Endless circle with Mac Studio

[multimania]

I’m really struggling, I know I’m not alone but I’m on the absolute edge of getting a Mac Studio. I have 2 other options and I’m driving myself into the ground about it. I know the choice is mine but I’d truly appreciate some help.

Currently I have a MBP 2017 15” 3.1 1tb. It has been a fine computer and has done (almost) everything I need. I am a sound designer and for that the Mbp is still fine. I also produce YouTube videos to go with my sounds and I’m wanting to move up my video productions from HD to 4K. To make things worse I recently updated my mbp to Ventura and now my video rendering in FCPX/Motion has slowed further.

My choices are either to get an M1 Mac Studio with either 24 or 32 gpu cores/1tb or a Mac Mini M2 pro 12 core/19 gpu cores. I understand about the new generation being faster but I keep coming back to the studio due to wider memory bandwidth, encoders etc. I still want the highest cpu performance possible as I run some cpu only graphics software which really needs lots of rendering muscle.

The last option I have is to wait. To answer the obvious question about whether time is money, well yes but I cannot afford or wish to change my machine out in the near term. I like keeping my Mac’s for a while (still have my old Mac Pro 2008!

I guess my main question is whether a 10 core M1 Max is really that much slower than an M2 pro and also is an M2 max still possible soon.

Sorry for my distorted brain dump! Any ideas would be most welcome.

 

[mcnallym]

Don't see an M2 Studio until the M2 Ultra is launched.

There was a 5 month gap between the M1 MBP and the M1 Studio launching so could well be a 5 month gap till an M2 Studio launching so could be May/June. Now with the belief that the Mac Pro going to launch with an M2 Ultra then there is a possibility that Studio update delayed to keep the Ultra for the Mac Pro. However we don't know for certain.
Certainly longer then the return window would be.

Now we know what the M2 Max will be like if Apple follows history and will be a 12 Core CPU/30 core GPU, with a 38 core GPU option.

Now from the MBP can see that a 12/19 Pro to 12/30 Max is £250.

So would expect an M2 Max to start at about £2,500, with a 500 uplift over the M2 Mini Pro of which 250 just the SoC + 100 for 10Gbe upgrade as well with 150 for chassis etc.

That is my opinion as I suspect the M1 Studio entry price lowered as no M1 Pro mini available, and Apple likely to move upwards with the M2 launching.

Of course can usually get the Studio refurbed now which can bring the price down further.

Neither system will be slow however if CPU is more important then probably find the M2 pro is a better buy over an M1 Max with 12 Cores of higher performance even if 8P + 4E vs 8P + 2E for the Max, however neither is slow and both will be a BIG jump over a 2017 mbp.

19 Cores vs 24 Cores GPU probably not a huge difference.

In ideal world probably would buy one of each and then return the one that don't want, however you need the money upfront for that. However the gap is too close to call unless can run actual jobs that you run on one of them, which is likely why not many responses

 

[Jorbanead]

This is a really tricky one.

First, if you want the better Mac for video editing, get the studio. If you want the mac with better cpu performance, get the mini. Sadly right now you have to choose one or the other.

The good news though is both of them are great computers. You just have to decide if you want to err on a better GPU or CPU.

As for the future of the Mac Studio - truly nobody knows. This is new territory for Apple and it could become a yearly staple like the MacBook Pro, or it could go the way of the iMac Pro and be a one and done thing. Or it could lay somewhere in between like the old Mac mini and get updates every few years. Right now AFAIK there are zero rumors about a new studio. Everyone is focusing on the possible Mac Pro and the 15” MacBook Air right now. Outside of that we haven’t heard much.

The good news is macs retain their value pretty well. If you get the studio you could always sell it for not too much loss. However - this is exactly why I will wait as long as I can and then I upgrade when they announce a product I want to buy.

 

[klky]

Is there a reason you're not considering an M1 Ultra? You didn't mention budget as a constraint, only a concern with getting the most power and not wanting to upgrade again for a while. Pretty sure an M1 Ultra would tick both those boxes.

 

[multimania]

Thank you everyone for your responses. It is indeed tricky!

Sorry @klky I didn't mention – yes my absolute limit is £/$2400 which is @ Mac Studio w 32 cores + 1tb hdd level. If I could afford more I would go Ultra for sure! Good to hear @mcnallym that both cpus are fast enough over my MBP. I was rendering on it today. The thermal throttling on it was down to 47% according to terminal .

I can't personally see a Mac Studio M2 coming if the Mac Pro is almost out. It would have to at least be afterwards by some months. I think I know what to do and by sounding it out here it's much clearer. My no.1 requirement is for a usable 4k timeline in FCPX (at the moment it is ridiculously bad) and more GPU power for Apple Motion (+plugins). I may keep my Logic Pro sessions on my MBP as there's no problem there for the type of stuff I do.

The M2 Mini Pro only appears to beat the Max in CPU and it's literally for one application - Artmatic Voyager as it's CPU bound with rendering. How much time I'd save with an M2 when some renders take hours may be measurable but it's got to be much better than now!

 

[SteveP1234]

The Mac Pro will have two choices of chips…..just like the Mac mini and the studio. If you look, all Mac products are coming out with two options, iPads and laptops.

 

[Jorbanead]

The Mac Pro will have two choices of chips…..just like the Mac mini and the studio. If you look, all Mac products are coming out with two options, iPads and laptops.

This is what I think too. My hope is Mac Pro comes with the Ultra and a new Extreme variant. So the headless desktop lineup would be:

Mac mini - M# and M# Pro
Mac Studio - M# Max and M# Ultra
Mac Pro - M# Ultra and M# Extreme

It’s only the Air and iMac that come with only the baseline M# chip, but they still use binned chips so there are options on core counts.

 

[multimania]

Well I’ve ordered a Mac Studio Max 32 core gpu with 1tb. I figured in the end that more gpu power, dual encoders was going to be worth more than slightly faster overall cpu of the Mini pro 12 core. There’s no right answer really but I’m happy with my decision.

I’ve got a good wait as it’s on 4 week back order being a custom config but I definitely needed 1tb regardless of the extra gpu. But I’m sure it’ll be worth it. Thanks very much for all of your advice!

 

[Mac4EverDrummer]

I'm in same boat here. So i priced this out:
mac mini: 32gb unified mem, 512gb ssd, 10gb ethernet, logic pro. => $1999.99
mac studio: same as above: $2198.99

Why wouldn't i go with the mac studio?

thankx

 

[multimania]

Well my Mac Studio arrived yesterday. I must say I’m impressed. Obviously I don’t have an M2 Pro sitting next to it so I can’t offer a definitive comparison.

However my early tests with Apple Motion, Fcpx and Logic X confirm that this machine absolutely dominates my old Mbp. My reservation was for the slight performance advantage of the 12 core M2 cpu. Whilst I’m sure it might shave a little of certain tasks I haven’t felt that and, more importantly I feel the whole machine is very balanced in its power.

With regards to noise (I read some posts here of it) here’s my experience:

Last night I setup an Artmatic render (Cpu bound) and simultaneously rendered a 4K motion graphic in Motion. I didn’t hear any fan increase at all. In fact I haven’t actually heard it at all!! It just chewed through the tasks as if it could keep doing it!

The only issue I’ve had so far is my LaCie 2big 8tb keeps sleeping and spinning up. I have removed the “put hard disks to sleep” and it’s still happening. I’m pretty sure it’s the drive as I’ve had loads of issues with it on my old machine in the past.

Personally speaking, I’m very happy I chose the Max over the M2 as the extra I/O, encoders & gpu performance, not to mention it being cool and quiet make it feel like it’s a Mac that’s going to serve my needs for many years to come.

Good luck with your decision!

 

[Mac4EverDrummer]

Well my Mac Studio arrived yesterday. I must say I’m impressed. Obviously I don’t have an M2 Pro sitting next to it so I can’t offer a definitive comparison.

However my early tests with Apple Motion, Fcpx and Logic X confirm that this machine absolutely dominates my old Mbp. My reservation was for the slight performance advantage of the 12 core M2 cpu. Whilst I’m sure it might shave a little of certain tasks I haven’t felt that and, more importantly I feel the whole machine is very balanced in its power.

With regards to noise (I read some posts here of it) here’s my experience:

Last night I setup an Artmatic render (Cpu bound) and simultaneously rendered a 4K motion graphic in Motion. I didn’t hear any fan increase at all. In fact I haven’t actually heard it at all!! It just chewed through the tasks as if it could keep doing it!

The only issue I’ve had so far is my LaCie 2big 8tb keeps sleeping and spinning up. I have removed the “put hard disks to sleep” and it’s still happening. I’m pretty sure it’s the drive as I’ve had loads of issues with it on my old machine in the past.

Personally speaking, I’m very happy I chose the Max over the M2 as the extra I/O, encoders & gpu performance, not to mention it being cool and quiet make it feel like it’s a Mac that’s going to serve my needs for many years to come.

Good luck with your decision!

That’s great to hear. Possibly most of the noise complaints were months ago
👍✌️👌

 

[jim0266]

I'm in same boat here. So i priced this out:
mac mini: 32gb unified mem, 512gb ssd, 10gb ethernet, logic pro. => $1999.99
mac studio: same as above: $2198.99

Why wouldn't i go with the mac studio?

thankx

I was leaning toward the Mini over the Studio... Until I trooped down to the Apple store to run my "real world" test. Looking at a bazillion YT videos actually told me very little about my real world needs, which are:

• I don't make money off my Mac (2015 27" iMac with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD), other than using it over my crappy work-supplied Windoze laptop while I WFH 97% of the time.
• As a hobby I run LR classic and Photoshop, but shoot very few images these days. About 50K images in LR.
• Making a few videos a month out of my GoPro 4k or iPhone in 4k. Some can be up to 20 mins long. Most are ~5-10 mins. Nothing fancy in the editing.

I took a 1 minute 4k/30FPS on my iPhone and Air Dropped it to the base Mac Studio and to a 14" MBP with the 16GB/1TB SSD to simulate the Mac Mini Pro I would purchase.

In FCP I made 1,5,10 and 15-minute versions from this file and added a simple title that spanned the videos. For someone with my needs I was shocked how little difference there was between my old iMac and the Mini. I had to get to a 15 minute video before I saw any real difference for the amount I use this computer for these intensive tasks. The performance gap between the Studio and the iMac versus the gap between the Mini Pro and the iMac now has me leaning more towards spending a bit more for the Studio. Amortized over how long I keep Macs seems to make sense.

For LR and PS I would guess either the Studio or Mini Pro would get me the same results.

These are the stats I recorded between the three machines to export the same file. I ran each test export at lease twice, some 3 times, and averaged the result is there was a noticeable difference in export time.

 

[bobcomer]

Mac Studio and to a 14" MBP with the 16GB/1TB SSD to simulate the Mac Mini Pro I would purchase.

You sure that wasn't an M1 MBP? I find those times for it odd compared to what else I have seen.

 

[Jorbanead]

You sure that wasn't an M1 MBP? I find those times for it odd compared to what else I have seen.

Apple Store doesn’t have any M1 MacBook Pro’s

The studio still has a better GPU and more encode/decode engines. So for video editing the M1 Max is going to pull ahead compared to M2 Pro.

 

[bobcomer]

Apple Store doesn’t have any M1 MacBook Pro’s

I don't see why they wouldn't -- old demo stock, and it does look the same...

The studio still has a better GPU and more encode/decode engines. So for video editing the M1 Max is going to pull ahead compared to M2 Pro.

That it would, but I'm not sure it would make as much difference in the test as it did.

 

[Jorbanead]

I don't see why they wouldn't -- old demo stock, and it does look the same...

Have you ever been to an Apple Store? They never have old products that have been discontinued.

Apple uses JIT manufacturing which means even for their most popular products (iPhones) they only have up to two weeks of supply at any time. This means when they update a new product (this case MacBook Pro); they have very low stock of the discontinued products. The remaining stock gets 1) sold to 3rd party retailers 2) kept for replacement units and parts 3) given to corporate employees.

The only time they keep older units available is when they continue to sell the older model as a lower cost option (like they currently sell the M1 MacBook Air still since the M2 Air had a price increase, and they still sell iPhone 12 and 13 as well). As of now, they have discontinued the M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro’s.

 

[bobcomer]

Have you ever been to an Apple Store?

Yep.

They never have old products that have been discontinued.

That's a pretty bold statement and hard to prove, but whatever, it's kind of irrelevant to my point

I just found the timings didn't seem right for an M2 Pro, that's all.

 

[jim0266]

You sure that wasn't an M1 MBP? I find those times for it odd compared to what else I have seen.

I was an M2 14" MBP. No doubt. I too was surprised the times weren't better compared to my 2015 iMac.

 

[bobcomer]

I was an M2 14" MBP. No doubt. I too was surprised the times weren't better compared to my 2015 iMac.

Thanks for verifying, that was a shocker. Anyway, you got your answer which is best for what you want to do!