My god…..I was thinking when I purchased my M1 Max 16 inch I would be fine for 4-5 years but this might consider me upgrading this year….also because I noticed the GPU is hitting the limit sometimes but also that with my new function I need more headroom for bigger projects with the CPU.
I too have an M1 Max 16" MBP and I edit 10-bit 4K videos in FCPX, but I've not run up against performance issues that necessitate an upgrade. Sure, the extra speed of the M4 Max would be fun, but it's not an absolute necessity. Perhaps when they release the M5, they'll finally have WIFI 7 support, and then it may be time to pull the trigger on a purchase. Maybe by then they will finally add FaceID and make the notch much more useful.
Impressive. But my M2 Pro is so awesome that I'm fine where I am. I think the only thing I should have got was more than 32GB RAM. It's amazing how powerful these computers are while running nearly silent and cool.
Why is a 1tb, 48gb M4 Pro Mac Mini more expensive than the baseline price of a current Mac Studio M3 Max (assuming Apple will keep the price the same for M4 Max)?
Because just the difference in RAM but a much more specced enclosure and better chip doesn’t make sense to me.
There is no m3 max Mac Studio. It’s stuck on m2 generation for now.
And that m4 pro Mac mini will tear the m2 max a new one. Heck, it whoops the m2 ultra also - at least in cpu. Waiting on GPU scores.
Apologies, I meant M2. But my question remains - why is the M4 Pro purchase price as mentioned more expensive as what will be the base Mac Studio?
The answer is the same as well. The m4 pro Mac mini is more performant than the studio in everything but GPU performance due to fewer cores.
Now I'm glad I've wavered on the Mac Studio. It wasn't a "need to" purchase, but a want-to one. I'll wait on some Mini reviews from graphics pros and go from there.
the M2 Ultra still beats the M4 Max in Cinebench in multicore performance, though it isn't exactly clear where that result came from, and the M2 Ultra wasn't ahead by that much.
The M2 Ultra does have quite a bit more total memory bandwidth, but half of that memory has to shuttle between the two halves of the Ultra, so it might end up being worse if memory vs cores for the running threads isn't carefully managed. Maybe Cinebench is better tuned for non-uniform memory access than Geekbench? Or maybe the submitted benchmark numbers are bogus (though the M4 Max benchmarks also don't come from a verified source).
Why is a 1tb, 48gb M4 Pro Mac Mini more expensive than the baseline price of a current Mac Studio M3 Max (assuming Apple will keep the price the same for M4 Max)?
Because just the difference in RAM but a much more specced enclosure and better chip doesn’t make sense to me.
There is no m3 max Mac Studio. It’s stuck on m2 generation for now.
And that m4 pro Mac mini will tear the m2 max a new one. Heck, it whoops the m2 ultra also - at least in cpu. Waiting on GPU scores.
Apologies, I meant M2. But my question remains - why is the M4 Pro purchase price as mentioned more expensive as what will be the base Mac Studio?
Because you are not comparing base model to base model. You have doubled both the RAM and SSD in the mini and didn't do that for the Studio. The Studio is cheaper because it has less RAM and half the storage space. I you simply match SSDs across both then you end up with a mini that costs less despite having more RAM.
It is kind of reasonable to think that you can throw whatever upgrades at the min and not have it eventually pass the price of the base model Studio. Likewise I can throw upgrades into the Mac Studio and have it cost more than the base level Mac Pro.
Now I'm glad I've wavered on the Mac Studio. It wasn't a "need to" purchase, but a want-to one. I'll wait on some Mini reviews from graphics pros and go from there.
What?! You're not using a Chromebook?
Oh, I definitely use Chromebooks for email, browsing, banking, bill payment, shopping, news, and posting to forums like AppleInsider.
I'll also a prosumer photographer with increasingly rare paid events meaning budget matters. For a couple of years now I've interested in the Mac Studio at home for my photo processing and related graphics.
the M2 Ultra still beats the M4 Max in Cinebench in multicore performance, though it isn't exactly clear where that result came from, and the M2 Ultra wasn't ahead by that much.
This is Cinebench R23. There's a test of the 2024 version:
M4 Max gets 2043 for CPU multi-threaded, M2 Ultra gets 1918. In the GPU test, M2 Ultra gets 7332, M4 Max gets 16409. This is due to hardware raytracing being added with M3 and later chips.
There's some data for Blender now, M4 Max is the first Apple chip to make it to page 1:
It's next to the desktop 4070 and 3090. M2 Ultra is on page 3, also due to lacking hardware raytracing.
In the Blender test, the Ultra GPU should scale at least 90% higher than Max, which would put M4 Ultra in the top 5 GPUs (really 2nd place as some are expensive workstation GPUs and the 4090 is duplicated). It will get moved down a bit when the 5080/5090 launches next year but they now have chips that are competing against the best desktop GPUs available.
There's a page here that lists the M4 Ultra with a note saying it's an engineering sample but it could just be a speculative entry:
Comments
I never said there was a max Mac mini.
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-list/cinebench-scores
the M2 Ultra still beats the M4 Max in Cinebench in multicore performance, though it isn't exactly clear where that result came from, and the M2 Ultra wasn't ahead by that much.
The M2 Ultra does have quite a bit more total memory bandwidth, but half of that memory has to shuttle between the two halves of the Ultra, so it might end up being worse if memory vs cores for the running threads isn't carefully managed. Maybe Cinebench is better tuned for non-uniform memory access than Geekbench? Or maybe the submitted benchmark numbers are bogus (though the M4 Max benchmarks also don't come from a verified source).
It is kind of reasonable to think that you can throw whatever upgrades at the min and not have it eventually pass the price of the base model Studio. Likewise I can throw upgrades into the Mac Studio and have it cost more than the base level Mac Pro.
I'll also a prosumer photographer with increasingly rare paid events meaning budget matters. For a couple of years now I've interested in the Mac Studio at home for my photo processing and related graphics.
https://www.theverge.com/24289831/apple-macbook-pro-m4-review-14-2024-laptop-specs-benchmarks
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/benchmark-apple_m2_ultra_76_gpu-cinebench_2024_multi_core
M4 Max gets 2043 for CPU multi-threaded, M2 Ultra gets 1918.
In the GPU test, M2 Ultra gets 7332, M4 Max gets 16409. This is due to hardware raytracing being added with M3 and later chips.
There's some data for Blender now, M4 Max is the first Apple chip to make it to page 1:
https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=OPTIX&compute_type=CUDA&compute_type=HIP&compute_type=METAL&compute_type=ONEAPI&group_by=device_name&blender_version=4.2.0
It's next to the desktop 4070 and 3090.
M2 Ultra is on page 3, also due to lacking hardware raytracing.
In the Blender test, the Ultra GPU should scale at least 90% higher than Max, which would put M4 Ultra in the top 5 GPUs (really 2nd place as some are expensive workstation GPUs and the 4090 is duplicated). It will get moved down a bit when the 5080/5090 launches next year but they now have chips that are competing against the best desktop GPUs available.
There's a page here that lists the M4 Ultra with a note saying it's an engineering sample but it could just be a speculative entry:
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-list/cinebench-scores