Click to expand...
HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a (HBR3) alt-mode with DSC over USB4 or TB4 can already support that 🤷🏼‍♂️
 
D

danwells

macrumors 6502a
Apr 4, 2015
778
611
The performance? The CPU performance of an M3 Max is essentially that of an M2 Ultra. The M3 cores themselves perform somewhat better, and there are 1.5x as many of them (P-cores). Due to core scaling imperfections, I'd expect the M3 Ultra to be about 1.5x-1.7x the speed of the M2 Ultra or M3 Max depending on workload, rather than twice

GPU performance is not as big an improvement (with the full-power M3 Max having about 3/4 the GPU performance of a 60 core M2 Ultra, and 2/3 that of a 76-core Ultra). That suggests that a full power M3 Ultra will have about 1.33x the GPU performance of a full power M2 Ultra (GPU cores, by and large, do scale).

Where this gets interesting is the "little Ultra" 60-core Mac Studio, especially as a refurbished machine. It'll draw somewhat more power (still highly efficient), but it'll be as fast as an M3 Max from a CPU perspective, and it has a faster GPU. You can pick one up for $3399 (refurbished) in the base configuration, and it ships with 64 GB of RAM.

If you wait for an M3 Max (not Ultra) Mac Studio, I'd expect "big Max" (the 16/40 model with competitive CPU performance) to be almost that expensive. The MacBook Pro took a $200 price jump in the base configuration from M2 Max to M3 Max, so I wouldn't be surprised to have a base Mac Studio around $2299 or even $2399 if Apple tacks an extra hundred on to the lower-production Studio. Because the difference between the two M3 Max versions is so significant, Apple charges $500 extra for the fully enabled one (and a RAM boost from 36 GB to 48 GB). That suggests that a "Big Max" Studio will start around $2799-$2899. Give it 64 GB of RAM and it's $2999-$3099.

For a $300-$400 price difference in the same configuration, is it worth buying a discounted M2 Ultra now instead of an M3 Max later? You get a boost in GPU performance, extra Thunderbolt ports, a theoretical boost in RAM access (for the VERY rare scenario where 400GB/S is not enough), and a computer now, instead of in 5-9 months (everybody hopes for WWDC, but October is a real possibility).
 
  • Like
Reactions: HappyIntro
G

Gloor

macrumors 6502a
Apr 19, 2007
794
310
All good but you forgot the big one. Raytracing and mesh shaders. That itself will be huge improvement.
I wouldn't get M2 Studio now (unless one really needs it) as the upgrades in M3 are game changers.

danwells said:
The performance? The CPU performance of an M3 Max is essentially that of an M2 Ultra. The M3 cores themselves perform somewhat better, and there are 1.5x as many of them (P-cores). Due to core scaling imperfections, I'd expect the M3 Ultra to be about 1.5x-1.7x the speed of the M2 Ultra or M3 Max depending on workload, rather than twice

GPU performance is not as big an improvement (with the full-power M3 Max having about 3/4 the GPU performance of a 60 core M2 Ultra, and 2/3 that of a 76-core Ultra). That suggests that a full power M3 Ultra will have about 1.33x the GPU performance of a full power M2 Ultra (GPU cores, by and large, do scale).

Where this gets interesting is the "little Ultra" 60-core Mac Studio, especially as a refurbished machine. It'll draw somewhat more power (still highly efficient), but it'll be as fast as an M3 Max from a CPU perspective, and it has a faster GPU. You can pick one up for $3399 (refurbished) in the base configuration, and it ships with 64 GB of RAM.

If you wait for an M3 Max (not Ultra) Mac Studio, I'd expect "big Max" (the 16/40 model with competitive CPU performance) to be almost that expensive. The MacBook Pro took a $200 price jump in the base configuration from M2 Max to M3 Max, so I wouldn't be surprised to have a base Mac Studio around $2299 or even $2399 if Apple tacks an extra hundred on to the lower-production Studio. Because the difference between the two M3 Max versions is so significant, Apple charges $500 extra for the fully enabled one (and a RAM boost from 36 GB to 48 GB). That suggests that a "Big Max" Studio will start around $2799-$2899. Give it 64 GB of RAM and it's $2999-$3099.

For a $300-$400 price difference in the same configuration, is it worth buying a discounted M2 Ultra now instead of an M3 Max later? You get a boost in GPU performance, extra Thunderbolt ports, a theoretical boost in RAM access (for the VERY rare scenario where 400GB/S is not enough), and a computer now, instead of in 5-9 months (everybody hopes for WWDC, but October is a real possibility).
Click to expand...
 
  • Like
Reactions: krell100
S

Schnitzel1979

macrumors member
Oct 4, 2013
47
19
wmy5 said:
I don't think there will be another M3-family chip after today's M4 iPad announcement. The new Studio will use M4 Max/Ultra chip. Hopefully we can see it in 2024, not 2025.
Click to expand...
M4 Chips in the Mac Studio would be great. lets see what Apple presents at the wwdc in June
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom