From iMac Pro to Mac Studio Max

[memo90061]

I currently have an iMac Pro with 3.0ghz 10 cores, 64gb ram, 1tb ssd, and 16gb video card. I wanted to upgrade to the Mac Studio Max just because I thought it would be faster and it is! I just thought it would be way faster for what I wanted to do from what I read online.

I mostly use it for web browsing, photoshop, adobe premiere pro and sometimes I upscale music videos/cartoons for fun.

I had the urge to upgrade to the Mac Studio because I was reading in Topaz forums that the Mac Studio was getting good numbers when upscaling content. I compared the numbers and it seems like both the iMac Pro and Mac Studio are pulling the same numbers when upscaling. When I use Artemis LQ, Video Enhance AI is giving me .5 seconds per frame on both machines.

Apps do open much quicker on the Mac Studio, but I don't know if the difference is enough to justify the the higher price. I was about to sell the iMac Pro for 2k and was going to spend 4k on Mac Studio + LG Ultrafine 5k. I was going to be spending an extra 2k. haha. Debating if I should just return the Mac Studio.

Is anyone coming from an iMac Pro and feeling the same or maybe it is faster for other programs?

PS. I'm not bashing the Mac Studio. I think it's a great machine, but now with a mortgage payment I think I'm becoming stingy and watching every dollar. haha

EDIT: Now I'm getting double the numbers on video enhance on the Mac Studio. Don't know what changed.

 

[lcubed]

max or ultra?

need some context for the studio

 

[izzle22]

max or ultra?

need some context for the studio

From iMac Pro to Mac Studio Max​

 

[memo90061]

Mac Studio Max with 32gpu, 64gm ram and 2tb ssd.

I really don't know what happened what changed. Photoshop and Premiere Pro open much faster. haha.
Exporting video from Premiere Pro felt the same on iMac Pro and Mac Studio Max.

 

[lcubed]

was the studio doing the initial spotlight indexing during your initial evaluations?
that can suck up a lot of cpu and disk bandwidth.

 

[Macuser1628]

iOS developer here. Moved from an iMac Pro (with a similar configuration to yours) to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio with a Pro Display XDR and I’m never going back. Best decision I’ve ever made. That sucker is 2X faster for my tasks

 

[memo90061]

was the studio doing the initial spotlight indexing during your initial evaluations?
that can suck up a lot of cpu and disk bandwidth.

It probably was!

iOS developer here. Moved from an iMac Pro (with a similar configuration to yours) to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio with a Pro Display XDR and I’m never going back. Best decision I’ve ever made. That sucker is 2X faster for my tasks

I would love to try the M1 Ultra with Video Enhance AI to see how fast it is. haha.

 

[atonaldenim]

Glad to hear you're seeing better performance! I bought the Topaz Black Friday deal but I have yet to really try it out. Hoping to get around to it soon on my Ultra.

 

[memo90061]

Glad to hear you're seeing better performance! I bought the Topaz Black Friday deal but I have yet to really try it out. Hoping to get around to it soon on my Ultra.

Ahhh! I regret not buying it during that time. I bought Gigapixel last week and have been creating multiple emails to try out VEIA for a month, but the newest version has a thumbnail. :/ Now I want to buy VEIA. Waiting for the next sale.

When are you receiving your ultra? I'm so curious to see numbers on the Ultra!

 

[atonaldenim]

When are you receiving your ultra? I'm so curious to see numbers on the Ultra!

I have it now, if you want to send me something short to run a comparison test, I’m happy to. I’d be curious too.

 

[memo90061]

I have it now, if you want to send me something short to run a comparison test, I’m happy to. I’d be curious too.

Once I'm home, I'll send a fragment of the video I was testing. Prores 1080p to 4k. The Mac Studio Max is giving me .31 with Artemis LQ.

Thank you

 

[ADGrant]

Apps do open much quicker on the Mac Studio, but I don't know if the difference is enough to justify the the higher price. I was about to sell the iMac Pro for 2k and was going to spend 4k on Mac Studio + LG Ultrafine 5k. I was going to be spending an extra 2k. haha. Debating if I should just return the Mac Studio.

Why the Ultrafine instead of the Apple Display?

 

[memo90061]

Why the Ultrafine instead of the Apple Display?

Because the Apple Display is not in stock yet. haha.

 

[mundomuso]

Hi!!

What do you think to this current deal of referb imac pro via owc with 3.0 10 core / 128gb ram / 1tb ssd / 27" 5k retina display no keyboard or mouse for $2499

Seems like a good deal seems the current 27" 5k apple display is $1599

Thats basically $900 for the cpu side of things right???

Any input appreciated! I am also one of those torn between older intel and new mac studio with display that would be over $4k

I currently have a 2013 imac 3.2 quad core i5 / 32gb ram / 1tb fusion drive, which overall has been a complete workhorse and still running well.

 

[mundomuso]

Hi!!

What do you think to this current deal of referb imac pro via owc with 3.0 10 core / 128gb ram / 1tb ssd / 27" 5k retina display no keyboard or mouse for $2499

Seems like a good deal seems the current 27" 5k apple display is $1599

Thats basically $900 for the cpu side of things right???

Any input appreciated! I am also one of those torn between older intel and new mac studio with display that would be over $4k

I currently have a 2013 imac 3.2 quad core i5 / 32gb ram / 1tb fusion drive, which overall has been a complete workhorse and still running well.

Opps forgot to put the url:

New, Used, and Refurbished Macs

Looking for a new or used Mac? OWC can help you look at price points for used Macs so you aren't paying the full price for a brand new Mac.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[atonaldenim]

Spending $2500 on an Intel Mac now would be a bad investment in my opinion. You can see in the latest versions of macOS how many features are not available to Intel Macs… Apple is dropping Intel support fast. And since the iMac Pro can't be a monitor for another Mac down the road... no you're not getting a Studio Display plus a "deal" on an Intel CPU, you're basically getting a really big laptop that's already halfway obsolete.

I bought a used Powerbook G4 the year after the Intel transition because “it was a good deal” but that thing got left behind so fast. Those new Intel Macs (after a couple years) were a night and day improvement from the old PowerPC Macs, and it's the same story here. Any new M1 Mac beats any old Intel iMac Pro handily in single-core CPU performance, and everything from an M1 Pro laptop and up will beat that 10-core iMac Pro in multi-core muscle. Not to mention the dramatic savings on your energy bill. https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks/

A spec’d out M1 Max Studio or Pro/Max MacBook Pro would fit in that budget and last a lot longer. And Apple offers a no-interest payment plan on the Apple Card to make the purchase easier. Hopefully soon we'll be seeing more mid-range options too like an M2 Pro Mac Mini.

You don’t need a Studio Display, if you really want 5K maybe try a used Ultrafine to save some $. Or else there are plenty of great affordable 1440p or 4K monitors out there. I'm sitting in front of two 27" 1440p monitors, I think they're great.

Compared to my Mac Pro 5,1s and Intel Macbook Pro, I like my Mac Studio Ultra so much better. It's so much faster and so quiet, never feels like it's struggling even with the biggest video renders. I am someone who's been staying on Mojave out of skepticism for the newer Apple stuff. And now that I've tried the latest Macs, my advice would be to leave the past behind, Apple Silicon is definitely the future.

 

[Seiko4169]

I still think the iMac Pro is Apple’s unsung hero. Brilliantly capable, super screen, whisper quiet. I ended up with 2 and still love the versatility of the intel / windows combo. I did consider a Studio Ultra plus XDR screen to bring everything up a notch in performance terms but that combo is 10k. I don’t consider the studio display a real upgrade over the iMac Pro screen so it’s only the XDR plus Studio but the price is considerable and pause for thought. Factor in a potential coil whine issue on the Studio and I’m holding fire.

Who knows, if Apple did bring to life a larger new iMac that tries to bring the iMac Pro’s capability and XDR like screen performance?

 

[atonaldenim]

iMac Pro is a great computer I'm sure for anyone who already owns one! There are definitely things an Intel Mac can do better right now, like virtualization, running older Mac software if needed. I'll be keeping at least one of my Mac Pro 5,1s around for those things, probably.

But if someone's looking to upgrade from a 2013 iMac that sounds like it's still running fine, buying anything less than Apple Silicon in Q3 2022 would be money wasted, in my opinion. Especially for someone who keeps a computer for 9 years, the Mac you'd want to have 9 years from now would be an Apple Silicon Mac, for sure, not an Intel one. Even the M1 iMac would be a 2X upgrade in CPU performance from a 2013 iMac. And probably hold its resale value better when it comes time to trade up to a better M2+ iMac (Pro?) in the near future.

But yeah I agree, for someone with an iMac Pro (or two!) already, there's plenty of time to wait for Apple Silicon to continue to mature before making a big upgrade.

 

[ADGrant]

Spending $2500 on an Intel Mac now would be a bad investment in my opinion. You can see in the latest versions of macOS how many features are not available to Intel Macs… Apple is dropping Intel support fast. And since the iMac Pro can't be a monitor for another Mac down the road... no you're not getting a Studio Display plus a "deal" on an Intel CPU, you're basically getting a really big laptop that's already halfway obsolete.

From what I have seen the latest versions of MacOS don't seem to have any significant features not available to Intel Macs. It's true though that Apple has dropped support for a lot of Intel Macs with Ventura. However, its also true that those Intel Macs had fairly old Intel chipsets. The iMac Pro has similar internals to the still selling Mac Pro. The Xeon W CPU is one generation older but it supports all the same instruction set extensions. The Vega graphics are the same architecture as the original cards sold with the current Mac Pro. It has the same T2 coprocessor chip (also used in the other still selling Intel Mac).

If you are looking at a iMac Pro though, you should also look at the 2020 27" i9 or i7 iMac. Same T2 chip but a later AMD GPU architecture (also now available with the Mac Pro). It doesn't support all the instruction set extensions of the Xeon CPUs but I doubt that will be an issue. The cooling system on this iMac is not as good as the iMac Pro but the i9 should be faster than the 10 core iMac Pro. Instead of a beefier cooling system you get user upgradable RAM (up to 128GB). The models with the 5700XT GPU have 16GB of VRAM as well.

 

[DMG35]

I was in the same boat OP, loved the iMac Pro and hated to get rid of it. I purchased the Mac Studio and Pro XDR Display, and I absolutely love it. The iMac Pro is coming up on being 6 years old....as well as it performs that's getting up there for myself I decided to try this new combo and I couldn't go back to the iMac Pro now.

 

[Seiko4169]

I was in the same boat OP, loved the iMac Pro and hated to get rid of it. I purchased the Mac Studio and Pro XDR Display, and I absolutely love it. The iMac Pro is coming up on being 6 years old....as well as it performs that's getting up there for myself I decided to try this new combo and I couldn't go back to the iMac Pro now.

Nice, that’s the combo I’ve ear marked as my iMac Pro replacement. What studio did you opt for and did you get lucky on the ‘whine’ sound?