What's missing? No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada. No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components. What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome. Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.
Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.
Exactly, instead of an all-in-one package with a 27" iMac, they release this overpriced monitor and a cpu with no upgradeability in a box. Cool. Cool.
You and that other guy haven’t been paying attention for the last two years have you. Get a clue.
Needed: way to use an old 27-inch iMac as a display for the Mac Studio.
That went through my mind too! I'm sure it's great, but $1500 27" monitor is pushing my budget, when my 5k iMac and the cheap QXHD secondary beside it are far from the weak links in my workflow now.
Okay, so there were two statements made that sealed the fate of the larger iMac. The first was that the Mac Studio and Studio display were the perfect for 27” iMac users. The second statement was at the very end when he said there was only one Mac left to transition, the Mac Pro.
So, there will be no iMac Pro, no iMac with a larger screen. The 24” iMac is it. The Mac Studio is the future and I’m okay with that.
Sounds exactly right. The heat dissipation in the Midi, er, Studio clearly dictated the height of the enclosure, and that, in turn, meant there was no way they could fit the same cooling capacity into an M1 Double Wide, er, Ultra-powered 27 (or larger)-inch iMac and still retain a slim profile. Unless with some future generation of M<something> chips Apple manages to achieve even higher performance with less heat generation.
Yeah, but I don't need the ultra option in a large iMac. The iMac Pro is effectively covered, but not the 27" iMac for around $2k. What I would love is a 32" 5k iMac with the pro and max options and a similar form factor & monitor performance to the 24" for under $3k.
Thanks for the info. I guess Apple had to forgo some features to get the ASi transition going, and TDM didn't make the chopping block. Not many people really knew about it outside of us power users.
Not sure if someone else said this.
As far as I'm aware they stopped Target Display Mode when they doubled the resolutions to retina displays in 2015. I am fairly certain that no 4K or 5K iMac has ever been able to be used as a display for another Mac via TDM. (D= Display, not Disk).
Because of this, the other comment confused me for a moment:
"The other Mac that you're connecting it to must have been introduced in 2019 or earlier and have macOS Catalina or earlier installed."
I now realize the "other" Mac means the Mac that's not being used as a display -- ie the Mac you want to add an iMac as a display to. So, Mac mini, for example. Interestingly, it specifically says 2019 or earlier, which doesn't necessarily tie it to Apple Silicon...? Nor to the T2 chip (since that first showed up in 2017's iMac Pro I believe.
Other ideas... So this is actually something I've been wondering about. This probably won't work for you since it sounds like you're looking to use your old iMac as the only display for the Mac Studio. That seems a bit of a waste (of the Mac Studio). Have you seen how much more awesome the retina displays are?
Still just something to consider if you were to use the iMac as a SECOND display for the Mac Studio:
With the new Universal Control feature (coming any day now in macOS 12.3), you might be ok with the iMac as another Mac, beside your PRIMARY display. For the most part you could use them as if they're one machine, but actually distribute the load a little.
For me for example, I'm a developer as much as other things. I currently use my MBP as a second screen beside my LG 5K connected to it as main screen. I'll usually have my IDE full screen on the main 5K display, and then other subsidiary things like web browser looking up documentation, Messages, Email, etc. on the MBP display beside it.
But I've been thinking I really want a bigger second screen, but don't like any of the options (at least until this ASD came along). But even then I don't know if I want a full size 27" display when it's only secondary, but I still want it bigger than 16". The 24" iMac might be perfect...
But if I can control the other Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and Mouse just by moving it over (as Universal Control promises), there's really no reason all those other things I do have to be running on the primary Mac, when they could be on a second Mac, beside the screen for the main Mac.
In fact, there's something to be said for offloading those other things (especially web browsing that likes to chew CPU sometimes) to another CPU (as well as another display) and have my main Mac do nothing but that primary work at hand (code, building, etc.). But I can still control the second Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and mouse as a fairly seamless experience. The only thing I really can't do is drag windows between them. But with everything synced up over iCloud and with the Coherence and Handoff features, I could start an email on the secondary Mac, and continue it on the primary Mac if I want to.
There's a lot to be said for a configuration like this. I have a fully loaded M1 Max MBP. I put my order in for the ASD as soon as the store came online after the event (to replace the LG 5K which I hate and will sell). Then run the MBP in clamshell mode, and have a 24" iMac on the right as the secondary screen instead of the MBP.
Just waiting for Universal Control to arrive to try it out before I go all in on this. Not sure if anything like that might be an option for your old iMac, but thought I'd share in case it's of any use.
Just ordered the Mac Studio with M1 Max. I just couldn't justify the extra $2K for the Ultra. 64GB unified memory and 1TB SSD storage to boot. Also ordered the Studio Display with Magic Mouse & Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. More than enough power for my needs. The wait will be interminable.
What's missing? No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada. No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components. What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome. Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.
Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.
I agree re: RAM/GPU, but please drop the SSD. They are so easy/cheap to expand with fast storage later on, it just isn't inside the case.
As for the GPU, yes, we'll have to wait and see. But, keep in mind they should be fast on-paper. A lot of the issue is just software compatibility. Your hash-rate is a great example. While the Max isn't going to match a 3090 due to memory bandwidth, it would probably be close if the mining software were Metal. People currently getting that 10 MH/s are essentially doing an emulation hack. That's actually pretty good considering.
If I had to take a guess, I think with a Metal miner, we'd see like 70-80% of like a 3080 for the Pro and then given more memory bandwidth, faster than a 3090 on the Ultra (would need to do more math than I care for right now to find out by how much ).
I am not sure I understand your point about the SSD being external. A M.2 is a SSD. Externally you can get about 1GB/sec on a USB C 3.2 and about 2GB/sec on thunderbolt (although I have yet to see one get that much when tested). A M.2, on the other hand, can currently get as much as 7 GB/sec. The one I have in my PS5 is 6 GB/sec and costs about $220 for 2TB currently. SSDs have been getting a lot faster recently at reasonable prices. Even if the M.2 speed is limited, you can expect to see a lot larger ones in a couple of years (unless China invades Taiwan in which case all of this is moot anyway).
A M1 Max gets a compute score of 61256 on GeekBench 5 for OpenCL. A RTX 3090 gets 205005. Apple's performance graphs are a complete fantasy.
I don't get it. Why are you going on about OpenCL? See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823. OpenCL and OpenGL are not supported on any Apple Silicon Macs. Modern Macs use Metal: (bottom right https://developer.apple.com/opencl/ ;"If you are using OpenCL for computational tasks in your Mac app, we recommend that you transition to Metal".
Meanwhile, there hasn't been any Metal (or even Mac) support for NVIDIA cards since around the GTX1080 -- years ago.
So there's no sensible "benchmark" comparison tests with NVIDIA cards. Apple's tests are based on Metal, and where they're comparing to NVIDIA cards they're doing real world tests with actual apps, on PCs with the 12th gen Intel chips and NVIDIA cards. I expect it's probably similar to the Photoshop and other shootouts Steve used to do in keynotes. What you're saying makes about as much sense as people who used to try to say a Pentium chip is faster than a G5 because it has a higher clock speed.
Your failure to understand their testing procedures doesn't make the results a fantasy. If you want to mine cryptocurrency, or do anything else with NVIDIA cards, you don't want a Mac.
Regarding SSDs. Unlike a small vocal few here, the vast majority of Mac users DO NOT CARE about adding hardware inside their Macs. I'm sure you know there's a limited supply of PCI lanes that can be managed by any chip. You want to take some of the available lanes and dedicate them to an internal SSD slot that almost no one will use, crippling the potential Thunderbolt and other peripheral access available to the rest of us. If there was nothing to lose, you'd have a case, but Apple is not going to take away functionality from the vast majority of their users to appease the tinkerers like you, when there are perfectly reasonable other solutions available to you.
1. Just buy what you need up front. 2. Or add to it externally later. 3. Or wait for the Mac Pro.
I stripe three M.2 NVMe drives over the three Thunderbolt 4 ports in my M1 Max MBP, and I get about 5500MBps. You get up to SIX TB4 ports in the Studio. Stripe your beloved M.2 drives over four of them and you'll get your 7000.
cpsro said: PCIe expansion, DIMM slots, support for ECC memory, and maybe 4 M1 Maxes.
I doubt the next Mac Pro will include user replaceable RAM, but rather maybe just unified ECC RAM. The days of replacing your RAM is gone. You buy all you can afford. That's the one thing I would increase as much as you can afford when spec'ing any Apple Silicon Mac out. PCIe expansion I can see yes. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an M2 CPU/GPU in the new Mac Pro. You can always add more storage with TB4 drives if you really needed it. For an general user or even company I doubt they'd even care to replace the RAM anyways.
Yeah, I hadn't initially thought of that, but they can probably just make the unified RAM ECC and that problem goes away (aside from future expansion). Thunderbolt is now fast enough to extend most things external (which it wasn't when first proposed with the trash-can Mac Pro concept). Storage external is a no-brainer. It is a bit messier setup, but eventually, that's the only benefit of a big-tower like machine.
OutdoorAppDeveloper said: I am not sure I understand your point about the SSD being external. A M.2 is a SSD. Externally you can get about 1GB/sec on a USB C 3.2 and about 2GB/sec on thunderbolt (although I have yet to see one get that much when tested). A M.2, on the other hand, can currently get as much as 7 GB/sec. The one I have in my PS5 is 6 GB/sec and costs about $220 for 2TB currently. SSDs have been getting a lot faster recently at reasonable prices. Even if the M.2 speed is limited, you can expect to see a lot larger ones in a couple of years (unless China invades Taiwan in which case all of this is moot anyway).
A M1 Max gets a compute score of 61256 on GeekBench 5 for OpenCL. A RTX 3090 gets 205005. Apple's performance graphs are a complete fantasy.
Sorry, I maybe went a bit overboard with the SSD statement. Yes, by going internal, you can get more performance. I guess I just see, anymore, the internal storage on my computer being OS/Apps/scratch-space, and then I add any additional storage a number of ways (and much more cheaply). But, I suppose if you're doing really huge projects, or work a ton with really massive files, having a ton of super-fast internal storage is beneficial... and at much lower costs than Apple.
re: GPU - but that's OpenCL, which is kind of the problem. What I want to see are more comparisons between a 3090 doing real world stuff, and a M1 Max/Ultra doing real world stuff with Metal optimized software. Then we'll know how they actually compare. I'd think, given the specs, the M1 would be ahead, depending on how dependent the particular thing is on memory speed.
But, what is the memory speed of the 3090? I though with the Max was slower but getting close, but that's double now with Ultra. Can't be too far away from similar speed now.
Detnator said: It's been 6 years since they started soldering everything. And for good reason, as has been explained on this forum countless times. Has it possibly occurred to you, ever -- maybe even when explained to you -- that there's a direct relationship between the performance of these machines and how they're physically put together? When you want Apple to build in internal upgradeability, you're asking them to compromise some of that performance. That would hurt the rest of their customers, that DON'T CARE about upgrading.
The RAM isn't upgradeable, because, you know, the RAM is part of the actual CPU system now. But you knew that right?
Yeah, well put. Do I miss the days of ordering the base-config Mac and then upgrading the RAM from OWC? Sure. But, overall, I'll take this new performance if push comes to shove. And, I don't have the data, but I think the machines are overall more reliable too.
Funny aside though on performance... my wife just upgraded from a 2015 mid-level MBA to a M1 Pro MBP (the Air was having issues). I'm all excited about it and asking her (a few days after we got it setup), so is it really fast? She's like, I don't really notice a difference. But, she's just been doing day-to-day stuff, I guess. I can't wait until she gets to video-editing and does her first export for YouTube. I'm pretty certain she'll notice it then. (And, some people just don't notice such things. To her, a car is just a car, too.)
Detnator said: Meanwhile, the GPU speeds... Not sure what you're talking about. These were compared directly against the actual options in the 2019 Mac Pro and highest end iMac.
And you're really going to compare a Mac's graphics performance -- for, you know, doing actual work -- against Nvidia's mining capabilities in a PC? You do realize the G in GPU stands for "Graphics", right?
To be fair, Apple is a bit deceptive there. The Mac Pro can have 4x (or more) of those GPUs. So, it isn't quite as good as they portrayed.
And, while I do CAD/3D, I'd *also* really like it if it could be mining some crypto. I could justify one really quickly if that were the case! Heck, if the mining performance (especially per watt) is what I think it would be with a Metal-optimized miner, I'd probably buy a dozen. The problem is it won't perform well until it is written for Metal. People getting the mining to work, if I understand, are running OpenGL and within an emulator. I'm actually surprised they are getting the hash rates that high!
But, I've also seen some fairly disappointing 3D/CAD efforts with the M1 Max. I'm hoping it is just software related, as the videos I saw were too slow to use (larger object/scene manipulation in a 3D modeler). We really need to see more real-world comparison in a broad range of apps (and then understand what is optimized, emulated, or worse).
k2kw said: unless China invades Taiwan in which case all of this is moot anyway).
This may be a smart reason for upgrading soon for both Mac and Windows machines.
Yeah, we live in 'interesting' times. I've never been so excited about being an Apple user, and kind of tech in general. I'm also wondering how long until I live out the rest of my life in the gulag.
k2kw said: Tape the studio to the back of the studio display.
A little effort and you might have a workable product idea!
Vermelho said: Yeah, but I don't need the ultra option in a large iMac. The iMac Pro is effectively covered, but not the 27" iMac for around $2k. What I would love is a 32" 5k iMac with the pro and max options and a similar form factor & monitor performance to the 24" for under $3k.
I hear you there. Closest thing is probably a 3rd party display + a M1 mini, but it won't quite be a match for GPU power, or possibly RAM. As has been said many times, that 5k iMac was a pretty darn good deal price-wise. Or, maybe a base Studio w/ chaper 3rd party display. Not an all-in-one then, but you'd have more computer by a good bit.
Detnator said: As far as I'm aware they stopped Target Display Mode when they doubled the resolutions to retina displays in 2015. I am fairly certain that no 4K or 5K iMac has ever been able to be used as a display for another Mac via TDM. (D= Display, not Disk).
Because of this, the other comment confused me for a moment:
I'm pretty sure you're right, and I was also confused by that comment. I actually briefly thought (before I realized it was wrong), that I should look into a 5k iMac (non Apple Silicon) as it would be enough Intel machine to suit my compatibility needs - instead of my 2018 mini - if I'd get the iMac display. Then I realized TDM would be as nice as having inputs like I do on my current monitor. Then I realized this was actually pre-Retina (less a problem about rez for me, but too old of a Mac). Then I realized I wasted time pondering it. LOL
Detnator said: If you want to mine cryptocurrency, or do anything else with NVIDIA cards, you don't want a Mac.
Heh, well I'm holding out hope someone will eventually write a Metal crypto-miner. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't already, but maybe these machines need to get more popular and out in numbers before someone will be motivated to do so. I once read an article about how a miner works, by a programmer giving an example of the math/code, and it didn't look all that complicated (though I'm not a programmer, so don't even know how I'd begin).
If it performs like I think it would, that could be a blessing/curse, as the demand for the systems would probably skyrocket (and we'd have the same issue getting a Mac as people do buying GPUs).
Depending on your productions needs the Mac Studio is either a bargain of a lifetime or not a particularly great deal. For video and 2d creative work I think you'd need your head seen to if you didn't but a Mac Studio either version will run rings around most PC boxes running Resolve. I can see many post production studios coming back to the Mac and the lower end Studio being the hot seller, I predict this model will fly off the shelves.
Unfortunately for 3D artists like myself the GPUs are just too weak for rendering and there's no hardware raytracing and what's more disappointing Apple's own software acceleration structure isn't particularly great. There's still issues with the size of the kernel Metal is able to work with so it looks like it's going to be behind Optix/HIP in performance and features for a while.
Towards the end of the year both nVidia and AMD will be dropping their next gen GPUs which are predicted to be of the order 2x (maybe even more) the performance of their current GPUs and that probably puts daylight between an M1 Mac Pro let alone the Studio. Leaks coming from the nVidia hack show that the GPUs will have double the VRAM so 48GB renders the unified memory advantage of the M1 moot. No one is going to try and render a 64GB 3d scene on a GPU as weak as the Studio's.
For me as predominantly a 3D artist I can't see beyond a PC workstation but I will probably pick up a low end Studio for video and compositing to replace my iMac. I might wait until M2 to do that though.
At the end when he said we have one more but that’s for another day and said the Mac Pro… so this studio isn’t going to be their biggest powerhouse but merely a stepping stone.. What the hell will the new Mac Pro be packed with??
The speculation was the "Duo" (now formally called the Ultra) would be two M1 Max Chips in tandem. It stands to reason that the "Quad" that has been speculated will be in the Mac Pro. The only question is which superlative are they are they going to use: "Ultra Ultra"? "Super-duper"? "Hyper"?
At the end when he said we have one more but that’s for another day and said the Mac Pro… so this studio isn’t going to be their biggest powerhouse but merely a stepping stone.. What the hell will the new Mac Pro be packed with??
The speculation was the "Duo" (now formally called the Ultra) would be two M1 Max Chips in tandem. It stands to reason that the "Quad" that has been speculated will be in the Mac Pro. The only question is which superlative are they are they going to use: "Ultra Ultra"? "Super-duper"? "Hyper"?
Ultra Max or Ultra Pro or some combination. Lol
I'd bet the new Pro will be the first with M2 chips, probably M2 Max and Ultra.
What's missing? No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada. No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components. What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome. Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.
Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.
It’s amusing that you,mama some others are not getting the charts. There is plenty of information if you know how to look for it. App,e tells us which CPU and GPU the charts are comparing to. That and the number given are enough to tell us relative performance.
it’s odd that by now people can’t tell that Apple is being conservative with the charts. People were saying that the charts were meant to conceal poorer performance than app,e was stating, while actually, performance and efficiency was better in the real world.
This seems to be an awesome machine but it's complete overkill for my needs. I was really hoping for a revised Mac Mini.
I suspect that something like that might still happen. I know that John stated that there was one product left, the Mac Pro. But they discontinued the 27” iMacs, and it’s hard to believe they won’t have a 27” iMac to sell.
At the end when he said we have one more but that’s for another day and said the Mac Pro… so this studio isn’t going to be their biggest powerhouse but merely a stepping stone.. What the hell will the new Mac Pro be packed with??
2 x M1 Ultra or 4 x M1 Ultra
By this rate, we will see the new Mac Pro by WWDC.
Almost certainly, the Pro will be at WWDC. At least I know it's nothing I'm going to be able to afford.
Could have the M2 by then, which could have additional interconnects. But even if it's just bigger Ultras, or multiple Ultras., it's going to piss on the competition.
There are two things about the M2.. one is that it’s based on last year’s A15, or two, is that it can be based on this year’s A16. If it comes out before the last quarter, then it should be based on last year’s A15. But if it comes out late, then it could be based on the new A16.
that’s because while the A15 is based on the n5 process, the A16 will be based on the newer n4 process. But those chips won’t be in mass production until sometime in May to June, and won’t be available before the new iPhone is announced in September.
i’d much rather see the M2 come out late. I bought my 13.3” Macbook Pro in October. The first ( I think) M1 machine available, though possibly the M1 Mini was out around the same time, or the first quarter of 2021. I really don’t remember. I expect the M2 to be in the same timeframe. I’d much rather see it based upon the A16 - a two generation jump. The move from the A14 to the A15 was decent, and according to Anandtech, better than Apple stated, but still wasn’t a really significant improvement in performance. I think we would be a bit disappointed if the M2 was just about 15% better, per core, than the M1. Two generations, along with the slight improvement in the process technology, could give a 25 to 35% improvement in performance, depending on how Apple decides to balance the performance/efficiency ratio. That could give a CPU number between 2160 and 2330. Which, if true, would run away with the core performance crown.
The Mac Studio starts from $1,999 with M1 Max, $3,999 with M1 Ultra.
That UltraFusion interconnect must cost a pretty penny to make sense of those prices.
Actually, not really.
M1 MAX is expensive and the cost doubles for every additional chip so it's actually reasonable.
You misunderstand, the M1 Ultra starts at $3,999, and the M1 Max Studio starts at $1,999. Apart from the processor there's very little difference, a spot of RAM and SSD, and some extra Thunderbolt ports, but nothing worth more than few hundred $. So the bulk of the $2,000 extra cost is an extra M1 Max and the UltraFusion interconnect. Since the M1 Max Studio starts at $1,999, including an M1 Max and a whole freaking computer, then the extra M1 Max can't very well be the whole lot of the $2,000. So that leaves the UltraFusion interconnect.
Or Apple are just pulling their usual tricks with upgrade prices. "actually reasonable"
It’s actually reasonable for the performance. It’s also an extremely powerful computer that you can reasonably take with you. If you don’t need this monitor, and can live with a cheaper one for say, $500, then you can have monitors in more than one place, and bring the computer with you. That’s a big advantage for some people. I know a few who have a photography van that they go on their photo outings in. They have a digital studio inside with an iMac. But it’s a bit of a pain. This might be a better solution.
this is also, and pretty obviously, a really expensive chip. Not nearly as expensive as the Xeon, where the 28 core UPGRADE price alone is $7,000! And does that include a pretty powerful GPU? No. Or anything else? No.
I hope in future versions Apple rebalances the CPU core vs GPU core mix. I'm sat here thinking a 10 core CPU + 128 GPU core would've been a much better balance for content creation for Mac Studio. So many applications take advantage of the GPU these days for effects, smoke and fluid sims that having 20 CPU cores seems a waste of silicon especially since traditional CPU tasks have been offloaded to onboard codecs and neural processors.
If the Mac Pro is 2x M1 Ultra 40 CPU cores and only 128 GPU cores looks even worse balanced, knowing the software I use on a daily basis I wouldn't be able to keep 20 CPU cores busy let alone 40 CPU cores because over the years developers have pushed so much work to the GPU. I think the M1 architecture kind of looks anachronistic and old school. Give me a Mac Pro with 20 cores and 256 GPU cores or even better 512 GPU cores. I just don't see the content creator being that well served by large numbers of CPU cores in 2022.
I'm sure the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will be kings of Cinebench, problem is no one I know cares about Cinebench scores because everyone is rendering on the GPU. Most creatives I know in the business are typically running 16 core CPUs and heavily invested in GPUs. Those who've got 32 core Threadrippers probably haven't got anything like good value from them.
I'd be interested if any other content creator has similar views?
Thanks for the info. I guess Apple had to forgo some features to get the ASi transition going, and TDM didn't make the chopping block. Not many people really knew about it outside of us power users.
Not sure if someone else said this.
As far as I'm aware they stopped Target Display Mode when they doubled the resolutions to retina displays in 2015. I am fairly certain that no 4K or 5K iMac has ever been able to be used as a display for another Mac via TDM. (D= Display, not Disk).
Because of this, the other comment confused me for a moment:
"The other Mac that you're connecting it to must have been introduced in 2019 or earlier and have macOS Catalina or earlier installed."
I now realize the "other" Mac means the Mac that's not being used as a display -- ie the Mac you want to add an iMac as a display to. So, Mac mini, for example. Interestingly, it specifically says 2019 or earlier, which doesn't necessarily tie it to Apple Silicon...? Nor to the T2 chip (since that first showed up in 2017's iMac Pro I believe.
Other ideas... So this is actually something I've been wondering about. This probably won't work for you since it sounds like you're looking to use your old iMac as the only display for the Mac Studio. That seems a bit of a waste (of the Mac Studio). Have you seen how much more awesome the retina displays are?
Still just something to consider if you were to use the iMac as a SECOND display for the Mac Studio:
With the new Universal Control feature (coming any day now in macOS 12.3), you might be ok with the iMac as another Mac, beside your PRIMARY display. For the most part you could use them as if they're one machine, but actually distribute the load a little.
For me for example, I'm a developer as much as other things. I currently use my MBP as a second screen beside my LG 5K connected to it as main screen. I'll usually have my IDE full screen on the main 5K display, and then other subsidiary things like web browser looking up documentation, Messages, Email, etc. on the MBP display beside it.
But I've been thinking I really want a bigger second screen, but don't like any of the options (at least until this ASD came along). But even then I don't know if I want a full size 27" display when it's only secondary, but I still want it bigger than 16". The 24" iMac might be perfect...
But if I can control the other Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and Mouse just by moving it over (as Universal Control promises), there's really no reason all those other things I do have to be running on the primary Mac, when they could be on a second Mac, beside the screen for the main Mac.
In fact, there's something to be said for offloading those other things (especially web browsing that likes to chew CPU sometimes) to another CPU (as well as another display) and have my main Mac do nothing but that primary work at hand (code, building, etc.). But I can still control the second Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and mouse as a fairly seamless experience. The only thing I really can't do is drag windows between them. But with everything synced up over iCloud and with the Coherence and Handoff features, I could start an email on the secondary Mac, and continue it on the primary Mac if I want to.
There's a lot to be said for a configuration like this. I have a fully loaded M1 Max MBP. I put my order in for the ASD as soon as the store came online after the event (to replace the LG 5K which I hate and will sell). Then run the MBP in clamshell mode, and have a 24" iMac on the right as the secondary screen instead of the MBP.
Just waiting for Universal Control to arrive to try it out before I go all in on this. Not sure if anything like that might be an option for your old iMac, but thought I'd share in case it's of any use.
In the betas, universal control works very well between my 16” M1 Macbook Pro and my iPad Pro. It also works well with my 13.3” Macbook Pro. All A1 machines. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work well here too. It’s something Apple is think big about, so I’m pretty sure they want to get it working on every Apple silicon Mac and iPad.
I hope in future versions Apple rebalances the CPU core vs GPU core mix. I'm sat here thinking a 10 core CPU + 128 GPU core would've been a much better balance for content creation for Mac Studio. So many applications take advantage of the GPU these days for effects, smoke and fluid sims that having 20 CPU cores seems a waste of silicon especially since traditional CPU tasks have been offloaded to onboard codecs and neural processors.
If the Mac Pro is 2x M1 Ultra 40 CPU cores and only 128 GPU cores looks even worse balanced, knowing the software I use on a daily basis I wouldn't be able to keep 20 CPU cores busy let alone 40 CPU cores because over the years developers have pushed so much work to the GPU. I think the M1 architecture kind of looks anachronistic and old school. Give me a Mac Pro with 20 cores and 256 GPU cores or even better 512 GPU cores. I just don't see the content creator being that well served by large numbers of CPU cores in 2022.
I'm sure the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will be kings of Cinebench, problem is no one I know cares about Cinebench scores because everyone is rendering on the GPU. Most creatives I know in the business are typically running 16 core CPUs and heavily invested in GPUs. Those who've got 32 core Threadrippers probably haven't got anything like good value from them.
I'd be interested if any other content creator has similar views?
These machines are general purpose machines, so not everything is so dependent on the GPU. Additionally, the neural engine is taking on a number of those tasks. Actually most rendering of ProRez, one of the most important codecs, is rendered on the specialized engines Apple designed for that purpose, far more so than the GPU. My Max has two of those engines, and the Ultra has four. If you’ve seen the reviews of the Max you’ll see that rendering is extremely fast. This will be about twice as fast.
@melgross ; Clearly you didn't read my post carefully or the points flew over your head.
Developers struggle to make effective use of threading in applications and even when they do there's a hug drop off in effectiveness after a few threads. I'd like to know what current workflow can keep 20 CPU cores busy on a consistent basis. I'm not talking about CPU rendering, it's 2022 most freelancers like me are GPU rendering.
Apple has offloaded much of the work of the CPU onto fixed function units on the SOC like compression and decompression and also machine learning so there's even less need for large numbers of CPU cores than an equivalent PC would require. Apple is clearly marketing the Studio to creators, their whole presentation contained hyperbole from creatives and someone running office applications will be best served by the Mac mini or a Macbook. Let's not pretend there's a huge science and engineering market for Apple, there isn't.
As a Davinci Resolve user I know just how reliant the app is on the GPU, even with beefy GPUs a complex effect chain can bring Resolve to its knees while not touching the CPU. Resolve is probably the best optimised app for the M1 and it will expose the relatively weak GPUs as the main performance limitation. 3D work is even more biased towards GPU performance with interactive viewport performance and rendering reliant on GPUs. Even in 2022 apps like Cinema4d are one thread wonders when interacting. Houdini and Blender are much better with threading but the law of diminishing returns kicks in very quickly double the CPU cores does not result in double the performance even when cooking sims.
I bet there will be post production facilities waiting for the Mac Pro just to get double the GPU cores and have even more CPU cores doing absolutely nothing. Apple's boast that the Studio is faster than the Intel Mac Pro's 5700 is really no boast at all, not in the real world not at this price point. The 5700 is equivalent in compute performance to an nVidia 1080Ti so not exactly cutting edge.
I've owned several Mac Pros in the past and used them for 3-4 years as I've been able to upgrade the GPU. In 3-4 years the GPUs in this Mac Studio will look silly compared to the state of art and as such the Studio will get old very quickly and having just 64 GPU cores is quite an Achilles heel.
Some real world benchmarks of the new Blender 3.1 put the relative GPU performance into perspective. Apple did the development so no one can say this is down to a poor implementation.
M1 - 198 Pro - 363 Max - 702
3090 - 5566 1080Ti - 839
If we're charitable and double the Max score to 1400 that puts the Ultra at around an nVidia 2060. If we double the score again to give an indication of what a Mac Pro might perform like that puts it below a 2080 or 3080 laptop performance.
This just isn't up to the level required for 3D artists to jump back on board Macs.
Comments
As far as I'm aware they stopped Target Display Mode when they doubled the resolutions to retina displays in 2015. I am fairly certain that no 4K or 5K iMac has ever been able to be used as a display for another Mac via TDM. (D= Display, not Disk).
Because of this, the other comment confused me for a moment:
- "The other Mac that you're connecting it to must have been introduced in 2019 or earlier and have macOS Catalina or earlier installed."
I now realize the "other" Mac means the Mac that's not being used as a display -- ie the Mac you want to add an iMac as a display to. So, Mac mini, for example. Interestingly, it specifically says 2019 or earlier, which doesn't necessarily tie it to Apple Silicon...? Nor to the T2 chip (since that first showed up in 2017's iMac Pro I believe.The link again. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592
So... needless to say TDM not an option here.
Other ideas... So this is actually something I've been wondering about. This probably won't work for you since it sounds like you're looking to use your old iMac as the only display for the Mac Studio. That seems a bit of a waste (of the Mac Studio). Have you seen how much more awesome the retina displays are?
Still just something to consider if you were to use the iMac as a SECOND display for the Mac Studio:
With the new Universal Control feature (coming any day now in macOS 12.3), you might be ok with the iMac as another Mac, beside your PRIMARY display. For the most part you could use them as if they're one machine, but actually distribute the load a little.
For me for example, I'm a developer as much as other things. I currently use my MBP as a second screen beside my LG 5K connected to it as main screen. I'll usually have my IDE full screen on the main 5K display, and then other subsidiary things like web browser looking up documentation, Messages, Email, etc. on the MBP display beside it.
But I've been thinking I really want a bigger second screen, but don't like any of the options (at least until this ASD came along). But even then I don't know if I want a full size 27" display when it's only secondary, but I still want it bigger than 16". The 24" iMac might be perfect...
But if I can control the other Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and Mouse just by moving it over (as Universal Control promises), there's really no reason all those other things I do have to be running on the primary Mac, when they could be on a second Mac, beside the screen for the main Mac.
In fact, there's something to be said for offloading those other things (especially web browsing that likes to chew CPU sometimes) to another CPU (as well as another display) and have my main Mac do nothing but that primary work at hand (code, building, etc.). But I can still control the second Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and mouse as a fairly seamless experience. The only thing I really can't do is drag windows between them. But with everything synced up over iCloud and with the Coherence and Handoff features, I could start an email on the secondary Mac, and continue it on the primary Mac if I want to.
There's a lot to be said for a configuration like this. I have a fully loaded M1 Max MBP. I put my order in for the ASD as soon as the store came online after the event (to replace the LG 5K which I hate and will sell). Then run the MBP in clamshell mode, and have a 24" iMac on the right as the secondary screen instead of the MBP.
Just waiting for Universal Control to arrive to try it out before I go all in on this. Not sure if anything like that might be an option for your old iMac, but thought I'd share in case it's of any use.
I don't get it. Why are you going on about OpenCL? See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823. OpenCL and OpenGL are not supported on any Apple Silicon Macs. Modern Macs use Metal: (bottom right https://developer.apple.com/opencl/ ;"If you are using OpenCL for computational tasks in your Mac app, we recommend that you transition to Metal".
Meanwhile, there hasn't been any Metal (or even Mac) support for NVIDIA cards since around the GTX1080 -- years ago.
So there's no sensible "benchmark" comparison tests with NVIDIA cards. Apple's tests are based on Metal, and where they're comparing to NVIDIA cards they're doing real world tests with actual apps, on PCs with the 12th gen Intel chips and NVIDIA cards. I expect it's probably similar to the Photoshop and other shootouts Steve used to do in keynotes. What you're saying makes about as much sense as people who used to try to say a Pentium chip is faster than a G5 because it has a higher clock speed.
Your failure to understand their testing procedures doesn't make the results a fantasy. If you want to mine cryptocurrency, or do anything else with NVIDIA cards, you don't want a Mac.
Regarding SSDs. Unlike a small vocal few here, the vast majority of Mac users DO NOT CARE about adding hardware inside their Macs. I'm sure you know there's a limited supply of PCI lanes that can be managed by any chip. You want to take some of the available lanes and dedicate them to an internal SSD slot that almost no one will use, crippling the potential Thunderbolt and other peripheral access available to the rest of us. If there was nothing to lose, you'd have a case, but Apple is not going to take away functionality from the vast majority of their users to appease the tinkerers like you, when there are perfectly reasonable other solutions available to you.
1. Just buy what you need up front.
2. Or add to it externally later.
3. Or wait for the Mac Pro.
I stripe three M.2 NVMe drives over the three Thunderbolt 4 ports in my M1 Max MBP, and I get about 5500MBps. You get up to SIX TB4 ports in the Studio. Stripe your beloved M.2 drives over four of them and you'll get your 7000.
Sorry, I maybe went a bit overboard with the SSD statement. Yes, by going internal, you can get more performance. I guess I just see, anymore, the internal storage on my computer being OS/Apps/scratch-space, and then I add any additional storage a number of ways (and much more cheaply). But, I suppose if you're doing really huge projects, or work a ton with really massive files, having a ton of super-fast internal storage is beneficial... and at much lower costs than Apple.
re: GPU - but that's OpenCL, which is kind of the problem. What I want to see are more comparisons between a 3090 doing real world stuff, and a M1 Max/Ultra doing real world stuff with Metal optimized software. Then we'll know how they actually compare. I'd think, given the specs, the M1 would be ahead, depending on how dependent the particular thing is on memory speed.
But, what is the memory speed of the 3090? I though with the Max was slower but getting close, but that's double now with Ultra. Can't be too far away from similar speed now.
Yeah, well put. Do I miss the days of ordering the base-config Mac and then upgrading the RAM from OWC? Sure. But, overall, I'll take this new performance if push comes to shove. And, I don't have the data, but I think the machines are overall more reliable too.
Funny aside though on performance... my wife just upgraded from a 2015 mid-level MBA to a M1 Pro MBP (the Air was having issues). I'm all excited about it and asking her (a few days after we got it setup), so is it really fast? She's like, I don't really notice a difference. But, she's just been doing day-to-day stuff, I guess. I can't wait until she gets to video-editing and does her first export for YouTube. I'm pretty certain she'll notice it then. (And, some people just don't notice such things. To her, a car is just a car, too.)
To be fair, Apple is a bit deceptive there. The Mac Pro can have 4x (or more) of those GPUs. So, it isn't quite as good as they portrayed.
And, while I do CAD/3D, I'd *also* really like it if it could be mining some crypto. I could justify one really quickly if that were the case! Heck, if the mining performance (especially per watt) is what I think it would be with a Metal-optimized miner, I'd probably buy a dozen. The problem is it won't perform well until it is written for Metal. People getting the mining to work, if I understand, are running OpenGL and within an emulator. I'm actually surprised they are getting the hash rates that high!
But, I've also seen some fairly disappointing 3D/CAD efforts with the M1 Max. I'm hoping it is just software related, as the videos I saw were too slow to use (larger object/scene manipulation in a 3D modeler). We really need to see more real-world comparison in a broad range of apps (and then understand what is optimized, emulated, or worse).
Yeah, we live in 'interesting' times.
I've never been so excited about being an Apple user, and kind of tech in general. I'm also wondering how long until I live out the rest of my life in the gulag.
I hear you there. Closest thing is probably a 3rd party display + a M1 mini, but it won't quite be a match for GPU power, or possibly RAM. As has been said many times, that 5k iMac was a pretty darn good deal price-wise. Or, maybe a base Studio w/ chaper 3rd party display. Not an all-in-one then, but you'd have more computer by a good bit.
I'm pretty sure you're right, and I was also confused by that comment. I actually briefly thought (before I realized it was wrong), that I should look into a 5k iMac (non Apple Silicon) as it would be enough Intel machine to suit my compatibility needs - instead of my 2018 mini - if I'd get the iMac display. Then I realized TDM would be as nice as having inputs like I do on my current monitor. Then I realized this was actually pre-Retina (less a problem about rez for me, but too old of a Mac). Then I realized I wasted time pondering it. LOL
Heh, well I'm holding out hope someone will eventually write a Metal crypto-miner. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't already, but maybe these machines need to get more popular and out in numbers before someone will be motivated to do so. I once read an article about how a miner works, by a programmer giving an example of the math/code, and it didn't look all that complicated (though I'm not a programmer, so don't even know how I'd begin).
If it performs like I think it would, that could be a blessing/curse, as the demand for the systems would probably skyrocket (and we'd have the same issue getting a Mac as people do buying GPUs).
Unfortunately for 3D artists like myself the GPUs are just too weak for rendering and there's no hardware raytracing and what's more disappointing Apple's own software acceleration structure isn't particularly great. There's still issues with the size of the kernel Metal is able to work with so it looks like it's going to be behind Optix/HIP in performance and features for a while.
Towards the end of the year both nVidia and AMD will be dropping their next gen GPUs which are predicted to be of the order 2x (maybe even more) the performance of their current GPUs and that probably puts daylight between an M1 Mac Pro let alone the Studio. Leaks coming from the nVidia hack show that the GPUs will have double the VRAM so 48GB renders the unified memory advantage of the M1 moot. No one is going to try and render a 64GB 3d scene on a GPU as weak as the Studio's.
For me as predominantly a 3D artist I can't see beyond a PC workstation but I will probably pick up a low end Studio for video and compositing to replace my iMac. I might wait until M2 to do that though.
I'd bet the new Pro will be the first with M2 chips, probably M2 Max and Ultra.
it’s odd that by now people can’t tell that Apple is being conservative with the charts. People were saying that the charts were meant to conceal poorer performance than app,e was stating, while actually, performance and efficiency was better in the real world.
ironic, eh?
that’s because while the A15 is based on the n5 process, the A16 will be based on the newer n4 process. But those chips won’t be in mass production until sometime in May to June, and won’t be available before the new iPhone is announced in September.
i’d much rather see the M2 come out late. I bought my 13.3” Macbook Pro in October. The first ( I think) M1 machine available, though possibly the M1 Mini was out around the same time, or the first quarter of 2021. I really don’t remember. I expect the M2 to be in the same timeframe. I’d much rather see it based upon the A16 - a two generation jump. The move from the A14 to the A15 was decent, and according to Anandtech, better than Apple stated, but still wasn’t a really significant improvement in performance. I think we would be a bit disappointed if the M2 was just about 15% better, per core, than the M1. Two generations, along with the slight improvement in the process technology, could give a 25 to 35% improvement in performance, depending on how Apple decides to balance the performance/efficiency ratio. That could give a CPU number between 2160 and 2330. Which, if true, would run away with the core performance crown.
this is also, and pretty obviously, a really expensive chip. Not nearly as expensive as the Xeon, where the 28 core UPGRADE price alone is $7,000! And does that include a pretty powerful GPU? No. Or anything else? No.
If the Mac Pro is 2x M1 Ultra 40 CPU cores and only 128 GPU cores looks even worse balanced, knowing the software I use on a daily basis I wouldn't be able to keep 20 CPU cores busy let alone 40 CPU cores because over the years developers have pushed so much work to the GPU. I think the M1 architecture kind of looks anachronistic and old school. Give me a Mac Pro with 20 cores and 256 GPU cores or even better 512 GPU cores. I just don't see the content creator being that well served by large numbers of CPU cores in 2022.
I'm sure the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will be kings of Cinebench, problem is no one I know cares about Cinebench scores because everyone is rendering on the GPU. Most creatives I know in the business are typically running 16 core CPUs and heavily invested in GPUs. Those who've got 32 core Threadrippers probably haven't got anything like good value from them.
I'd be interested if any other content creator has similar views?
The Studio Display is tempting, but still crazy expensive.
I was expecting a new 27" iMac, too.
Am I crazy expecting a touch screen at this point in the line-up ?
I settled for an iMac M1 for the time being.
I'm going to have to budget a lot of new peripherals and applications before I can make the leap.
Maybe next year.