Mac Studio Reviews: Faster Than a $13,000 Mac Pro

[Roykor]

I think there are greater polluters out there and larger energy use cases that eclipse the M1 user base.

That is not my point. This is not looking at other polluters, but looking at your own wallet. Energy is expensive these days. Multiply that if there is a floor filled with artists working for clients. The "i dont care about how many watt it consumes, i am an pro user" mindset is stupid and old. The ARM cpu shows it can do heavy lifting while only sipping watts.. and I hope this will be a new benchmark for the whole industry. Anyway, thats my take on it

 

[ct2k7]

That is not my point. This is not looking at other polluters, but looking at your own wallet. Energy is expensive these days. Multiply that if there is a floor filled with artists working for clients. The "i dont care about how many watt it consumes, i am an pro user" mindset is stupid and old. The ARM cpu shows it can do heavy lifting while only sipping watts.. and I hope this will be a new benchmark for the whole industry. Anyway, thats my take on it

Ok, I understand your point.

I just don’t feel that many businesses care about the cost of utilities and accept it as part of the business.

 

[polyphenol]

Same with my Windows PC. This is 2022 and modern computers have low power sleep functions

And some work better than others.

If I leave my Surface Pro connected to mains overnight, it is still warm to the touch, even in a cold room. Warmer than my mini or MBP get when actually being used.

 

[russell_314]

And some work better than others.

If I leave my Surface Pro connected to mains overnight, it is still warm to the touch, even in a cold room. Warmer than my mini or MBP get when actually being used.

Wow I wonder if it's the battery charging or is it waking up to do something?

 

[ct2k7]

And some work better than others.

If I leave my Surface Pro connected to mains overnight, it is still warm to the touch, even in a cold room. Warmer than my mini or MBP get when actually being used.

I find my Surface Pro X tends to outlast my iPads, when they’re sleeping

 

[russell_314]

I find my Surface Pro X tends to outlast my iPads, when they’re sleeping

So it works best if you don't use it? ??

 

[ct2k7]

So it works best if you don't use it? ??

I don’t know, they’re never very warm to the touch or not that I’ve noticed when using them.

 

[polyphenol]

Wow I wonder if it's the battery charging or is it waking up to do something?

If I leave it disconnected from mains, the battery really doesn't last many days. It appears to be doing things, but I have not specially chosen things to be done - maybe Windows Updates, but nothing else obvious.

 

[Icelus]

 

[svish]

Very powerful. But hopefully, Apple does not see the combination of Mac Studio and Studio Display as the replacement for 27” iMac.

 

[Ethosik]

No one said the m1 max was slow; things can always be faster but who cares if you can export 2min quicker

When I’m exporting a 10 hour video? That equates to hours of time saved. And I’d rather not have my laptop running that hot for that long.

 

[MacBH928]

Have you actually done anything like that? I’m guessing not. Otherwise you wouldn’t make a statement like that.

Rendering a 22 second clip in After Effects took over 4 hours on an M1 Ultra MBP with 32GB RAM. I wouldn’t even dare try it on the M1 MBA we have, it would cripple it. My guess is the Ultra cuts that time significantly. Even if it shaved 30 minutes off (probably more), do you know what 30 minutes is worth to people that do that for a living? The machine will potentially pay for itself in 2 weeks or less.

you can't be serious, these numbers are like 1996 numbers. 4 hours for 22 seconds? The reviews in the videos showing its rendering videos (and i think the iJustine one is showing 21 min video) in 3:30 minutes. She also showed 18 prores videos playing together on the device. How long does it take for game developers to render all these 4K games in complete 3D world? I think I am misunderstanding something here?

After rendering, does something go wrong and you have to go back and fix and re-render for another 4 hours?

if it takes 4 hours to render 22 seconds, why is any one excited over this? Who is it for then?

 

[theorist9]

The headline is clickbait—or, if it's an accurate reflection of the linked reviews, then those reviews have been cherry-picked. A more accurage headline would read: "....Faster in some tasks, slower in others."

From what I've read, the top M1 Ultra is only consistently faster than the top Mac Pro when using software for which Apple has built-in accelerators (like Pro Res). Outside of that, it depends on the use case. For instance, these links indicate it's slower for R3D Raw playback and export:

Apple Silicon Mac Pro may be less upgradable than 2019 model - 9to5Mac

The latest Bloomberg report says that we could see the upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro by WWDC in June. The M1 Max MacBook Pro has already ...

9to5mac.com

7.1 Mac Pro next to Mac Studio - don't worry, it's still good

Got the Ultra Mac Studio in - here it is next to the 7.1 Mac Pro. From working with it so far, it's a beautiful little machine, tons of power. Doesn't feel much faster on the every day use side of things, perhaps apps open a faster, but not too noticeable vs the Mac Pro. Just did some...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Unregistered 4U]

The headline is clickbait—or, if it's an accurate reflection of the linked reviews, then those reviews have been cherry-picked. A more accurage headline would read: "....Faster in some tasks, slower in others."

From what I've read, the top M1 Ultra is only consistently faster than the top Mac Pro when using software for which Apple has built-in accelerators (like Pro Res). Outside of that, it depends on the use case. For instance, these links indicate it's slower for R3D Raw playback and export:

Apple Silicon Mac Pro may be less upgradable than 2019 model - 9to5Mac

The latest Bloomberg report says that we could see the upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro by WWDC in June. The M1 Max MacBook Pro has already ...

9to5mac.com

View attachment 1996361

7.1 Mac Pro next to Mac Studio - don't worry, it's still good

Got the Ultra Mac Studio in - here it is next to the 7.1 Mac Pro. From working with it so far, it's a beautiful little machine, tons of power. Doesn't feel much faster on the every day use side of things, perhaps apps open a faster, but not too noticeable vs the Mac Pro. Just did some...

forums.macrumors.com

View attachment 1996362

Well, it depends on the configuration of the Mac Pro, doesn’t it? The devil’s in the details…
Price JUST for the upgrade, still have to buy a Mac Pro

Price for the whole Mac Studio, Ultra, maxed out storage even (to make it REALLY unfair! )

 

[theorist9]

Well, it depends on the configuration of the Mac Pro, doesn’t it? The devil’s in the details…
Price JUST for the upgrade, still have to buy a Mac Pro
View attachment 1996392
Price for the whole Mac Studio, Ultra, maxed out storage even (to make it REALLY unfair! )
View attachment 1996393

Good point. The W6800x Duo that rondocap found was 2.5 x faster for exporting 4k R3D raw wouldn't be $13,000, it would be closer to double that. But at 2.5x faster with the W6800X, it seems you could drop down quite a bit in GPU power (and, correspondingly, expense), and still be faster than the Mac Studio Ultra at that task. E.g., how would the Dual 5700X ($8000 less) perform?

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Good point. The W6800x Duo that rondocap found was 2.5 x faster for exporting 4k R3D raw wouldn't be $13,000, it would be closer to double that. But at 2.5x faster with the W6800X, it seems you could drop down quite a bit in GPU power (and, correspondingly, expense), and still be faster than the Mac Studio Ultra at that task. E.g., how would the Dual 5700X ($8000 less) perform?

That’s a valid question and I was thinking the same thing. I’m not in the position to check that out personally , but it would be very interesting to know what performance level can be reached at which dollar level (right off the bat, we’d drop the M1 Studio by $2,200 because that’s for 8gigs. On top of that, though, even once the price is leveled out, the Intel system will still be a slower Mac for a whole lot of other tasks.

Actually, so, looking at it another way, for the TOP performance with exporting 4k R3D (if that’s an appreciable amount of work that a particular user performs), I’d be willing to bet that the best price/performance is likely not ANY Mac system. Which goes back to my thought that anyone using any Mac (or specifically M1 Mac) is already aware that they’re not going to be getting the best performance across the board. What they ARE getting is a fast computer that runs macOS with far fewer problems than a hackintosh.

Oh, and we can assume that any current Apple Silicon migration efforts will not have had the same level of activity around low level performance tweaking, so there’s also a lot of performance that MAY be left on the table. Another interesting activity would be to run this same test in a year with more refined code and see if the delta is still there.

 

[theorist9]

Oh, and we can assume that any current Apple Silicon migration efforts will not have had the same level of activity around low level performance tweaking, so there’s also a lot of performance that MAY be left on the table. Another interesting activity would be to run this same test in a year with more refined code and see if the delta is still there.

Yeah, that's definitely the case. Mathematica's benchmark (which, I think typically uses up to 4 cores) continues to be significantly slower on AS than on the core i9 iMac.