Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

zachol posted:

I feel like I'm the weirdo, but I actually strongly prefer a smaller screen. Are there recommendations for a nice 4K 24" monitor?
That would be the PPI for retina, right?

There’s a smaller, less expensive LG UltraFine 4K companion to the 5K made specifically for Macs that’s 23.7”.

I believe the PPI is way worse than the 24” iMac so maybe don’t use it as a second display for one of those.

It’s still $700 tho, IDK if I wouldn’t rather suck it up and get a bigger 27” Dell UltraSharp for $150-200 less. There are cheaper ones (particularly on the used market, Dell used to make a 24” 4K UltraSharp) but ehhh

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sphyre
Jun 14, 2001

I'd be amazed if a 5K 27" monitor was worth the price premium over a 4k 27" monitor running at running at 1440p scaling equivalent

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

Sphyre posted:

I'd be amazed if a 5K 27" monitor was worth the price premium over a 4k 27" monitor running at running at 1440p scaling equivalent

it’s presumably nice to have if you’re editing 4K at native res, with your timeline/sidebar occupying the remaining K. I wouldn’t know because I have two 4K screens and zero 5K ones, and I never did video poo poo on a 5K iMac.

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


the talent deficit posted:

no one really knows. apple's driver/library support is atrocious so it's impossible to tell if it's poor showing is hardware related or software related. right now the apple gpus are borderline useless except for some video editing workloads. tensorflow ml performance is a fraction of what you would expect from raw flops and there's almost no games using native metal so it's hard to really infer anything

https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/macos-metal-games/

It's literally only a handful that are using M1 native Metal.

Apple still thinks a graphic standard that they created with no input from anyone else and requires totally rewriting everything for is good enough for developers.

quote:

if you need to run general purpose gpu stuff right now your only option is still nvidia. maybe apple will figure out their driver situation and macs can compete but they absolutely cannot right now

What's sad is that we've kind of lived through this kind of poo poo before when Apple was hawking G4/G5 machines with Altivec.

Apple kept thinking everyone was going to take advantage of what Altivec brought in terms of computing, which basically turned out to result in a few speedier PhotoShop plugins but nothing else really groundbreaking.

What's the point of having 12-core, 24-core, 32/64 core GPUs if nobody wants to learn or use Metal?

Apple has actually helped the developers of Blender by pretty much writing a Metal backend for them, and in the Blender forums the general sentiment seems to be that OpenCL, even the moribund version that was ported to Apple Silicon, rendered stuff faster/better.

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





Binary Badger posted:

What's the point of having 12-core, 24-core, 32/64 core GPUs if nobody wants to learn or use Metal?

there's almost no point. outside of some very niche use cases there's nothing worth doing with those gpu cores that you couldn't do with the base model m1. the m1 max is utterly pointless unless you get it with 64gb of ram. the extra gpu cores are complete unnecessary. i'm half convinced there's no technical barrier to having a 64gb pro except that by only making it available on the max they can squeeze an extra $250 out of you

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





Ok Comboomer posted:

it’s presumably nice to have if you’re editing 4K at native res, with your timeline/sidebar occupying the remaining K. I wouldn’t know because I have two 4K screens and zero 5K ones, and I never did video poo poo on a 5K iMac.

anyone who says this doesn't edit video. the "extra" 1k pixels are 4.4 inches tall and 4.8 inches wide. you can't fit anything useful in that space especially not a timeline. also no one edits at full res there's literally no point.

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

the talent deficit posted:

anyone who says this doesn't edit video. the "extra" 1k pixels are 4.4 inches tall and 4.8 inches wide. you can't fit anything useful in that space especially not a timeline. also no one edits at full res there's literally no point.

well there you go

frogbs
May 5, 2004
Well well well

jokes posted:

I am extremely disappointed about Apple’s reticence to have higher refresh rates. I’m locked in and can’t go back to lower refresh rates and now that I use a Surface Pro 8 for work (120Hz screen), and a 120+Hz screen for work and for home use, Apple screens feel like a downgrade, which is strange.

They’ve always had the best displays! I’d be lying if I said MacBook/Apple Screens aren’t impressive as hell, but the refresh rate issues are very annoying.

I've always thought Apple's displays were great, but someone in the SHSC Monitor thread the other day said they were "the worst" compared to others they've seen and now I don't know what to think!

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

the talent deficit posted:

there's almost no point. outside of some very niche use cases there's nothing worth doing with those gpu cores that you couldn't do with the base model m1. the m1 max is utterly pointless unless you get it with 64gb of ram. the extra gpu cores are complete unnecessary. i'm half convinced there's no technical barrier to having a 64gb pro except that by only making it available on the max they can squeeze an extra $250 out of you

I'm confused about this statement, what do you consider niche? Any creative professional who uses Mac OS can absolutely benefit from the larger set of GPU cores if the applications they use are optimized for Metal. Blender Metal rendering is in early days and beta so I don't know it's a great example. The base model doesn't have the media engines so while that's not GPU dependent it makes video work a no brainer on the Pro/Max. The M1 Pro/Max kind of stomp on the M1 in both synthetic and practical benchmarks, particularly in 3D. If you're talking about gaming well, yeah, that's pointless. The difference between a 16 GPU and 32 GPU is much smaller for sure, but the regular M1 gets beaten pretty hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct6grKlMJuk

e; like this is one test in the video above, it's fairly representative of all the results

squirrelzipper fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 12, 2022

xgalaxy
Jan 27, 2004
i write code

Binary Badger posted:

https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/macos-metal-games/

It's literally only a handful that are using M1 native Metal.

Apple still thinks a graphic standard that they created with no input from anyone else and requires totally rewriting everything for is good enough for developers.

What's sad is that we've kind of lived through this kind of poo poo before when Apple was hawking G4/G5 machines with Altivec.

Apple kept thinking everyone was going to take advantage of what Altivec brought in terms of computing, which basically turned out to result in a few speedier PhotoShop plugins but nothing else really groundbreaking.

What's the point of having 12-core, 24-core, 32/64 core GPUs if nobody wants to learn or use Metal?

Apple has actually helped the developers of Blender by pretty much writing a Metal backend for them, and in the Blender forums the general sentiment seems to be that OpenCL, even the moribund version that was ported to Apple Silicon, rendered stuff faster/better.

Almost every AAA graphics programmer I follow on Twitter thinks Metal is awesome but sad that it isn’t available on Windows.
So I don’t think the API itself is bad because far smarter people than me don’t think it is.

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

Binary Badger posted:

https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/macos-metal-games/

It's literally only a handful that are using M1 native Metal.

Apple still thinks a graphic standard that they created with no input from anyone else and requires totally rewriting everything for is good enough for developers.

What's sad is that we've kind of lived through this kind of poo poo before when Apple was hawking G4/G5 machines with Altivec.

Apple kept thinking everyone was going to take advantage of what Altivec brought in terms of computing, which basically turned out to result in a few speedier PhotoShop plugins but nothing else really groundbreaking.

What's the point of having 12-core, 24-core, 32/64 core GPUs if nobody wants to learn or use Metal?

Apple has actually helped the developers of Blender by pretty much writing a Metal backend for them, and in the Blender forums the general sentiment seems to be that OpenCL, even the moribund version that was ported to Apple Silicon, rendered stuff faster/better.

Apple made more in the gaming market than Microsoft, AcitBlizz, and Sony combined. Most of which use metal. They may not be games you want to play, but that's the market Apple cares about. They do not give a single poo poo about AAA PC/Console gaming and probably never will.

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





squirrelzipper posted:

I'm confused about this statement, what do you consider niche? Any creative professional who uses Mac OS can absolutely benefit from the larger set of GPU cores if the applications they use are optimized for Metal. Blender Metal rendering is in early days and beta so I don't know it's a great example. The base model doesn't have the media engines so while that's not GPU dependent it makes video work a no brainer on the Pro/Max. The M1 Pro/Max kind of stomp on the M1 in both synthetic and practical benchmarks, particularly in 3D. If you're talking about gaming well, yeah, that's pointless. The difference between a 16 GPU and 32 GPU is much smaller for sure, but the regular M1 gets beaten pretty hard.

you need to define creative professional. if you mean video editors who use final cut pro and davinci resolve, then yes, the m1 is good value (but still way behind nvidia). if you mean almost anything else then there's very little use for the gpu cores. machine learning on the m1 is a total waste of time when compared to even nvidia products 3 generations old. for still photo editing there's almost no difference between the pro and the max. for adobe premiere (the most popular video editing suite by a landslide) performance doesn't track with the raw performance of the apple gpus

i do think the gpus have potential if apple can get their software in order. right now though all those gpu cores are mostly going to waste

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

the talent deficit posted:

you need to define creative professional. if you mean video editors who use final cut pro and davinci resolve, then yes, the m1 is good value (but still way behind nvidia). if you mean almost anything else then there's very little use for the gpu cores. machine learning on the m1 is a total waste of time when compared to even nvidia products 3 generations old. for still photo editing there's almost no difference between the pro and the max. for adobe premiere (the most popular video editing suite by a landslide) performance doesn't track with the raw performance of the apple gpus

i do think the gpus have potential if apple can get their software in order. right now though all those gpu cores are mostly going to waste

Man look at those goalposts go. You said this:

the talent deficit posted:

there's almost no point. outside of some very niche use cases there's nothing worth doing with those gpu cores that you couldn't do with the base model m1. the m1 max is utterly pointless unless you get it with 64gb of ram. the extra gpu cores are complete unnecessary. i'm half convinced there's no technical barrier to having a 64gb pro except that by only making it available on the max they can squeeze an extra $250 out of you

Which is demonstrably untrue, take 5 minutes and watch the CNET video and tell me this holds true.


the talent deficit posted:

you need to define creative professional. if you mean video editors who use final cut pro and davinci resolve, then yes, the m1 is good value (but still way behind nvidia).

This is dumb because FCP is not even available on a Nvidia capable system.


the talent deficit posted:

for still photo editing there's almost no difference between the pro and the max. for adobe premiere (the most popular video editing suite by a landslide) performance doesn't track with the raw performance of the apple gpus

This is not the issue because again your statement was that there's no use for the additional GPU cores beyond the base M1 which is totally false.

Also, I consider folks who work in Houdini, Cinema 4D, Redshift, Affinity, etc. creatives and all those apps use the extra GPU capability to good effect.

the talent deficit posted:

machine learning on the m1 is a total waste of time when compared to even nvidia products 3 generations old.s

Ok?

e; video in which a bunch of GPU cores are totally not being used guys! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct6grKlMJuk

squirrelzipper fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Mar 12, 2022

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

squirrelzipper posted:

This is dumb because FCP is not even available on a Nvidia capable system.

:shobon: not exactly true

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp690?locale=en_US

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011


One of the best laptops ever made, I finally retired mine in 2019.

~Coxy
Dec 9, 2003

R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD

I don't know what's the latest version of FCP that runs on System 10.14 Mojave but you can still run a GTX1080 with that. It even has CUDA and G-Sync.

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

squirrelzipper posted:

One of the best laptops ever made, I finally retired mine in 2019.

I’m still using mine

Coconut Battery still pegs it at like 90% battery health

carry on then
Jul 10, 2010

by VideoGames

(and can't post for 10 years!)

Ok Comboomer posted:

I’m still using mine

Coconut Battery still pegs it at like 90% battery health

I must be unlucky because I haven't seen a battery that doesn't destroy itself to half capacity in 5 years. I'm not _that_ hard on it either.

Splinter
Jul 4, 2003
Cowabunga!
I'm still using my specced out Late 2013 15" rMBP, though I did have the top case replaced in 2019 (battery service). System info is reporting a full charge capacity of 7740 mAh, which I believe is ~91% (google tells me the new capacity is ~8460 mAh). I recently re-applied thermal paste and it keeps chugging along. It's still quite capable and I actually prefer it to my work issued Dell workstation laptop (with an i9, 64 GB of RAM, Quadro dGPU) for 90% of my development work. It handles multiple docker containers, Intellij running a Java/Spring backend, VSCode running a React/Next frontend, and 100+ firefox tabs (yes I have a problem) all at once without too much complaints. Plus it runs MacOS (as opposed to my work-required Linux distro w/ terrible nVidia drivers on the Dell workstation laptop) and is actually enjoyable to use as a laptop. I'll still be upgrading to some flavor of M1 soon as it does scream at me when running a large Ableton project or when photo editing with CaptureOne, as well as due to only getting 2-3 hours of battery life for some of my heavier workloads (still better than the 45-60 minutes I'll get from the Dell). But at the end of the day it still gets the job done without much pain for a lot of what I do.

Mia Wasikowska
Oct 7, 2006

m1max is good if you wanna use 3+ displays. and better believe i do

Mia Wasikowska
Oct 7, 2006

its really a shame how bad monterey's new multiple display manager thing is

Astro7x
Aug 4, 2004
Thinks It's All Real
Apparently the $1,300 5K LG Ultrafines have been removed from the Apple store, leaving only the Studio Display.

We just picked up an LG ultra fine at work with our business account for $1,180, so perfect timing.

toiletbrush
May 17, 2010

Binary Badger posted:

What's sad is that we've kind of lived through this kind of poo poo before when Apple was hawking G4/G5 machines with Altivec.

Apple kept thinking everyone was going to take advantage of what Altivec brought in terms of computing, which basically turned out to result in a few speedier PhotoShop plugins but nothing else really groundbreaking.
wtf you've got to be loving joking

quote:

Apple has actually helped the developers of Blender by pretty much writing a Metal backend for them, and in the Blender forums the general sentiment seems to be that OpenCL, even the moribund version that was ported to Apple Silicon, rendered stuff faster/better.
tbf Blender's metal support is still very much in beta and hasn't had any effort spent on performance, they're still doing basic stuff like getting Intel and non-AS gpu support done and getting automated test suites passing.

also ive not read the forums but everyone on the dev list seems pretty impressed with the speed.

toiletbrush fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 13, 2022

binarysmurf
Aug 18, 2012

I smurf, therefore I am.

the talent deficit posted:

the m1 max is utterly pointless unless you get it with 64gb of ram. the extra gpu cores are complete unnecessary.

Can you expand on this? Why is 'only' 32GB on the Max a detriment? I'll be getting this version, as I have no need for 64GB. At all.

Splinter
Jul 4, 2003
Cowabunga!

binarysmurf posted:

Can you expand on this? Why is 'only' 32GB on the Max a detriment? I'll be getting this version, as I have no need for 64GB. At all.

I believe what they mean is since the GPU cores aren't that useful for many people's workloads, the only reason to get a Max over a Pro would be if you need 64 GB of RAM (as the Pro is limited to 32 GB). They are saying if you only need 32 GB of RAM or less, save your money and get an M1 Pro instead of an M1 Max. This isn't relevant to the Studio (only MBPs) since the Studios are only offered in a Max or Ultra (no Pro).

binarysmurf
Aug 18, 2012

I smurf, therefore I am.

Splinter posted:

I believe what they mean is since the GPU cores aren't that useful for many people's workloads, the only reason to get a Max over a Pro would be if you need 64 GB of RAM (as the Pro is limited to 32 GB). They are saying if you only need 32 GB of RAM or less, save your money and get an M1 Pro instead of an M1 Max. This isn't relevant to the Studio (only MBPs) since the Studios are only offered in a Max or Ultra (no Pro).

Thanks. Given that I a) have no need or interest in a laptop (nor the extra expense), and b) I felt that the OG M1 chip was slightly underpowered, the Studio is a perfect fit for me.

Given that the most computationally intensive tasks I do are either Xcode development, or video conversion with ffmpeg or Handbrake.. Is it even worth me ponying up the extra $AU300 to go from 24 GPU cores -> 32 GPU cores? I do some light gaming, but it's not a major factor in my system choice.

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

binarysmurf posted:

Thanks. Given that I a) have no need or interest in a laptop (nor the extra expense), and b) I felt that the OG M1 chip was slightly underpowered, the Studio is a perfect fit for me.

Given that the most computationally intensive tasks I do are either Xcode development, or video conversion with ffmpeg or Handbrake.. Is it even worth me ponying up the extra $AU300 to go from 24 GPU cores -> 32 GPU cores? I do some light gaming, but it's not a major factor in my system choice.

Probably not. The extra graphic cores seem to add the most value when doing Metal optimized tasks - taking the place of CUDA, Vulkan, OpenCL/GL. None of those use cases really do that outside of gaming, and these aren’t gaming computers you’re way better off with a PC or Xbox/PS5 for that. The media engine does H.264/5, HVEC, and ProRes duties. I don’t know if the other codecs that ffmpeg works with are handled by the GPU but either way it probably wouldn’t have the lift worth the $.

squirrelzipper fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Mar 13, 2022

LODGE NORTH
Jul 30, 2007

Given the introduction of the Mac Studio and the more-or-less confirmation that the Mac Pro will live on -- who is the Mac Pro for? What target market needs more than what the Studio can offer?

squirrelzipper
Nov 2, 2011

LODGE NORTH posted:

Given the introduction of the Mac Studio and the more-or-less confirmation that the Mac Pro will live on -- who is the Mac Pro for? What target market needs more than what the Studio can offer?

Studios that need to customize and expand their machines. Remains to be seen how that will work with AS but a lot of 3D/VFX/Production studios will want open PCIE slots, end user upgrade able ram (probably a no go), hot swappable drive bays, etc. I think TB4 removes a lot of that need personally. Maybe the Pro just will be massively parallel M2/M1 Ultras in a rack mount with lots of thermal headroom. I guess we’ll see.

xgalaxy
Jan 27, 2004
i write code

LODGE NORTH posted:

Given the introduction of the Mac Studio and the more-or-less confirmation that the Mac Pro will live on -- who is the Mac Pro for? What target market needs more than what the Studio can offer?

The Mac Pro is going to be a server blade.

Yeast
Dec 25, 2006

$1900 Grande Latte

LODGE NORTH posted:

Given the introduction of the Mac Studio and the more-or-less confirmation that the Mac Pro will live on -- who is the Mac Pro for? What target market needs more than what the Studio can offer?

We don’t know yet, but it might be targeted almost exclusively at people who must have expansion slot access.

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





binarysmurf posted:

Can you expand on this? Why is 'only' 32GB on the Max a detriment? I'll be getting this version, as I have no need for 64GB. At all.

the m1 max offers more gpu cores and more memory bandwidth over the pro. the cpu performance is identical at identical core counts and as far as i know you can't configure the max with more cpu cores than the pro. if you're "only" getting 32gb of ram you are unlikely to need the extra memory bandwidth and it's also unlikely you even have access to it because i doubt the 32gb can use the full width of the interface. one half is probably just disabled if you don't have the maximum ram. that just leaves the gpu as a differentiator

if you're not doing specific video editing tasks that actually make full use of the gpu then the benefits you see from the extra gpu cores are probably limited. you CAN get better performance in things like gaming and machine learning workloads and maybe even a few photo editing tasks but these are so limited by the software support on the m1's that if you need performance in these areas you really shouldn't be using a mac at all

for everything outside very specific use cases the m1 pro with 32gb is going to perform almost identically to the m1 max with 32gb. that's why i'm personally disappointed by apple's product segmentation. i'd love to buy a pro with 64gb or even 128gb of ram as what i do is purely ram limited but i need to step up to a max or ultra with a bunch of extra gpu cores to get it

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

LODGE NORTH posted:

Given the introduction of the Mac Studio and the more-or-less confirmation that the Mac Pro will live on -- who is the Mac Pro for? What target market needs more than what the Studio can offer?

The most obvious point is that Apple was comparing the M1 Ultra GPU performance against single external GPUs and its trivial to add another card to the Max Pro and double that performance.

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

the talent deficit posted:

the m1 max offers more gpu cores and more memory bandwidth over the pro. the cpu performance is identical at identical core counts and as far as i know you can't configure the max with more cpu cores than the pro. if you're "only" getting 32gb of ram you are unlikely to need the extra memory bandwidth and it's also unlikely you even have access to it because i doubt the 32gb can use the full width of the interface. one half is probably just disabled if you don't have the maximum ram. that just leaves the gpu as a differentiator

if you're not doing specific video editing tasks that actually make full use of the gpu then the benefits you see from the extra gpu cores are probably limited. you CAN get better performance in things like gaming and machine learning workloads and maybe even a few photo editing tasks but these are so limited by the software support on the m1's that if you need performance in these areas you really shouldn't be using a mac at all

for everything outside very specific use cases the m1 pro with 32gb is going to perform almost identically to the m1 max with 32gb. that's why i'm personally disappointed by apple's product segmentation. i'd love to buy a pro with 64gb or even 128gb of ram as what i do is purely ram limited but i need to step up to a max or ultra with a bunch of extra gpu cores to get it

It’s Apple—if they weren’t charging you for the full package upgrade they’d find a way to charge you the exact same amount for just the RAM

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

the talent deficit posted:

the m1 max offers more gpu cores and more memory bandwidth over the pro. the cpu performance is identical at identical core counts and as far as i know you can't configure the max with more cpu cores than the pro. if you're "only" getting 32gb of ram you are unlikely to need the extra memory bandwidth and it's also unlikely you even have access to it because i doubt the 32gb can use the full width of the interface. one half is probably just disabled if you don't have the maximum ram. that just leaves the gpu as a differentiator

What? No.

M1 Pro has two 128-bit LPDDR5 packages mounted on the SoC package. If you buy a 16GB config, each LPDDR5 package is 8GB. If you buy a 32GB config, they're each 16GB. M1 Max uses the same two RAM densities, but now there's an additional two 128-bit memory controller channels, so the two possible configs become 32GB and 64GB. M1 Ultra doubles the memory controller channel count again, so its two configs are 64GB and 128GB. They're all fully populated, full width.

quote:

if you're not doing specific video editing tasks that actually make full use of the gpu then the benefits you see from the extra gpu cores are probably limited. you CAN get better performance in things like gaming and machine learning workloads and maybe even a few photo editing tasks but these are so limited by the software support on the m1's that if you need performance in these areas you really shouldn't be using a mac at all

It's weird that you discount everything a bigger GPU can do outside of "specific video editing tasks". I get it, you don't personally need it, but I think you might be viewing the world through your own glasses a bit too much.

quote:

for everything outside very specific use cases the m1 pro with 32gb is going to perform almost identically to the m1 max with 32gb.

This much is true, if you don't need the bigger GPU there aren't many loads which get much out of the extra bandwidth.

quote:

that's why i'm personally disappointed by apple's product segmentation. i'd love to buy a pro with 64gb or even 128gb of ram as what i do is purely ram limited but i need to step up to a max or ultra with a bunch of extra gpu cores to get it

Needing to buy an ultra for 128GB isn't segmentation, it's a consequence of soldered short-distance point-to-point RAM links being a lot less flexible than DIMMs.

There isn't an alternative to LPDDR5 which matches its latency, per-pin bandwidth, and parallelism (number of commands in flight). Using it the way Apple does is one of the biggest differentiators they've got. The upside is substantial performance and power efficiency wins. The downside is that you need a lot of SoC pins, memory controller channels, package size, and even SoC count to expand memory capacity.

Wheres Wallace
May 5, 2009

:) keep on keepin' on :)
I need some insight on M1 mac mini vs base mac studio performance. I am a content creator that edits large video files into multiple clips for social media promos. I also do audio production that goes on hand in hand with video projects, so there is a workflow to consider.

I currently use a 2015 macbook pro - i7 with 16 gb of RAM. Its definitely showing its age and the screen real estate is really limiting with it comes to larger video and audio projects. I'll have a little over $400 trade-in credit with my 2015 macbook pro trade-in.


I was looking at the base M1 Mac Mini with a ball park $300-400 27 inch 4K screen from Amazon, but after seeing a few benchmarks in the thread, I'm not sure if the value is there for the M1 8core/8gpu with 16GB RAM and 1 TB vs the base Mac studio. The vanilla M1 chip will vastly outperform a 4th gen i7, so it will be a upgrade any way I look at it. But should I just wait and save up for a mac studio for definitive night and day difference in performance?

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Wheres Wallace posted:

I need some insight on M1 mac mini vs base mac studio performance. I am a content creator that edits large video files into multiple clips for social media promos. I also do audio production that goes on hand in hand with video projects, so there is a workflow to consider.

I currently use a 2015 macbook pro - i7 with 16 gb of RAM. Its definitely showing its age and the screen real estate is really limiting with it comes to larger video and audio projects. I'll have a little over $400 trade-in credit with my 2015 macbook pro trade-in.


I was looking at the base M1 Mac Mini with a ball park $300-400 27 inch 4K screen from Amazon, but after seeing a few benchmarks in the thread, I'm not sure if the value is there for the M1 8core/8gpu with 16GB RAM and 1 TB vs the base Mac studio. The vanilla M1 chip will vastly outperform a 4th gen i7, so it will be a upgrade any way I look at it. But should I just wait and save up for a mac studio for definitive night and day difference in performance?

Without knowing how big those projects are, I honestly thing this thread pushes a bit “you need better specs” versus what the m1 base can actually do. Your average dad on YouTube shows how much of his editing he’s done on a Mac mini m1 and it’s legit impressive. Marco Armon who created overcast and is on the best Mac podcast, (atp) used an M1 with 16 gigs for almost a year to do all of his coding and compiling. Yes he upgraded to pro chips in his laptops, but he was able to do everything with the base in one. The only reason the updated really was to speed up times, and occasionally it hit walls with a 16 gigs. I think for the majority of people M1 with 16 gigs really does cover most used cases, even people in this thread who I think exaggerate a tad.

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!

Wheres Wallace posted:

I need some insight on M1 mac mini vs base mac studio performance. I am a content creator that edits large video files into multiple clips for social media promos. I also do audio production that goes on hand in hand with video projects, so there is a workflow to consider.

I currently use a 2015 macbook pro - i7 with 16 gb of RAM. Its definitely showing its age and the screen real estate is really limiting with it comes to larger video and audio projects. I'll have a little over $400 trade-in credit with my 2015 macbook pro trade-in.


I was looking at the base M1 Mac Mini with a ball park $300-400 27 inch 4K screen from Amazon, but after seeing a few benchmarks in the thread, I'm not sure if the value is there for the M1 8core/8gpu with 16GB RAM and 1 TB vs the base Mac studio. The vanilla M1 chip will vastly outperform a 4th gen i7, so it will be a upgrade any way I look at it. But should I just wait and save up for a mac studio for definitive night and day difference in performance?

Consider the following:

How much do you make/intend to make in content creation? Does the MBP’s lack of power affect your income/quality of life/how you spend your time?

Would you make a lot more content, or make higher quality content, etc if you had that extra power?

Do you think the added power of the Mac Studio would scale appropriately vs the added power of a Mac Mini? In other words, is the Mac Studio with ostensibly Xeon-beating power going to enable you to work in a way/medium/on simultaneous projects/etc that an M1 Mini, or even your current Mac, won’t?

If you had your current 2015 MacBook Pro hooked up to an external display, would that solve the majority of your complaints?

My 2c is this: there’s nothing that you have described that leads me to believe that an M1 Mini wouldn’t already be a major, “definitive night and day difference” for you.

If you feel like you’re being economically/creatively hamstrung by working on an old computer, then absolutely you should upgrade.

If it were me, and I didn’t have like a specific plan for the extra horsepower in the Studio (mind you, a specific plan can be something as stupid as “I make Apple-related content and I want something beefy that I can hack/emulate Windows games to work on while simultaneously streaming on Twitch”) I’d start with an M1 Mini.

If you find yourself hitting the wall within the first two weeks of using it, you can easily give it back to Apple for a full refund. If it happens after, you can always sell it on the used market or trade it in for a Studio or whatever down the road.

If you’re making any income at all from this (or making a provably good faith effort to do so, at least in terms of how your country’s tax authority qualifies “business” vs “hobby”) then you should be writing off your computer.

Mercurius
May 4, 2004

Amp it up.

Ok Comboomer posted:

Consider the following:

How much do you make/intend to make in content creation? Does the MBP’s lack of power affect your income/quality of life/how you spend your time?

Would you make a lot more content, or make higher quality content, etc if you had that extra power?

Do you think the added power of the Mac Studio would scale appropriately vs the added power of a Mac Mini? In other words, is the Mac Studio with ostensibly Xeon-beating power going to enable you to work in a way/medium/on simultaneous projects/etc that an M1 Mini, or even your current Mac, won’t?

If you had your current 2015 MacBook Pro hooked up to an external display, would that solve the majority of your complaints?

My 2c is this: there’s nothing that you have described that leads me to believe that an M1 Mini wouldn’t already be a major, “definitive night and day difference” for you.

If you feel like you’re being economically/creatively hamstrung by working on an old computer, then absolutely you should upgrade.

If it were me, and I didn’t have like a specific plan for the extra horsepower in the Studio (mind you, a specific plan can be something as stupid as “I make Apple-related content and I want something beefy that I can hack/emulate Windows games to work on while simultaneously streaming on Twitch”) I’d start with an M1 Mini.

If you find yourself hitting the wall within the first two weeks of using it, you can easily give it back to Apple for a full refund. If it happens after, you can always sell it on the used market or trade it in for a Studio or whatever down the road.

If you’re making any income at all from this (or making a provably good faith effort to do so, at least in terms of how your country’s tax authority qualifies “business” vs “hobby”) then you should be writing off your computer.
Honestly I think the main question for M1 vs Pro vs Max vs Ultra at the moment is how many external monitors do you need to output to. Base M1 can do one natively (and the Mini can do a second via HDMI but it has some issues with certain displays), M1 Pro can do two, M1 Max (in the laptops) can do three and it's a bit hard to tell but based on the tech specs it looks like the Studio can do 4 USB-C+1 HDMI regardless of config.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

mediaphage
Mar 22, 2007

Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through
i’d buy the mini now and sell it in a year if you really feel like you need more performance. the loss won’t be too bad

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply