Mac Studio Performance - Disappointing News

[Ethosik]

I think the reviewers need another day or two to finish their tests and post their results. The Max Tech guys were on this Cult of Mac podcast yesterday and talked about their initial impressions of the new software updates. They said for the tests they like to run, they were not seeing big changes on the Ultra export times to H.265, but they did see some gains in exporting to ProRes.

I'm not an FCP user but @Ethosik I hear you on wanting to know about how to speed up your 8-10 hour video exports as much as possible! Probably telling you things you already know, but I believe the fastest way to get a video out of FCP would be to export in the same ProRes format that you're editing with (Optimized Media). I think that type of export of existing render files should be relatively fast? And then in Compressor you could take that ProRes master and compress it to H.264/5 or whatever your delivery format is. I know in Compressor, don't know about if also in FCP, you can set up distributed rendering where the ProRes to H.264/5 encoding job is split into multiple pieces / across multiple Compressor machines on the network. That kind of parallelism is how you could squeeze every last drop out of the M1 Max / Ultra I think.

I don't need to export to the ProRes master file first. I just send my Final Cut Pro project directly to Compressor. Yeah taking the ProRes master file and exporting to HEVC is faster than FCP to HEVC, but in the end its not faster since I first need to export to ProRes first. Also, with an 8-10 hour video, the master file is 2-3 TB! So even if the export to ProRes Master is faster with the Ultra, I don't think in the long run it would be as fast as sending the FCP project directly to compressor.

I saw the speed drastically improve going from a 2019 i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM to a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. And another significant speed increase going from the M1 Mac Mini 16GB of RAM to the M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro with 32GB of RAM. All due to the extra encoders. I am hoping with the extra encoders with the M1 Ultra and the newer Final Cut Pro, that my Mac Studio will make it even faster still!

Worse case, I have already shaved off 2.5-3 hours during the export just going to my new laptop so even if there is 0% improvement with the Mac Studio, I will be happy. I prefer to do this stuff on full desktops. Having an All in One iMac export an 8-10 hour video for a long time is not good. And I have burned out so many laptops doing this too. So before my choices were crappy Intel Mac Mini or way to expensive 2019 Mac Pro. This is why before I moved to HEVC I still used my 2010 Mac Pro.

Now that there is a Mac Studio, I won't need to worry about the thermals as much as with the laptop. And I know its probably just left over worry from Intel Macbook Pros. But its still 8-10 hour exports a few times a week can't be good even for Apple Silicon laptops in the long run. So a desktop with proper cooling for long long long exports on a regular basis should be good! And with software improvements, I would definitely imagine the Ultra would speed things up more.

 

[now i see it]

I don't need to export to the ProRes master file first. I just send my Final Cut Pro project directly to Compressor. Yeah taking the ProRes master file and exporting to HEVC is faster than FCP to HEVC, but in the end its not faster since I first need to export to ProRes first. Also, with an 8-10 hour video, the master file is 2-3 TB! So even if the export to ProRes Master is faster with the Ultra, I don't think in the long run it would be as fast as sending the FCP project directly to compressor.

I saw the speed drastically improve going from a 2019 i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM to a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. And another significant speed increase going from the M1 Mac Mini 16GB of RAM to the M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro with 32GB of RAM. All due to the extra encoders. I am hoping with the extra encoders with the M1 Ultra and the newer Final Cut Pro, that my Mac Studio will make it even faster still!

Worse case, I have already shaved off 2.5-3 hours during the export just going to my new laptop so even if there is 0% improvement with the Mac Studio, I will be happy. I prefer to do this stuff on full desktops. Having an All in One iMac export an 8-10 hour video for a long time is not good. And I have burned out so many laptops doing this too. So before my choices were crappy Intel Mac Mini or way to expensive 2019 Mac Pro. This is why before I moved to HEVC I still used my 2010 Mac Pro.

Now that there is a Mac Studio, I won't need to worry about the thermals as much as with the laptop. And I know its probably just left over worry from Intel Macbook Pros. But its still 8-10 hour exports a few times a week can't be good even for Apple Silicon laptops in the long run. So a desktop with proper cooling for long long long exports on a regular basis should be good! And with software improvements, I would definitely imagine the Ultra would speed things up more.

Im more familiar with 3D rendering (either single image or 3D animation) than what’s involved with video compressing, but in the 3D world, a project can be rendered over a network of as many computers you’ve got available to cut rendering time way way down.
If four “render nodes” (dedicated rendering computers) were hooked up to the network for rendering and they all had equal performance, rendering an animation that would normally take 5 hours will be done in one.
The more computers hooked up the the “render farm”, the faster stuff gets finished.

Is this possible with video export?

 

[Ethosik]

Im more familiar with 3D rendering (either single image or 3D animation) than what’s involved with video compressing, but in the 3D world, a project can be rendered over a network of as many computers you’ve got available to cut rendering time way way down.
If four “render nodes” (dedicated rendering computers) were hooked up to the network for rendering and they all had equal performance, rendering an animation that would normally take 5 hours will be done in one.
The more computers hooked up the the “render farm”, the faster stuff gets finished.

Is this possible with video export?

Yep there is a feature like that. I don't really have such a need for it as I am not on THAT tight of a deadline, but it is possible.

Transcode batches with multiple computers using Compressor

In Compressor, distribute the transcoding process by using two or more computers.

support.apple.com

 

[F-Train]

Im more familiar with 3D rendering (either single image or 3D animation) than what’s involved with video compressing, but in the 3D world, a project can be rendered over a network of as many computers you’ve got available to cut rendering time way way down.
If four “render nodes” (dedicated rendering computers) were hooked up to the network for rendering and they all had equal performance, rendering an animation that would normally take 5 hours will be done in one.
The more computers hooked up the the “render farm”, the faster stuff gets finished.

Is this possible with video export?

This is the Compressor Preferences window that @Ethosik's link talks about.

 

[krell100]

I'd be very interested to know if the FCP optimisations mean it's now fully utilising the Ultra chip; this would then mean that there is hope that the mediocre GPU performance is a software optimisation issue..

 

[Sirmausalot]

Although performance on the Ultra with FCP has been great, I saw zero percent decrease in encoding times with FCP and compressor updates. I did a few informal tests with an hour long program to H264 and H265 multi and single pass. Of course I do not have a Studio Max to compare it to. But "optimizations" for my very real use scenerios we're nil. I suspect reviewers will see the same.

 

[F-Train]

Although performance on the Ultra with FCP has been great, I saw zero percent decrease in encoding times with FCP and compressor updates. I did a few informal tests with an hour long program to H264 and H265 multi and single pass. Of course I do not have a Studio Max to compare it to. But "optimizations" for my very real use scenerios we're nil. I suspect reviewers will see the same.

Can't recall the source, but I saw a report in the last couple of days saying that export times for Final Cut/Compressor and DaVinci Resolve are now comparable, which they were not for some codecs and resolutions before the update.

 

[PianoPro]

Can't recall the source, but I saw a report in the last couple of days saying that export times for Final Cut/Compressor and DaVinci Resolve are now comparable, which they were not for some codecs and resolutions before the update.

Are you thinking of this?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tudio-mac-now-available.2341586/post-31019474

 

[F-Train]

Are you thinking of this?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tudio-mac-now-available.2341586/post-31019474

Thanks. Yup, @darthaddie's post. I imagine that there will be more coming. Parker Walbeck did a video a couple of weeks ago that I'd like to see him update. This is a screen capture from his video:

 

[EmpireUnknown]

I'm not really a user who's particularly focused on video workflows so I can't speak to the Studio's performance on that front, but I figured it might be good to drop in and provide some inklings and thoughts from a different angle, since video work seems to be quite well-covered already.

I'm a software developer and machine learning engineer by trade, and have been doing things related to that over past few weeks that I've had the Mac Studio (64GB/48GPU version).

For one piece of proprietary software that I run (which is CPU-bound), I'm seeing an almost linear scaling between the M1 Mac Mini (I have three at home which were used as my previous "processing farm") and the Mac Studio, within a couple percentage points. As such, this one Mac Studio is worth about 4 Mac Mini's to me when it comes to CPU-bound tasks, which is great and pretty much in line with Apple's claims. To that end the value proposition is also quite reasonable, if you consider having to buy 4 Mac Mini's instead.

Now over the past few days I've started work on a new AI model as well, and I figured I might as well give the Mac Studio a shot, now that Apple supplies Tensorflow support via Metal, not holding out much hope.
My baseline for comparison in this area is my deep learning server at work, which consists of a Threadripper 2990WX and an RTX 3090 (which we bough way back when they were still available for retail price, perish the thought).

Lo' and behold, I had to check my measurements a couple of times, but it does in fact seem like in certain workloads within the deep learning area that I'm active in (image classification at the moment), the Mac Studio can actually trade punches with an RTX 3090.
I was pretty skeptical at first, but after running the training for a couple of hours my Mac Studio consistently slightly outperforms the 3090 by a couple percent. It's not much, mind you, but the fact that it can keep up at about half the system power usage of the 3090 alone is quite something. Add to that the fact that I can load datasets bigger than the 24GB VRAM on the 3090 and it's actually a pretty decent option for me.
It chewed through an epoch of training on EfficientNetB0 for my dataset of about 150.000 images in ~7 minutes. The same script takes ~8.5 minutes per epoch on the 3090.
Of course some other bottlenecks may also play a role (such as bandwidth between CPU/GPU etc), but as a one-stop-shop that you just set off and it works perfectly, the Mac Studio is great.

From my experience thus far testing both the CPU and the GPU for my purposes, I can corroborate the lofty (and originally rather exaggerated-seeming) claims of Apple at their keynote: For me, this is in fact a linear speedup, and it can punch out a 3090 for my use cases. All in all I'm very happy with the performance on offer from Apple right now, and this isn't even the 64-core GPU variant.

 

[F-Train]

Hard on the heels of Apple's update to Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic released DaVinci Resolve 18 this afternoon as a public beta. As someone who uses both applications, I'm looking forward to comparative tests, by people who know what they're talking about, with the Studio Max.

 

[gazwas]

Hard on the heels of Apple's update to Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic released DaVinci Resolve 18 this afternoon as a public beta. As someone who uses both applications, I'm looking forward to comparative tests, by people who know what they're talking about, with the Studio Max.

Looks like you bought the right machine for video and the Studio Max is a perfect match for this workflow. As @EmpireUnknown has shown above, the Ultra really needs something much more intensive to flex its muscles to show any improvements.

After watching the latest Max Tech Video editing review, the Studio Max and Ultra are basically within seconds of each other for all bar one test (RED RAW). Export tests are identical, additionally general editing, scrubbing, effects and colour corrections both performed as well on both machines.

What I’m finding really hard to get my head around is the Prores and Prores RAW tests show level pegging performance despited the Ultra have double the decoders designed for this exact codec. Is Prores now not taxing enough for a single decoder so the Ultra’s second decoder just sits there unused? Having two of anything has to be faster than one but with the Ultra its looks like its second decoder lies dormant even with the much anticipated FCP 10.6.2 update.

Can’t wait to hear about what resolve 18 has to offer.

 

[chfilm]

I just got my hands on the studio to compare it for two days for my everyday video editor / motion design hybrid workflows and I am seriously impressed.
I tested it against my Mac Pro 2019 with 16cores, 2xVegaII and 192gb Ram. And the Studio beats the Mac Pro in almost EVERY scenario, sometimes by maybe 10-20%, in after effects as much as 30% less rendering time.
It's not at a point yet where I wanna immediately sell my mac pro, especially if you think about what's coming for us in the next mac pro and after the crazy investment that this machine was for me. But still, having more power, in such a TINY and portable form factor is INSANE.
Sure, I could swap in a 28core and a 6800 duo and the mac pro would rule again in most cases, but not such where for example prores video needs to be en or decoded - for example the Studio renders ProRes to ProRes with over 850 fps using the new blackmagicdesign proxy generator, while the mac pro WITH afterburner can do only 250 fps....

Also It feels wrong investing in this now old platform that will surely be extremely outperformed by the next mac pro.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I just got my hands on the studio to compare it for two days for my everyday video editor / motion design hybrid workflows and I am seriously impressed.
I tested it against my Mac Pro 2019 with 16cores, 2xVegaII and 192gb Ram. And the Studio beats the Mac Pro in almost EVERY scenario, sometimes by maybe 10-20%, in after effects as much as 30% less rendering time.
It's not at a point yet where I wanna immediately sell my mac pro, especially if you think about what's coming for us in the next mac pro and after the crazy investment that this machine was for me. But still, having more power, in such a TINY and portable form factor is INSANE.
Sure, I could swap in a 28core and a 6800 duo and the mac pro would rule again in most cases, but not such where for example prores video needs to be en or decoded - for example the Studio renders ProRes to ProRes with over 850 fps using the new blackmagicdesign proxy generator, while the mac pro WITH afterburner can do only 250 fps....

Also It feels wrong investing in this now old platform that will surely be extremely outperformed by the next mac pro.

You are using the Studio Max, or Ultra?

 

[hugodrax]

I don't need to export to the ProRes master file first. I just send my Final Cut Pro project directly to Compressor. Yeah taking the ProRes master file and exporting to HEVC is faster than FCP to HEVC, but in the end its not faster since I first need to export to ProRes first. Also, with an 8-10 hour video, the master file is 2-3 TB! So even if the export to ProRes Master is faster with the Ultra, I don't think in the long run it would be as fast as sending the FCP project directly to compressor.

I saw the speed drastically improve going from a 2019 i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM to a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. And another significant speed increase going from the M1 Mac Mini 16GB of RAM to the M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro with 32GB of RAM. All due to the extra encoders. I am hoping with the extra encoders with the M1 Ultra and the newer Final Cut Pro, that my Mac Studio will make it even faster still!

Worse case, I have already shaved off 2.5-3 hours during the export just going to my new laptop so even if there is 0% improvement with the Mac Studio, I will be happy. I prefer to do this stuff on full desktops. Having an All in One iMac export an 8-10 hour video for a long time is not good. And I have burned out so many laptops doing this too. So before my choices were crappy Intel Mac Mini or way to expensive 2019 Mac Pro. This is why before I moved to HEVC I still used my 2010 Mac Pro.

Now that there is a Mac Studio, I won't need to worry about the thermals as much as with the laptop. And I know its probably just left over worry from Intel Macbook Pros. But its still 8-10 hour exports a few times a week can't be good even for Apple Silicon laptops in the long run. So a desktop with proper cooling for long long long exports on a regular basis should be good! And with software improvements, I would definitely imagine the Ultra would speed things up more.

If you are doing heavy 2-3tbw writes a day I would highly recommend buying an external drive enclosure that can take U.2 drives. You can get U.2 new enterprise drives for a penny or two more than consumer drives. the P4610s which I bought a few are 772 bucks for 6.4tb drives that can do 3 drive writes a day every day no issue (36.54PBW) (ie 36,540 TBW) 3 Full drive writes meaning if you wrote 6.4tb a day to the drive

I use 2 external enclosures with 4 P6410 6.4tb drives in them. connected via thunderbolt. Tons of NOS stock enterprise drives for a fraction of what they cost.

Spec sheets. They are workhorses that's for sure. For heavy workloads.

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

 

[Ethosik]

If you are doing heavy 2-3tbw writes a day I would highly recommend buying an external drive enclosure that can take U.2 drives. You can get U.2 new enterprise drives for a penny or two more than consumer drives. the P4610s which I bought a few are 772 bucks for 6.4tb drives that can do 3 drive writes a day every day no issue (36.54PBW) (ie 36,540 TBW) 3 Full drive writes meaning if you wrote 6.4tb a day to the drive

I use 2 external enclosures with 4 P6410 6.4tb drives in them. connected via thunderbolt. Tons of NOS stock enterprise drives for a fraction of what they cost.

Spec sheets. They are workhorses that's for sure. For heavy workloads.

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Oh yeah I do everything external. I only have the internal drive for OS and apps.

 

[lcubed]

I use 2 external enclosures with 4 P6410 6.4tb drives in them. connected via thunderbolt. Tons of NOS stock enterprise drives for a fraction of what they cost.

what does NOS mean? in my world, that's nitrous oxide for boosting/blowing up vehicle engines.

 

[eddie_ducking]

Sure, I could swap in a 28core and a 6800 duo and the mac pro would rule again in most cases, but not such where for example prores video needs to be en or decoded - for example the Studio renders ProRes to ProRes with over 850 fps using the new blackmagicdesign proxy generator, while the mac pro WITH afterburner can do only 250 fps....

Also It feels wrong investing in this now old platform that will surely be extremely outperformed by the next mac pro.

Even second hand, wouldn't a 28 Core W3275 and W6800x Duo cost the best part of a Studio Ultra anyway ?

 

[F-Train]

what does NOS mean? in my world, that's nitrous oxide for boosting/blowing up vehicle engines.

New Old Stock

 

[eddie_ducking]

* Deleted *

 

[hugodrax]

Oh yeah I do everything external. I only have the internal drive for OS and apps.

New Old Stock. The drives I buy normally run 2,300 dollars for one drive but I found a source for them at new sealed intel boxes for 772 dollars lol. They are heavy duty workhorses and get abused every day with heavy writes. The problem with consumer drives is they suck at steady state operation and the moment that little cache is filled the speed and IOPs drop to ****. It also seems consumer drives are getting worse and worse. now the QLC drives drop to Old Spinning HD speeds once you pass about 50GB of write, then it has to write to the ****** QLC cells.

Enterprise drives are rated for real use, can't afford to have a Raid Array of SSDs that go haywire and cause dropouts so they are designed for hard 24/7 operation.

https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/612/dc_p4610_series_brief-1522268.pdf

 

[Pressure]

Something is definitely going on with the M1 Max equipped Mac Studios, be it the 24-core or 32-core GPU.

The utilisation chart for the M1 Max and M1 Ultra running Lightroom. I would be surprised if we didn't get a firmware update in the nearest future or Adobe is doing something funky.

 

[Adult80HD]

Something is definitely going on with the M1 Max equipped Mac Studios, be it the 24-core or 32-core GPU.

The utilisation chart for the M1 Max and M1 Ultra running Lightroom. I would be surprised if we didn't get a firmware update in the nearest future or Adobe is doing something funky.

View attachment 1995318

This isn't universal though. It seems that some Max Studios show this but not all, and it's probably why his Max underperforms his Max MBP in some tests. I have two Ultras and one Max and I don't get the same issue with the CPU not being fully utilized, and my Max never underpeforms my Max MBP either. Either his is faulty, or there's a batch of Max Studios with some issues, but its most definitely not a universal issue.

 

[F-Train]

Something is definitely going on with the M1 Max equipped Mac Studios, be it the 24-core or 32-core GPU.

The utilisation chart for the M1 Max and M1 Ultra running Lightroom. I would be surprised if we didn't get a firmware update in the nearest future or Adobe is doing something funky.

View attachment 1995318

This is the same guy who recently strongly recommended pairing an Acacis enclosure with a Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD. As he has now acknowledged, the Acasis enclosure that he was recommending is limited in write speed, and that particular Samsung SSD has abysmal write speed in any Thunderbolt enclosure. Not only has he now acknowledged that, he suggests that he was aware of both facts, not that he told his viewers, when he asserted that it was a "Great Choice". Of course, he got the enclosure for free.

He's right up there with Max Tech as a fountain of sloppy YouTube videos.

 

[atonaldenim]

New Old Stock. The drives I buy normally run 2,300 dollars for one drive but I found a source for them at new sealed intel boxes for 772 dollars lol. They are heavy duty workhorses and get abused every day with heavy writes. The problem with consumer drives is they suck at steady state operation and the moment that little cache is filled the speed and IOPs drop to ****. It also seems consumer drives are getting worse and worse. now the QLC drives drop to Old Spinning HD speeds once you pass about 50GB of write, then it has to write to the ****** QLC cells.

Enterprise drives are rated for real use, can't afford to have a Raid Array of SSDs that go haywire and cause dropouts so they are designed for hard 24/7 operation.

https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/612/dc_p4610_series_brief-1522268.pdf

OK I’m intrigued, what’s your source for 6.4TB P4610 SSDs? Are you using the OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual TB enclosure, or the Helios 3S or something else?

I’ve been curious about the U.2 form factor, would you say the main benefit is access to enterprise SSDs, are there other benefits over M.2 SSDs?

Thanks for the tips!