Challenge accepted, Apple. – Mac Studio Review

[Emily Young]

Apple claims the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is the most powerful computer you can buy for $4,000. Does that put AMD, Intel, and Nvidia on notice – Or is Apple making claims they can’t back up?

 

 

Buy an Apple Mac Studio M1 Max: https://geni.us/c9DL

Buy an Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra: https://geni.us/DFJvaa

Buy an Apple Studio Display: https://geni.us/3ho7o

Buy an Apple Magic Keyboard: https://geni.us/8ezY

Buy an Apple Magic Mouse: https://geni.us/h04VhmR

Buy an Apple MacBook Pro 14” M1 Pro: https://geni.us/S8vIu

Buy an Intel Core i9-12900K: https://geni.us/516f8Q

Buy a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090: https://geni.us/eZkB

[MultiGamerClub]

Thought for sure they would just stick with the M2, but nope ahah

[card100]

You could use Minecraft Java 1.19 as a fair benchmark for Apple Silicon since its compiled for Apple Silicon. You would just need to add a mod to show FPS.

[garethsnaim]

I aint spending 4k on this any time soon

[Commodus]

Pretty much what you'd expect: it's a fine machine for Apple's target user (an AV editor with a large budget), but struggles with unoptimized apps. I'm sure an M2 Max/Ultra variant would offer a nice boost, but that probably won't come until next year.

 

On the plus side: you don't need to spend nearly that much to get a computer that's very quick in many common tasks. A 14-inch MacBook Pro will do the job nicely if you just need a bit of extra oomph.

[hishnash]

@GabenJr On macOS if you want to get frame times you can do this using the `Instruments` tools that bundle Xcode. On apple silicon this will give you some very accurate metrics for all sorts of things but be careful to only capture what you want if you capture too much it can impact perfomance. Just capturing screen updates will not have any perf impact however.

To do this:
1) open Xcode (anyone can download this no dev account needed) 
2) in the menu bar top left click 'Xcode -> Open Developer Tool -> Instruments '

3) In Instruments create a new `blank` profile (so as to avoid any perf impact from additional profiling tools)

4) Top right clip the '+' search for `display` and click the `Display: Records display an vscyne events` 
5) In this search box now search for `Metal` and select `Metal Application` (yes do this even if the game is openGL as openGL on macOS runs as an emulation within Metal) 
6) Top right you will see you Macs name followed by a `>`  with `All Processes` now start your game and then here if you click on `All Processes` you should find the game, select it. (so it only records events from the game as much as possible.. vscyn is not filtered per app as it is more hardware related)
7) click the record and record some data (not to much) when done click stop and then explore. 
8) to explore frame times select on the `Metal Application` entry, in the detail inspector at the bottom of your screen you will see a breakdown for each frame, how long it took etc ('Max' is the time it took after the last frame finishes and Total it the total time from when that frame started to when it finishes think of this as latency) when you use frame time numbers on other platforms you are comparing to the max number (time between frames). 
9) if you want to copy out this data you can expand the GPU section and select 'Drawable Presentable` then in the detail view select all the entires and copy them out these can be pasted into a spreadsheet application. These are the exact times that frames were deliverable (some frames may be skipped by the system if they happen at a faster rate than the screen can refresh of course). 

I suggest playing around in these tools, just note the more instruments you add the higher the overhead it will have on the running application but these tools are very richt and the GPU tools can in general be used agaist any running application (some of the cpu memory tools will only work on apps built for debug).  

PS these tools can also be used to capture the same data from attached iOS devices by clicking on you Macs name and selecting the iOS device!! The debug counters and detail apple expose on apple silicon GPUs is very deep and advanced on pare with console tooling if not further in many cases. 

[hishnash]

With respect to the video encoding not being faster than the Max this is expected as for a single video stream it will not be able to use multiple encoders. However if you do find yourselves trying to encode multiple streams at ones (such as rendering out more than one resolution) it should be able to use both encoders. 

[Chiyawa]

It's a nice little machine, but they can cram more features like expandable storage. Still, 4k is too high for average consumer in my opinion.

[NomBread]

I am honestly fine with my desktop probably not going to spend 4000 dollars on this. Some people are looking for upgradability but to bad that apple never really cared that much for it. 

[Roswell]

"Let's run a bunch of non native x86 code and whine about it"

[crazzp]

9 minutes ago, Roswell said:

"Let's run a bunch of non native x86 code and whine about it"

"Our products are perfect, you're holding it wrong.

Sincerely,

Apple"

[themrsbusta]

 

Why not a R9 5950X with RX 6900 XT? it will use half of the power consumption with the same performance of this Intel.

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, NomBread said:

some people are looking for upgradability but to bad that apple never really cared that much for it. 

They do just in a different machine the macPro is very upgradable and Apple said explicitly that the Mac Pro will get apple silicon later and this was not the replacement for the macPro. 

[crazzp]

10 minutes ago, hishnash said:

They do just in a different machine the macPro is very upgradable and Apple said explicitly that the Mac Pro will get apple silicon later and this was not the replacement for the macPro. 

But why? There is no apparent reason why there is such arbitrary segregation other than Apple wanting a tight control 

[maplepants]

When LTT does a video like this you can really tell they're really just a gaming channel. The first quarter (~5 min) of the video is dedicated to gaming performance. This is compared to 30s spent on development workflows, when developers are Apple's largest market of "pro" buyers. When reviewing a new GPU from Nvidia or AMD they put some effort into testing how the card fits into the market segment it's aiming at. But when they encounter a non-gaming focused computer like this, they just don't put the same effort in.

 

Hopefully one of the benefits of LTT Labs ends up being that they get better at making content that's not laser focused on gaming performance, since there's a lot more that computers can actually do.

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, crazzp said:

But why? There is no apparent reason why there is such arbitrary segregation other than Apple wanting a tight control 

Not really about controle here, taking the studio be easy to upgrade would not be as trivial as you think. Most importantly if they wanted to keep the internal power supply they would need to make large changes so that they could legally tell users they can open it. Also for upgradability apple could (and might still) sell the small NAND modules but the idea that the SSD controller should just be able to support any abetary configuration of these is a little over the top, no other SSD controller on the market has this ability, all ssd controllers need exploit configuration for the NAND dies they are addressing there is no such thing as hot plug NAND dies. I expect as part of the self repair program we will get access to by these NAND sticks but you will be limited to buying the configurations that the firmware is written and validated to support.  That means your not just adding another 512 GB stick to make a 1 TB drive unless apple want to put in the validation efforts to build a SSD profile for this (its not just allowing support as you need to build a profile to correctly balance write where and bandwidth usage of the seperate modules). 
 

[hishnash]

Just now, maplepants said:

Hopefully one of the benefits of LTT Labs ends up being that they get better at making content that's not laser focused on gaming performance, since there's a lot more that computers can actually do.

Yer lets hope they use this to acquire some talent that is used to working on these other platforms, but I don't expect they will think that is reliant to there audience. The glaring issue is they keep on saying they cant capture frame rates/times on Mac when apple provide free tools that do this extremely accurate and have done so for many many years. These tools will be more accurate and provide more detail than any of the tools they are using currently on pc.

[maplepants]

1 minute ago, hishnash said:

Yer lets hope they use this to acquire some talent that is used to working on these other platforms, but I don't expect they will think that is reliant to there audience. The glaring issue is they keep on saying they cant capture frame rates/times on Mac when apple provide free tools that do this extremely accurate and have done so for many many years. These tools will be more accurate and provide more detail than any of the tools they are using currently on pc.

Apple does provide good tools for that, but I'd rather they didn't find them. If they found a better way to measure game performance on Macs they probably wouldn't run any of the other benchmarks at all.

 

I'd be more interested in them branching out into CAD benchmarks, better Photoshop / photo editing testing, more developer workflows, and some audio DAW tests. 

 

Even the comparison rig was a high end gaming PC and not a Mac Pro or a $4000 ThinkStation. 

 

But I think this is just a reflection of what they're used to doing. When they hear Apple say "it's much better than similarly priced computers" LTT hears "it's much better than similarly priced gaming computers". 

 

Hopefully though, this is the gap that LTT Labs will fill. Somebody from LTT Labs will have the idea and the know how go kit out a ThinkStation for the same-ish money as the the Mac Studio (or the new Mac Pro) and see how it compares across some non-gaming workflows that would actually be relevant to the machine.

 

I'll be very disappointed if when the new Mac Pro comes out we get another video just talking about gaming and completely ignoring the use cases people actually by these thinks for.

[caosio]

i get this on youtube and yeah i belive is some kind of scam with the LTT logo... i know that becouse i never win any prize at all on my lifeXD 

 

i have to say i enjoy your reviews Anthony and have a nice day people.

[Commodus]

5 hours ago, crazzp said:

But why? There is no apparent reason why there is such arbitrary segregation other than Apple wanting a tight control 

The Mac Studio likely exists to fill a gap — to offer a pro desktop based on Apple Silicon before an updated Mac Pro is available. Think of it like the iMac Pro that was around for a few years while Apple finished the current Mac Pro design.

 

Apple even hinted as much during the event where it introduced the Mac Studio — a Mac Pro was "for another day." It knows the Studio isn't going to be enough for some customers.

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, maplepants said:

I'll be very disappointed if when the new Mac Pro comes out we get another video just talking about gaming and completely ignoring the use cases people actually by these thinks for.

I think we can count on that happening unfortunately even if they do have labs up and running they will feel they need to compare gaming when the system will be a Mutli GPU beast were 0 of the games consider multi gpu.

[Ultraforce]

3 hours ago, maplepants said:

When LTT does a video like this you can really tell they're really just a gaming channel. The first quarter (~5 min) of the video is dedicated to gaming performance. This is compared to 30s spent on development workflows, when developers are Apple's largest market of "pro" buyers. When reviewing a new GPU from Nvidia or AMD they put some effort into testing how the card fits into the market segment it's aiming at. But when they encounter a non-gaming focused computer like this, they just don't put the same effort in.

 

Hopefully one of the benefits of LTT Labs ends up being that they get better at making content that's not laser focused on gaming performance, since there's a lot more that computers can actually do.

One thing that Anthony posted in the comments as a reply to someone was yeah he hopes that with Labs they will have peopel with the expertise to be able to do tests dealing with certain other topics such as audio engineering which Apple is famous for and that LTT so far has really not been able to really deal with other then mentioning that it is why the rack mounted Mac Pro exists.

 

17 minutes ago, techonlineportal said:

I think It's very expensive for people.

Am i Right?

I'd not personally buy one but as others mentioned, at least from what I've seen it's really not advertised as being something for people and more so something for people who will use it to make money doing projects with it. The MacBook Air, iMac, Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro seem like more so what Apple expects normal people to buy is my guess. I know if I was going to get into programming stuff where I needed Apple stuff I'd probably go a Mac Mini or maybe MacBook Air, since I'm only used to iOS and would rather most be doing stuff on Windows and maybe Linux.

[Commodus]

12 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

It's a nice little machine, but they can cram more features like expandable storage. Still, 4k is too high for average consumer in my opinion.

I don't think LTT or anyone is claiming that $4,000 is an "average consumer" price. If you're buying the Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra, it's because you're a pro with specific needs (or else a very well-heeled fan). Even the stock M1 Max version is overkill for many people, including some creatives.

[darknessblade]

Even if it is supposed to be the most powerful PC you can buy now. Just like DELL/HP/Alienware PC's It is nothing but a pile of E-waste, when you cannot upgrade it yourself

[HenrySalayne]

6 hours ago, maplepants said:

Even the comparison rig was a high end gaming PC and not a Mac Pro or a $4000 ThinkStation. 

 At least 95% of the bread and butter workstations will have a fast (SC and MC) CPU and a top-tier GPU, something like a 12900K and a 3090 for example. That's exactly what you would find in a workstation computer.

The fact that you don't know that, means, you don't use workstations. So why do you even care about the comparison?