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izzy0242mr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 24, 2009
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I'm sure Apple didn't compare its AS Mac Pro to a top specced out Intel Mac Pro. But I'm curious since everyone is complaining that we only get 192 GB RAM max here...does anyone have a Mac Pro with anywhere close to 1.5 TB RAM and if so how does that compare in benchmarks to the new Mac Pro? What about with a top end GPU installed?
 
Not sure if anyone, other than reviewers, has their hands on a new Mac Studio Pro (AKA Mac Pro) yet. I thought that first day orders weren't supposed to arrive until tomorrow.
 
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Not sure if anyone, other than reviewers, has their hands on a new Mac Studio Pro (AKA Mac Pro) yet. I thought that first day orders weren't supposed to arrive until tomorrow.
Fair enough but we do have benchmarks right? I'm just curious if anyone with maxed out Intel Mac Pros have data to share.
 
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I'm not a gamer or design person but also thought that with 76gpu cores why do you need to add a graphic card. Its seems that this huge amount of cores would do the job.

But what do i know i have a gtx630 in a 3,1 and radeon 7850
 
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The Mac Pro could have 5000 cpu and 10000 gpu cores and I still wouldn't be able to load 512gb-1TB of orchestral samples in my DAW template.
Not picking fight or nothing just learning about others.

what do you use currently that 5000cpu and 10000 gpu cores would not come close to handling your work load
 
The Mac Pro could have 5000 cpu and 10000 gpu cores and I still wouldn't be able to load 512gb-1TB of orchestral samples in my DAW template.
Just curious, have you tried loading your 1TB DAW template using less RAM, e.g. 192GB or even 64GB? What happens?

It seems like the OS should be able to put the rest of the file into swap and with current SSD speeds, produce little stutter. But maybe a 10-1 or 20-1 ratio of RAM to swap is too much.
 
Just curious, have you tried loading your 1TB DAW template using less RAM, e.g. 192GB or even 64GB? What happens?

It seems like the OS should be able to put the rest of the file into swap and with current SSD speeds, produce little stutter. But maybe a 10-1 or 20-1 ratio of RAM to swap is too much.
I purchased the M1 Ultra Mac Studio maxed out with 128gb when it was announced. Tried loading the session there and it couldn't handle it. Previously was using a 2019 Mac Pro with 1TB of RAM.
I would trim it down if the M2 Ultras had 256gb RAM but they maxed out at 192 instead... M3 I suppose.
I'm not sure how many watched when Apple released the 2019 Mac Pro and showcased it. They specifically showed it running Logic Pro with endless software sample libraries and saying "now you can do this all on one machine!" Here we are 4 years later and they don't let you do that anymore on any of the Pro machines they offer.

 
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This guy mentioned why he prefer to keep the 7,1 that can have more than 192GB of RAM. Even no performance comparison, but the reason is valid.


I'm sure he's not alone on this either. The amount of assets major audio studios got loaded at once greatly exceed 300 gb. You got all the Logic instruments loaded, you got ProTools loaded, among other things. To keep latency low you need as much RAM as possible. Yeah there's swap memory but that causes more writes on the SSD and shortens it's lifespan and some don't wanna do that

Hopefully M3 supports 300 gb RAM configs for them.
 
I purchased the M1 Ultra Mac Studio maxed out with 128gb when it was announced. Tried loading the session there and it couldn't handle it. Previously was using a 2019 Mac Pro with 1TB of RAM.
I would trim it down if the M2 Ultras had 256gb RAM but they maxed out at 192 instead... M3 I suppose.
I'm not sure how many watched when Apple released the 2019 Mac Pro and showcased it. They specifically showed it running Logic Pro with endless software sample libraries and saying "now you can do this all on one machine!" Here we are 4 years later and they don't let you do that anymore on any of the Pro machines they offer.

If only Apple was able to deliver a M3 Extreme that allegedly tops out at 384GB memory... would that be satisfactory?
 
I purchased the M1 Ultra Mac Studio maxed out with 128gb when it was announced. Tried loading the session there and it couldn't handle it. Previously was using a 2019 Mac Pro with 1TB of RAM.
I would trim it down if the M2 Ultras had 256gb RAM but they maxed out at 192 instead... M3 I suppose.
I'm not sure how many watched when Apple released the 2019 Mac Pro and showcased it. They specifically showed it running Logic Pro with endless software sample libraries and saying "now you can do this all on one machine!" Here we are 4 years later and they don't let you do that anymore on any of the Pro machines they offer.


It sucks the RAM count is not as high as we had hoped. I really want y'all to experience Apple Silicon. It's the real deal.
 
The Mac Pro could have 5000 cpu and 10000 gpu cores and I still wouldn't be able to load 512gb-1TB of orchestral samples in my DAW template.
I feel similarly - except I could use 10,000 GPU cores. The problem with their current design is that the capability of the CPU, GPU and amount of RAM are all linked. You'd like a huge amount of RAM, I'd like more GPU for 3D rendering without needing loads more CPU… I think Apple will have to become more flexible in their offering…
 
What if you have 8TB of SSD, can't that be fast and large enough as a swap drive to handle whatever the previous Mac Pro was handling with 1TB of RAM? Honest question.

Every single write to swap causes permanent damage, also known as wear, to the SSD being used for swap. A machine with a lot of ram can avoid that, and also just make a big old ramdisk - and with hibernation enabled, that ramdisk can survive sleep - it's still writing to SSD, but it's doing it once, not constantly.

Using swap, Vs using ram is slower, and less efficient.
 
What if you have 8TB of SSD, can't that be fast and large enough as a swap drive to handle whatever the previous Mac Pro was handling with 1TB of RAM? Honest question.

Yes but people keep comparing old architectures to SoC architectures and miss this point completely. Anecdotal but stuff I'd max my 64 gig Intel MBP on works flawlessly on my MacBook Air M2 with 16 gigs of ram.
 
Yes but people keep comparing old architectures to SoC architectures and miss this point completely. Anecdotal but stuff I'd max my 64 gig Intel MBP on works flawlessly on my MacBook Air M2 with 16 gigs of ram.
Very niche use case. Likely whoever hits EOL of their SSD makes serious money to replace their whole Mac.

If not then charge higher to cover the damage.
 
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