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silverlakerCA

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 2, 2020
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I'm looking to upgrade form my sturdy Mac Studio M1 to either a new M4 (the basic) or the Mac Studio M2 Ultra that's priced well as Costco. I have never purchased a Mac from Costco. I am not finding the M2 Ultra as an Apple-refurbished so don't know how to compare the cost.

Would appreciate your advice.
Thanks
 
What apps are you looking to run? The ultra should will outperform the M4 Max studio in everything but single core tasks.

It looks like the costco has the m2 ultra for 2,500 dollars, has 24 cpu cores, 60 gpu cores, 64GB of ram, 1TB of storage.
The M4 Max base model is 1,800, has 14 cores/32gpu cores, 36gb of ram and 512GB of storage

On paper, the M2 ultra wins out. but The M2 Ultra studio came out in 2023, so that will hit legacy support sooner then the M4 Max if that matters.
 
What apps are you looking to run? The ultra should will outperform the M4 Max studio in everything but single core tasks.

It looks like the costco has the m2 ultra for 2,500 dollars, has 24 cpu cores, 60 gpu cores, 64GB of ram, 1TB of storage.
The M4 Max base model is 1,800, has 14 cores/32gpu cores, 36gb of ram and 512GB of storage

On paper, the M2 ultra wins out. but The M2 Ultra studio came out in 2023, so that will hit legacy support sooner then the M4 Max if that matters.
I use it for photo editing, blogging, and about to start work on a documentary. I'm sure both the M4 and M2 Ultra can handle it. Just considering the small-enough price difference since I'll be keeping whatever I buy for a long while (I hope)
 
I use it for photo editing, blogging, and about to start work on a documentary. I'm sure both the M4 and M2 Ultra can handle it. Just considering the small-enough price difference since I'll be keeping whatever I buy for a long while (I hope)
This begs the question: What are the issues you're experiencing with the M1 Studio that a new Studio would solve?
 
Unless you know you need an Ultra you will likely benefit more from the M4 Max. And if you are using a first gen Studio in 2025 and that still works for you then you clearly don't need an Ultra. Likely a M4 Max base model will be cheaper as well.

The Ultra has a lot more CPU and GPU cores and scales well with apps that parallelize their computations to make use of all these cores at once. Especially for CPU based workloads this is rarely the case. Most apps will be able to use 2 CPU cores, maybe even 4 or 8. And for those apps the M4 Max will be much faster because each individual M4 core is much faster than each individual core on the M2 Ultra.

With a select few apps the additional resources the Ultra chips provide leads to a significant advantage in CPU performance. Anything that heavily relies on GPU performance will benefit from the additional GPU cores (amount of GPU cores has a 1:1 relation to performance).

That doesn't mean you will see any performance benefits using Photoshop with the M2 Ultra instead of the M4 Max. As I mentioned in the first sentence if you really need the Ultra then you'll know it because you're likely using this for work and know the requirements or you are otherwise in need of this performance.

I suggest you put the saved money towards some extra memory. Perhaps you'll want to double from the 32GiB you have now to 64GiB. But only you know if you need that.

I use it for photo editing, blogging, and about to start work on a documentary.
Get the cheapest M4 Max Studio and call it a day. If you use Lightroom you might want to upgrade the memory but for casual hobby work the 32GiB will still be perfectly alright. Going back in time 2 generations from M4 to M2 just so you can get the Ultra you won't ever need is a ridiculous suggestion.

The real question here is whether you're out of SoC performance or out of memory. If you run Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time switching between the two then you might find that your M1 Studio slows down significantly because it's running out of memory. In that case you need to know that before you place an order and make sure you upgrade to 64GiB of RAM.

If memory isn't the issue and it's really the SoC's raw computational power that's lacking then the M4 Max base model will fix that.
 
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Unless you know you need an Ultra you will likely benefit more from the M4 Max. And if you are using a first gen Studio in 2025 and that still works for you then you clearly don't need an Ultra. Likely a M4 Max base model will be cheaper as well.

The Ultra has a lot more CPU and GPU cores and scales well with apps that parallelize their computations to make use of all these cores at once. Especially for CPU based workloads this is rarely the case. Most apps will be able to use 2 CPU cores, maybe even 4 or 8. And for those apps the M4 Max will be much faster because each individual M4 core is much faster than each individual core on the M2 Ultra.

With a select few apps the additional resources the Ultra chips provide leads to a significant advantage in CPU performance. Anything that heavily relies on GPU performance will benefit from the additional GPU cores (amount of GPU cores has a 1:1 relation to performance).

That doesn't mean you will see any performance benefits using Photoshop with the M2 Ultra instead of the M4 Max. As I mentioned in the first sentence if you really need the Ultra then you'll know it because you're likely using this for work and know the requirements or you are otherwise in need of this performance.

I suggest you put the saved money towards some extra memory. Perhaps you'll want to double from the 32GiB you have now to 64GiB. But only you know if you need that.


Get the cheapest M4 Max Studio and call it a day. If you use Lightroom you might want to upgrade the memory but for casual hobby work the 32GiB will still be perfectly alright. Going back in time 2 generations from M4 to M2 just so you can get the Ultra you won't ever need is a ridiculous suggestion.

The real question here is whether you're out of SoC performance or out of memory. If you run Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time switching between the two then you might find that your M1 Studio slows down significantly because it's running out of memory. In that case you need to know that before you place an order and make sure you upgrade to 64GiB of RAM.

If memory isn't the issue and it's really the SoC's raw computational power that's lacking then the M4 Max base model will fix that.
I am stuck with Lightroom and Photoshop until January/subscribed. But in the meantime, I've shifted to Affinity Photo and also Pixelmator Pro.
 
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