it has been one month since we started
using and testing our three mac studios
and in that time we have made a bunch of
discoveries including a few breakthrough
ones just a few days ago about specific
hardware limitations with the mac studio
that explain a lot of the issues that we
have found and talked about in our
previous videos in this one month real
world review i will be talking about all
of that including my honest experience
with these mac studios and what i think
about them if they are worth purchasing
or upgrading to compared to previous
imacs and other desktops
and the few personal dilemmas that i
have with the mac studio in general so
let's go ahead and jump right into it
people been waiting for a desktop like
this for many years now now yes we did
have the mac mini but that had a bunch
of limitations including not having an
actual dedicated graphics card which was
its biggest weakness now we made a bunch
of videos on egpus comparing different
ones and seeing if it's worth it for
your use case so a lot of people use
those to speed them up but because of
inefficiencies and bandwidth limitations
for a lot of people they just did not
make sense compared to buying an imac or
a macbook well we finally have a serious
desktop mac that is relatively
affordable compared to the mac pro which
comes in a nice form factor that i have
to say is so easy to carry around with
you
and it is just a pleasure to use and to
hold into experience it's definitely
nice now i have to say i have been
loving the system and i've been loving
all the io whoever thought the apple
would give us front ports and a front sd
card reader i think that's probably
because johnny ive is no longer there so
i am very thankful for that and even on
the base model these two front ports
that are not thunderbolt they are usb-c
that is twice the speed of the previous
ones and the sd card supports really
fast speeds as well now with my previous
uh mac mini and also even the imacs one
big limitation was being limited with
thunderbolt ports and this has four on
the back and not only they're they
thunderbolt they each have their own
controller meaning that you could split
these out without being limited with
bandwidth so that's been really nice we
have 10 gigabit ethernet as far as io
this thing is awesome and i also want to
talk about fan noise because on stage
apple said that this thing runs really
cool and you can't really hear it for
the most part but i think they
understated that because even maxing out
the gpu and the cpu completely the fans
stayed at idle and the temperatures are
extremely low like people literally
commented and said that doesn't seem
right that's too low but in fact that is
how cool this thing runs so apple
definitely over engineered it now for
those of you guys that need a desktop
because of multiple displays it is
awesome to see that even the base model
can support up to five displays four 6k
xdr high resolutions and a 4k display so
it's cool the apple didn't limit it now
there is no doubt that this is an
amazing machine but the elephant in the
room is the price point because
previously you could buy a 5k imac for
1800 bucks that included a computer a
beautiful 5k display a keyboard and a
mouse for that price and now even the
base model is two thousand dollars and
then if you add on apple's genuine
accessories you're looking at close to
four thousand dollars for a system which
is crazy now sure if you buy a base two
thousand dollar max studio that will be
more powerful than that imac but it
still is a lot of money so realistically
this thing is not only replacing the
imac that they drop from their lineup to
get you to spend more money on a system
that's split up
and it's replacing also the imac pro so
with that does this thing really hold up
in terms of performance to a high-end
system before and is it worth it well i
will say after month of use heck yeah it
is worth it even if you're buying the
base model as long as you can actually
make use of that performance we have
made a ton of performance videos and
comparisons within the last month that
go into extreme detail
testing out the system comparing it to
macbooks mac mini's desktop custom
windows pcs and intel mac pros and imacs
along with a super detailed video
comparing all three configurations of
the mac studio so if you guys want an
insane amount of detail you guys can
check those out but in this video i want
to go over the top level kind of
thoughts and perspectives on performance
now before i jump into that
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the m1 max mac studios have the same
performance as apple's latest laptops
which seems kind of like a bummer at
first but you have to keep in mind that
those macbooks not only destroyed the
intel macbooks they replaced but even
the higher end imacs that have desktop
chips including the imac pro
not only that it even embarrassed my
fifteen thousand dollar intel based mac
pro
which was really really surprising now
for people that look at simple
benchmarks and looking at their raw
graphics performance well of course the
mac pro does beat it out but the crazy
thing about apple silicate is that there
are so many other efficiencies and
improvements that make real world usage
much faster for example we have the
unified memory design and with that we
have tile memory so when a program is
optimized for it the graphics doesn't
have to send the data back to the cpu
back to the ram and then back and forth
it stays there and because of that many
real world tasks are so much faster this
means that even if you had a high-end
imac pro a 2 000 max studio can actually
outperform that so don't think you have
to buy the 4 000 model or up to 8 000 if
you spec that out now the m1 ultra on
the other hand is a whole nother beast
the cpu performance is
extraordinary but without the gpu well
it's a bit hit or miss but let's touch
on the cpu first some people say why do
you need a faster and faster and faster
computer why do you need to keep
upgrading well that is true even the m1
mac mini is great for a lot of people
but if you are somebody that is pushing
these computers to their maximum
especially if you're making money with
it it can make a significant difference
having 20 cpu cores with the m1 ultra
along with higher amounts of ram that
are much much faster and have more
channels can make a huge difference for
example for lightroom photo editing this
performance is unheard of even with
high-end overclocked water cooled custom
pcs with intel's latest 12th gen for the
people that can make use of it spending
the extra sixteen hundred dollars going
from the base model up to an m1 ultra
with 48 graphic scores and 64 gigabytes
of ram can make a world of a difference
for example i know somebody that is
literally gonna make an extra thousand
to fifteen hundred dollars a month on
these speed improvements because instead
of sitting there watching everything
load and process for example when you're
doing photo merge you're doing hdr
you literally get that work done twice
as fast or even more than before and if
you're doing a lot of projects and
you're going off of you know a flat rate
price which they are you can make but
make back that difference in price in a
month and then within a year that's an
extra 10 000 of income and then of
course if you have a team that's working
on stuff like this these macs and these
new chips with new faster cpus can make
a massive difference this is why the mac
studio specifically the m1 ultra is an
absolutely incredible product where even
a hind mac pro that costs way more can't
touch it and you have this form factor
and this price now the m1 ultra on the
cpu side you don't need to get the
higher end 64 core this is where we need
to talk about the graphics when apple
announced their chip they made some huge
claims about the gpu performance not
only that it used so little power but
they talked about how it compares to a
12900k with an rtx 3090 gpu so people
were expecting it to compete and to be
honest and fair in some tests like gfx
bench it does get close but in our
detailed testing we found that well it
does kind of fall flat and for a couple
different reasons first off one thing
that almost nobody notices on that graph
that they showed off the rtx 3090 was
only shown up to just over 300 watts of
power and then compared to the m1 ultra
which at 200 watts less can perform
slightly better when people see that
chart that's up there for a few seconds
you think wow this is beating out the
rtx 3090 that's what everybody talked
about but in fact that graphics card
does not use just above 300 watts it
uses a lot higher so if you're using it
the way it's designed it is quite a bit
more powerful now for the things that
apple really optimize for like video
editing this thing is quite a bit faster
but for other things that bottleneck the
system or it's just not designed for
window species are quite a bit faster
specifically for things that use ray
tracing for example blender with opt-x
is just screaming now we went in and we
tested out a bunch of real world tests
both photo editing different
applications photoshop after effects
video editing and we saw some cases
where the 64 core barely performed any
faster than the 48 core in some cases
where even the m1 ultra chips were not
much faster than the 2 000 base model
and that really got us thinking and
researching more we found that in one
specific test that pushes both the cpu
and gpu really hard
the 64 core was barely faster and it
throttled down to
all the way down to like 700 megahertz
instead of 1300 and the wattage just
wasn't there now the highest wattage we
ever saw used was 87 watts where apple
on stage showed off 105 and for perfect
proper scaling it should be 120 watts if
you're going off of just the standard m1
chip scaled up which is what the m1
ultra is so we started looking into what
the heck is going on and i kind of told
people overall don't buy the 64 core
option unless you absolutely know that
your program is optimized so we talked
with multiple engineers software
hardware we have some extra information
and we were shown with xcode's mapping
feature that even though the gpu is
marked at 100 usage half the time
literally it is just sitting there not
doing anything for a couple of reasons
part of it's software optimization and
you guys have to know that
just because an application is designed
for
apple silicon and arm does not mean that
it's actually optimized for these chips
with the tile memory and the unified
setup so half the time this ultra
especially the higher end one it could
just be sitting there and it's sitting
there which is why the geekbench scores
are so low and they don't scale
now
we got more information about what is
limiting it for example in blender in in
certain cases where the wattage is so
low and that is actually a hardware
design thing these m1 chips were
actually first starting to be designed
up to seven
years ago yes that is incredible and
then about five years ago for you know
these higher end versions meaning that
the kind of workloads that we're doing
now working with black magic raw working
with
this 8k footage and these crazy high
resolution things weren't around and
they're based off of iphones so a lot of
people have said well this is an iphone
chip and technically you are right and
because of that there is a buffer in the
chips
that isn't very large so when a software
is not optimized and throws throwing
huge chunks of data you end up getting
some slowdowns and bottlenecks while the
gpu has to wait it's almost like if you
have a funnel and then you literally
have this tiny little channel to pass
through data so if this data can't get
to the gpu fast enough the gpu is
waiting for more information to try to
kind of squeeze through so half the time
it is sitting there and so if you're
seeing that your m1 ultra's graphics
there it's down clocking to 700
megahertz and the wattage is low that is
just because it's not getting data fast
enough now we also got more info about
can this be fixed and how much faster
can it be well on a hardware level it
cannot be changed that's already sealed
and scaled and the more graphic scores
there are the more of this limitation of
bottleneck you see which is why the 64
core is hit way harder than a 24 core 32
core m1 max which has very little
bottlenecks now some tests have been
done some software is being rewritten
and
being you know fixed for this and for
example the m1 max model for 12k
blackmagic raw has seen improvements up
to two and a half times faster as far as
the speed and that will be coming out
now as the data is smaller or as
you have other bottlenecks you might not
see that big of a difference but if
software companies optimize and they fix
how their program sends data these m1
ultras are going to get a lot faster but
the question is and i mentioned this in
my previous video how long is that going
to take we have heard from different
software developers that they haven't
even received m1 ultras yet apple does
send out machines to some developers and
others buy it and they're waiting but
because of the availability it is taking
time to get these optimizations to be
made so if you're buying a high-end one
expect to wait quite a bit now this is
also why i have to touch on final cut we
have been wanting to make a comparison
for video editing a very detailed one
including all the macs but apple even
close to a month later didn't release
the final cut version that they
advertised on stage for their
performance numbers now today as i was
shooting this video they released it i
paused we went and ran some tests and
unfortunately the things where we saw
bottlenecks in
they have not been fixed in fact in our
toughest test the heist and mac actually
got eight seconds
slower so that is a bummer i don't know
if they're working on it or what is
happening but we know that with future
versions of mac os there's going to be
some improvements as well that is going
to take some time for that to come out
so if you're worried about getting the
most bang for the buck from these
systems do know that you will have to
wait and with that for full-on hardware
changes we are going to have to wait for
the m2 chips which will be you know a
ways out for these higher end ones so
with all of that is the max studio still
worth it well yeah absolutely especially
if you are using the high-end cpu that
can make a big difference for you now as
far as the gpu well it will never be as
fast as an rtx 3090 especially if you're
using a program like blender which has
the ray tracing cores that are utilized
to make it so much faster even when the
software is updated which will take a
while it will not touch that now we do
know that apple is working on ray
tracing for future chips that will come
out in the future but for now this is
not gonna be a powerhouse for those
types of uses now for other people that
are working with photos illustrations
coding is insanely fast video editing in
these areas these systems are incredible
i know some of you guys asked if you're
buying the base model should you upgrade
to the 32 core graphics i think for 200
bucks yes if you're using graphics
you're really pushing it it is worth it
but this is where my personal dilemma
comes in i made a video saying do not
buy the 2 000
mac studio that is because for the first
time ever we have a macbook that has the
same performance as the mac studio with
the m1 max in the past macbooks not only
were a lot slower they were limited in
performance but they also thermal
throttled but now apple gave us this
insanely good macbook in this mac studio
that's a desktop but it doesn't utilize
any extra clock speeds any extra
performance so personally
unless you know that you need a desktop
and you need five displays instead of
having three displays with the macbook
or maybe i don't know for some other
reason you really want to have a desktop
i think it's worth spending a little bit
more money getting that beautiful
display the xdr display that's really
nice getting the speakers the keyboard
the trackpad the battery with the
capability to take it to go and using
that as a desktop solution they just
plug in i think you get so much more
value and it might run a little bit
hotter than this
but the performance is the same now on
the flip side if you are somebody that
can make use of the extra performance of
the m1 ultra chip that 4 000 model that
i recommend that is where this computer
is a game changer and it can even beat
out a 28 core mac pro in terms of xcode
in in photo work in a lot of different
cpu applications and graphics that are
optimized it is incredible and it is
actually a great value compared to the
you know buying an imac pro in the past
people spend 10 grand or a mac pro it is
a really nice machine so there you guys
go if you have any questions let me know
down in the comment section below i will
do my best to answer them we will be
doing that triple comparison we're going
to dive into video editing so if you
guys want to see that with premiere pro
and adobe
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in the next video
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you