Mac Studio Purchase Advice

[dpcon]

I work in music production on a 12 core 5.1 Mac Pro (2.4ghz) and 6 Core Mini i7. Both have 64 gigs of Ram. I would much prefer to work off a single box with a Mac Studio M1 Ultra being the most obvious candidate. The problem is they max out at 128 gigs ram and I’m essentially there already with my two computers as far as ram load. Does anyone have a clue as to when a similar machine with double the current gram limit will be available? Is that a total mystery at this point or has it been ballparked in anyway? (Yes I’ve read a lot here but maybe I missed something.) I nearly pulled the trigger on an M1 Ultra but thought better of it. If anyone has a clue I’m sure it’s the people here. Thanks!

 

[kschendel]

I suspect you'll be fine with 128GB. For one thing, you will no longer need two copies of all of the non-application stuff: OS, services, background threads, etc. For another, the Apple Silicon architecture seems to use memory more efficiently than X86 due to a number of factors. Unless both of your current boxes are running seriously short of RAM, and you need to run everything on both current machines simultaneously, I think 128GB will work OK.

 

[Homy]

To answer your question the rumors say M2 Pro/Max will be released in March 2023 with 96GB RAM. There is a benchmark on Geekbench for it, called Mac14,6. Another unreleased Mac called Mac15,4 has leaked on Steam.

 

[dpcon]

Thanks kschendal, I was wondering if those very things were true and that I indeed would be at a new level of efficiency. Also, you can load instruments in a way where they don't actually load into ram until triggered. The other side of the coin is being somewhat future proof since new sample libraries with multiple microphone positions (different sample sets for each mic which can add up fast) are coming on board all the time. Nonetheless I'm encouraged by your post.