Will Mac Studio M4 Max outperformed Macbook Pro?

[Canadia69]

Getting my mac studio on Wednesday and Im excited to see reviews comparing performance.
Curious on you all's opinions on whether the Mac Studio's bigger case and better cooling will result in better performance compared to the M4 Max Macbook pro.

I know its the same chip but are longer task going to be abled better bc of the reduction of thermal throttling?

 

[Velin]

How much more RAM did you get?

 

[Canadia69]

How much more RAM did you get?

64gb ram

And i dont own a m4 max macbook pro, was just curious if its gonna perform slightly better then what we saw

 

[Zubba]

Getting my mac studio on Wednesday and Im excited to see reviews comparing performance.
Curious on you all's opinions on whether the Mac Studio's bigger case and better cooling will result in better performance compared to the M4 Max Macbook pro.

I know its the same chip but are longer task going to be abled better bc of the reduction of thermal throttling?

There's no reason to think it'll offer any meaningful performance increase over an equally specced MBP. The 16" MBP probably has very similar thermal limitations to the studio.

 

[Canadia69]

There's no reason to think it'll offer any meaningful performance increase over an equally specced MBP. The 16" MBP probably has very similar thermal limitations to the studio.

Ok i see. I assumed the bigger case and therefore bigger heat sinks would offer better thermals but maybe not

 

[Zubba]

Ok i see. I assumed the bigger case and therefore bigger heat sinks would offer better thermals but maybe not

I think it's safe to assume it's probably "better", but I doubt by much. We'll have to wait for the hands on reviews/testing to be sure, but I'd honestly be really surprised to see it offer any significant performance boost that could be seen in regular use.

 

[UnifiedMelody]

Getting my mac studio on Wednesday and Im excited to see reviews comparing performance.
Curious on you all's opinions on whether the Mac Studio's bigger case and better cooling will result in better performance compared to the M4 Max Macbook pro.

I know its the same chip but are longer task going to be abled better bc of the reduction of thermal throttling?

Given the reviewer of a M3 Ultra [Moniz] said the fans never came on upon stress testing... I'd be inclined to say M4 Max is even more silent or non existent.

That said I did see some reviews, M4 Max seems like the king of the Apple lineup and I felt the Ultras weren't as appealing; as you know the next gen max chip will just outperform it. [unless one needs that ram/gpu]

 

[UnifiedMelody]

I think it's safe to assume it's probably "better", but I doubt by much. We'll have to wait for the hands on reviews/testing to be sure, but I'd honestly be really surprised to see it offer any significant performance boost that could be seen in regular use.

probably would get more performance boost. even my M4 Max in a MBP gets warm and that can lean towards some throttling [no Cinebench]. so id assume the Mac Studio will be higher performing under a sustained workload as fans will never spin/turn on thanks to its thermal cooling.

 

[herp]

Given the reviewer of a M3 Ultra [Moniz] said the fans never came on upon stress testing... I'd be inclined to say M4 Max is even more silent or non existent.

Perhaps but its not straightforward to compare stress testing between M3 Ultra and M4 Max since M3 Ultra has a much better copper heat sink (2 lbs heavier) vs the aluminum(?) heatsink of M4 Max. With the higher power draw of the new machines it would be nice if the better heatsink was used on both.

 

[UnifiedMelody]

Perhaps but its not straightforward to compare stress testing between M3 Ultra and M4 Max since M3 Ultra has a much better copper heat sink (2 lbs heavier) vs the aluminum(?) heatsink of M4 Max. With the higher power draw of the new machines it would be nice if the better heatsink was used on both.

I think a few are going to stress test eventually which is why I'm waiting for the video. But given past history even Aluminum heatsink on M2 Max was more than sufficient enough the temps never exceeded 65*c which is nuts.
I'd say add 10-20*c on the M4 Max variant as a guess, thats still M2 Ultra temps back in the day with copper thermal

 

[Canadia69]

To get a rough idea, I just checked geekbench to compare 16inch Mbp M2 Max with Mac Studio M2 Max (both 12/38 cores) and results are:

16 Mbp M2 Max:
- since core : 2750
- multi core : 14712

Mac Studio M2 Max:
- since core : 2804
- multi core : 14877

So I am guessing there should be a small difference as well for M4 Max but nothing major

 

[mdhaus72]

Based on the review information I read this morning, the Studio version of the M4 Max slightly out-performs the MacBook Pro version of the same chip. It's not by much...but it's pretty consistent.

And it also appears that our assumptions about single/multi-core performance on the M3 Ultra are indeed true - The M4 Max outperforms it pretty handily with single-core functions and the Ultra really shines on multi-core tasks. Although even there, the M4 Max had some tests where it held up pretty close to the Ultra. My guess is that it's because the M4 is simply a better architecture overall.

 

[Zubba]

Based on the review information I read this morning, the Studio version of the M4 Max slightly out-performs the MacBook Pro version of the same chip. It's not by much...but it's pretty consistent.

If you're referring to the Ars review they very specifically stated that while their findings did show the Studio did slightly better on a consistent basis the difference was so negligible as to be within their margin of error. Their exact phrasing was:

"The M4 Max version of the Mac Studio performs pretty similarly to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the same chip—maybe the tiniest smidge faster, thanks to the extra heat dissipation of a desktop computer, but the difference so small that we'd put it within the margin of error if it weren't so consistent."

Pretty much a wash.

M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio Review: A weird update, but it mostly works

M3 Ultra has benefits, but sometimes you’re paying more for worse performance.

arstechnica.com

 

[Zubba]

I've pretty much decided to go M4M/128/2TB, as it looks to be shaping up that the Ultra 3 doesn't really offer significant improvement outside of Video production/3D rendering/LLMs (and you'd basically want to get 512gb of memory for LLMs which would extend you into some pretty high price points).

 

[mdhaus72]

If you're referring to the Ars review they very specifically stated that while their findings did show the Studio did slightly better on a consistent basis the difference was so negligible as to be within their margin of error. Their exact phrasing was:

"The M4 Max version of the Mac Studio performs pretty similarly to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the same chip—maybe the tiniest smidge faster, thanks to the extra heat dissipation of a desktop computer, but the difference so small that we'd put it within the margin of error if it weren't so consistent."

Pretty much a wash.

M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio Review: A weird update, but it mostly works

M3 Ultra has benefits, but sometimes you’re paying more for worse performance.

arstechnica.com

The key words in that quote are the last words: "...if it weren't so consistent."

And that was my point - The difference isn't much, but it is consistently there. And there are other benchmarks out there showing the same thing.

 

[xraydoc]

Ok i see. I assumed the bigger case and therefore bigger heat sinks would offer better thermals but maybe not

I’m pretty certain this is in fact correct. The heat sink in the Studio and the amount of air movement is substantially larger.

For short tasks, it’s likely insignificant. For sustained tasks, it’ll be at least a bit faster, and definitely far quieter.