Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2023 Mac Studio Reviews: Faster M2 Ultra Chip and 8K Display Support
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Alternative take: the cost for Apple to make the base model 1TB is $10-15.
This is a Pro’s Pro device right?
With all these displays, would it make sense to set up 3 workspaces at home with 2 4K monitors each and allocate 8 processors and 16 GPUs per workspace so 3 people can work from the same machine via a couple of VMs? Maybe one running on Windows 11 Arm, another with an instance of MacOS and a third with something else. When in need for more power, you can get more resources when needed. Only the mouse and keyboard might be challenging.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Because people will pay. Price is not based solely on performance specs. Price is set on what the market will bear. Mac Pro is well established to cost more than any other Mac. Nobody should be surprised that it is priced higher than Studio. Those accustomed to buying Mac Pro feel no surprise that it costs the most.
Why is "sugar water" now priced at 3X what it was priced pre-covid? We might spin "inflation" but inflation only inflates if people are willing to pay more. Have people choose to keep their cash instead of paying 3X the established price and- magically- the cost fo sugar water will work its way back down to a level that will motivate a sufficient number to buy again.
Contrary to mainstream belief, buyers decide pricing by voting with their wallets. (Collectively) Don't pay and prices will come down. Pay a price- high or not- and that price is right. So sayeth the most objective gauge of pricing: dollars exchanged.
Last edited:
I think we have to take the M1 Ultra sales figures with a rather large grain of salt... It was a new CPU in a new product line (Mac Studio)... and on top of that, a premium high-end device that was being marketed toward a segment that has been waiting years for the Mac Pro, which Apple had also said was still incoming.
With these M2 models now, the landscape is different. The M2 Ultra Mac Pro is available, the M2 Ultra Studio and M2 Max Studio are available, and the M2 Pro Mini and M2 Mini are available. So it's easy to survey the options and find which of the five best fits your needs. We didn't have that ability when the M1 Studio came out - and the "Is this it? Is this the Mac Pro, or is it still coming?" concerns certainly wouldn't have helped M1 Ultra Studio sales.
If it truly was a "flop", we'd likely not have seen an M2 version and it would have just eventually been sun-setted like the iMac Pro.
I'm not saying it was a wild success, but it did fill the role formerly handled by the iMac 5K and that was a pretty popular model within the Mac desktop line.
From what I have been reading and hearing, it's a bit faster in CPU, a fair bit faster in GPU and quieter than the M1 Ultra.
Tick-tock'ing assumes a particular somewhat long-term plan (over at least three or four paired rounds); I don't think we know enough to say that's Apple's plan.
All we do know is that every indication is that the A15 was an energy-optimized version of the A14. As I said, there are some improvements, but almost all the performance improvement is from higher frequency at essentially the same IPC. Then A16 looks like a mad scramble to do the best they could with what was available (N4 on TSMC's side, next gen design on Apple's side ready for N3, so we get basically a shrunk A15).
It certainly would make sense (IMHO) for Apple to alternate between performance SoC designs (which then go on to Pro/Max/Ultra) and energy improved designs (which only ship as A and M). But that's just a speculation, I wouldn't claim more than that. And it may be an infeasible speculation if Apple concludes that TSMC dates are too variable to be relied upon for such a scheme...
DisplayPort - Wikipedia
The most recent version was launched in Oct 2022, and there was a period of stasis before then. To be fair part of the issue is that they want to stay in sync with other standards like USB and so had to wait for them.
So my guess is that Apple couldn't make that Oct 2022 date (ie finalized things before then) and decided to stick with IP that was known to work. (In theory the older 2.0 spec supports some of what you want; in reality it was a godawful mess that required nastly cables, so barely anyone used it.)
Presumably this will all be revised for the next rev, to be based on 2.1
Really? You know the sales numbers and how they differ compared to the sales volume Apple expected (ie the definition of a flop)?
Please share...
I use Clip Studio a lot and 64GB is more than enough. I work in 600dpi and there’s no problems with tons of layers and giant brushes. I’ve been using the M1 Max
No RIP at all. M1 Ultra users like myself are doing just fine. No need to monkey branch onto the latest and greatest when the current gear we own is already overkill for our needs.
"Still" completely silent? Because previous Ars Technica Mac reviewer John Siracusa says it has an annoying whine and that he hopes they fixed that.
Jason Snell has the M2 Mac Studio Ultra on evaluation loan and he says it is quieter than his M1 Mac Studio Max that he purchased. He also spoke with Apple engineers at WWDC and they stated that Apple did make changes to the cooling system for the M2 Mac Studio to combat the noise people were reporting with the M1 model.
My experience with a 16gb MBP 14” M1 Pro while troubleshooting an issue with Apple support - I opened photoshop, illustrator, I design, premiere, after fx, logic, ableton and opened demo files or big projects in each.
It made almost no difference. It wouldn’t slow down in doing tasks even with some background rendering.
You might also want to check MaxTech’s comparison of 64gb versus 96gb in the Studio. They could find next to no benefit for the vast majority of tasks. (Max tech is not perfect but this test seems competent.)
64gb is almost certainly sufficient for your needs with those apps unless you’re doing a lot of 8k + editing.
Last edited:
I’m curious is there a hardware limitation of TB4 not being capable of 4K at higher than 60hz?!
Is there ANY videographer or photo editor working at extremes that is tiring of 60hz or has seen issues with their work or proofing their work on 60hz?!
Sorry I’m not knowledgeable in this regard. I’m just trying to figure out why more pixels for a much higher resolution equals clarity (much like throwing higher megapixels in a smartphone camera) vs also adding a higher refresh rate.
Oh you mean when macOS 11 debuted under full kernel guidance of Craig?! Lol.
We’ll still be dreaming on that one.
Most likely what’ll re-assure you of Apple is if Microsoft continues their direction of NPU-based computers using Windows 12 and forcing users to use all around the clock internet connection and subscribe to cloud data to run the computer. That’s the gist of what I’m getting with their move to ARM based computers.
If my hunch is right, that’s really gonna upset a few gamers. Or solidify console gaming or streaming games is the way?!
Did you mean 16gb or 64gb? I only have 16gb in the new M2 Pro Mac Mini. However, it did appear that my old 2014 i7 MBP was handling memory exactly the same when I opened an identical FCPx project in each. BOTH were using about 12GB ram and about 4-5GB swap.
I tested with a 16gb MBP 14 with M1 pro. ASi handles memory demands well.
Also the storage speeds have increased as well
Also the M1 chips the 2 media engines could ONLY operate on separate videos during export:
I'd love to see the GB5/6 comparison of the M1 Max/Ultra, M2 Max/Ultra, and the 18-core Xeon iMac ProSo we are comparing an M2 Ultra with Intel 28 Core unit from 2016, which seems unfair.
These days Intel and AMD have CPUs with 56 and 64 cores with access to 4TB of RAM.
The most significant benefit of the M processors is power consumption, but workstation has fewer restrictions and needs to deliver raw power.
I would love to see a comparison with the newer CPUs from AMD and Intel.
Apple is not even in the first 100 when it comes to raw power
PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End
PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!www.cpubenchmark.net
I'd love to see the GB5/6 comparison of the M1 Max/Ultra, M2 Max/Ultra, and the 18-core Xeon iMac Pro
You should be able to get that from the GeekBench site.
Based on MaxTech's GeekBench 6 results, they found that the M2 Ultra is a bit faster in the Mac Pro than the Mac Studio in both single core and multicore. The SoC does run cooler (though neither gets very warm), so it might just be able to hold maximum clock longer or Apple might have increased the clock-speeds on the Pro slightly.