M3 Max and Ram combo for Studio Display & MacBook open display?

[Lucas Curious]

since the GPU shares the ram for each core, what is the recommended RAM when using a Studio Display and open MacBook while also doing some GPU intense task like color grading footage in Resolve? Currently I ordered the 30 gpu/36gb combo but wondering if under these conditions, it would start choking performance once that GPU starts eating the ram but Also I dont want to overspend for specs I may use 1% of the time.

 

[torifile]

You need at least 128 gigs of unified memory to run external and internal displays at the same time. Otherwise you will see performance degradation for sure.

 

[Onimusha370]

since the GPU shares the ram for each core, what is the recommended RAM when using a Studio Display and open MacBook while also doing some GPU intense task like color grading footage in Resolve? Currently I ordered the 30 gpu/36gb combo but wondering if under these conditions, it would start choking performance once that GPU starts eating the ram but Also I dont want to overspend for specs I may use 1% of the time.

That config will be plenty for what you're doing, I regularly use my M1 Pro with 2 externals and it copes just fine, the base M3 Max will devour it

 

[AndreeOnline]

Outputting pixels of "completed work" is generally a low-intensity task of modern GPUs.

You have dedicated hardware that is responsible for video output, pulling data from framebuffers and putting it onto external displays.

In terms of everyday work—not including 3D applications or video editing initially—the main use of VRAM would be the framebuffers, textures for UI elements, and any additional buffers needed for GPU-based operations like window compositing and transparency effects, etc.

A single frame on an Apple 5K display is around 56MB and macOS uses double buffering which makes it 112MB. It's safe to say that the system would require at least a few hundred megabytes beyond that, likely edging closer to 1 GB or more in a typical macOS environment with multiple applications open. And yes, that's just a "what the hell, let's just call it 1GB"-number.

While not a negligible number, it's manageable. On top of that, you have all the computational work that you do on an app-per-app basis.

Still, as you hopefully understand, adding an extra display is not too much to ask of today's hardware.