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small or smaller than the Studio
Those small PC cases/form factor don't provide the same performance as a Studio. I mean sure you can get a Intel NUC but they won't even remotely have the same performance.

You need beefy cooling to cool a 12th gen i7 12700 or i9.
 
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Try Lenovo. I only buy low end dells.

ThinkStation P348 Tower Workstation, i9-11900, 32GB RAM, 1TB Disk, 3 yr warranty $1729
The base Mac Studio is not that far behind regarding price. Like its a different class. It's smaller, way more efficient.

Intel NUC 12 Extreme Kit ('Dragon Canyon') - Review 2022 - PCMag Australia

This is the closest. Can't wait to see benchmarks of the M1 Ultra. This Mac ain't for the average joe.


power draw for i9 12900. Again the NUC is much cheaper but I 100% know that M1 Ultra will not draw 120+ watts in Cinebench r23.
 
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Those small PC cases/form factor don't provide the same performance as a Studio.
You'd be surprised at how close they can get now with Alder Lake, but yes, not quite as fast as an M1 Max.

Anyway, I don't want to argue about this, it's silly to, be happy with what you have and I'll do the same. btw, I ordered a Studio Max 64GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD. It'll join my menagerie that includes both Mac's, and Windows PC's. :)
 
You'd be surprised at how close they can get now with Alder Lake, but yes, not quite as fast as an M1 Max.

Anyway, I don't want to argue about this, it's silly to, be happy with what you have and I'll do the same. btw, I ordered a Studio Max 64GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD. It'll join my menagerie that includes both Mac's, and Windows PC's. :)
Well enjoy your studio. Yep both macOS and windows is good.
 
You need beefy cooling to cool a 12th gen i7 12700 or i9.
The Studio kind of has beefy cooling too, and one reason I traded in my M1 MBA for it.

Beefy cooling doesn't bother me though, I'm around computers all day, some MUCH more cooling needy. :)

I don't have an 11th or 12th Gen Intel yet, wont need another until next year. I went with AMD Ryzen for my work laptop.
 
This is the closest. Can't wait to see benchmarks of the M1 Ultra. This Mac ain't for the average joe.
Not for me either. I just can't justify the cost to myself. I wish I could though.

I'm real curious about how the Ultra will do too!
 
The Mac Studio is amazing high-end machine. However as great as it is to see Apple provide a headless desktop system I was really hoping to see a M1 'Pro' Mac Mini starting $1299 with 16GB/512GB for us above-average Joes who want better than M1 Macbook Air performance.

Which AMD GPU matches this (roughly)?

I think the general rule of thumb is every Apple M1 core is as good as two AMD Vega cores if you average GPU compute with 3D rendering

So M1 Ultra 64-core = Pro Vega II Duo. Better if you are doing 8K ProRes rendering or otherwise have a workload that pays into to the M1's strengths.
 
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So I’m dumb and can use guidance …

I have a maxed-out ollllllllld late 2013 27” iMac I want to replace. I do professional design work (Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop) and some video editing (nothing major, quick things). Other than that, it’s an internet machine and I use it to connect to my work virtual PC via VMware Horizon (and on said virtual machine also do professionally design work).

Was hoping for a Mini Pro but alas. Do I need to upgrade the Mac Studio Max to the 32-core GPU or is the base 24-core GPU fine? Same with unified memory - is the 64gb upgrade cost worth it for future proofing, or is it likely overkill?
 
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I think that I'd might buy it and add external 2-3TB USB_C drive, that way, getting best out of Studio. 32GB of RAM is certainly good as a base.
 
It starts at $1999 for M1 Max 10CPU and 24GPU and 32GB RAM

Where as an mac mini intel i7 with 32 RAM and 512GB would cost you $1899 from Apple.

A 16" MacBook pro with M1 Max costs $3099. So for $1,100 less you would be getting M1 Max.

So I don't even know why people are disappointed. I never pay Apple for storage that exceeds $400 option.

It's incredible value compared to the intel i7 mac mini model. For most users who come from high-end Mac mini this is a perfect replacement for that.
Americans are lucky in that regard.. We get shafted in the Netherlands with Apple pricing:

We pay this for the base model:
 

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Americans are lucky in that regard.. We get shafted in the Netherlands with Apple pricing:

We pay this for the base model:
Yes, but you count American pricing with no tax versus NL prices with VAT in it.
In US, you can expect to pay $2000+$200(tax in-store) = $2200 to take it home.
In NL, 2329=X(price w/no tax) + 21% of X (VAT). Find X = 2329/1.21 = 1925 Euro which is around $2100 USD pre-tax. But again you also have 2 year warranty coverage versus 1 in US. And Apple's pricing: it sets similar numbers in USD/GBP/EUR meaning that people mostly have income around 2K-3K, so there is no point to set the price related to the currency rate (that is how Apple thinks).

Also that 21% that sits on top of the Mac goes to your government. Govt gives you a metro discounts, better healthcare, money incentives to pupils at school who don't use cannabis, nice police officers, nice roads. Basically speaking you can clearly see that 21% is directly spent to improve your life as a citizen.

Also you do have nicer roads and bicycle friendly community. Here I feel scared to ride a bicycle on the roads, while it was a pleasure to ride it in Rotterdam. Any street food is much better than in US (Turkish durum doners in Netherlands?! Kapsalon - is my favorite, still dream at nights, what about famous fries and mayo?), the same goes for sandwiches at the gas station, cheap Red Bull, roads with no holes, nice culture of drivers towards pedestrian/cyclists. We can go forever, but I want to say that to each their own.
 
Yes, but you count American pricing with no tax versus NL prices with VAT in it.
In US, you can expect to pay $2000+$200(tax in-store) = $2200 to take it home.
In NL, 2329=X(price w/no tax) + 21% of X (VAT). Find X = 2329/1.21 = 1925 Euro which is around $2100 USD pre-tax. But again you also have 2 year warranty coverage versus 1 in US. And Apple's pricing: it sets similar numbers in USD/GBP/EUR meaning that people mostly have income around 2K-3K, so there is no point to set the price related to the currency rate (that is how Apple thinks).

Also that 21% that sits on top of the Mac goes to your government. Govt gives you a metro discounts, better healthcare, money incentives to pupils at school who don't use cannabis, nice police officers, nice roads. Basically speaking you can clearly see that 21% is directly spent to improve your life as a citizen.

Also you do have nicer roads and bicycle friendly community. Here I feel scared to ride a bicycle on the roads, while it was a pleasure to ride it in Rotterdam. Any street food is much better than in US (Turkish durum doners in Netherlands?! Kapsalon - is my favorite, still dream at nights, what about famous fries and mayo?), the same goes for sandwiches at the gas station, cheap Red Bull, roads with no holes, nice culture of drivers towards pedestrian/cyclists. We can go forever, but I want to say that to each their own.
Hahah.. great post! I just wanted to moan about the price because I can’t afford it ?
 
It starts at $1999 for M1 Max 10CPU and 24GPU and 32GB RAM

Where as an mac mini intel i7 with 32 RAM and 512GB would cost you $1899 from Apple.

A 16" MacBook pro with M1 Max costs $3099. So for $1,100 less you would be getting M1 Max.

So I don't even know why people are disappointed. I never pay Apple for storage that exceeds $400 option.

It's incredible value compared to the intel i7 mac mini model. For most users who come from high-end Mac mini this is a perfect replacement for that.

But once you add the Studio Display, the Mac Studio is more expensive while having an inferior quality display in comparison to what you get the with the 16" M1 MacBook Pro (which also has 21 hours of battery life).

If the Studio Display was 120hz and mini-LED, then the price might be fine I would say.
 
I just ordered my Mac Studio. Hopefully, the shipment date moves up but it may take a month before it arrives.

I used my education discount and could have bought the base model for $1,799, but I figured if I'm getting the M1 Max I might as well get one that isn't missing graphics cores. So that increased the price to $1,979. Then I figured why not up the storage to 1TB and a total of $2,159.

Those were the easy decisions because then I started thinking should I go with 2TB storage or 64GB RAM or neither. Either choice would bring the total to $2,519 plus tax. In the end I decided to go with 2TB because I was always managing storage on my old Mac Mini and would rather not worry about it.

I haven't decided if I'll get the Studio Display but it is tempting. I do wish it had more inputs for another computer or an HDMI device. For now, I'll just use my old Dell 24" monitor and older Apple keyboard and mouse.

Screen Shot 2022-03-09 at 1.59.59 AM.png
 
I want to see the performance difference between the base Mac Studio and similarly specced 16" MBP.

Wonder if the thermal constraints of the 16" MBP is holding it back.
 
I plan to get:
  • Base model $1999
  • Add 32-core GPU + $200
  • Add 1TB SSD + $200
  • Total $2399
Beyond that I will wait on raytracing to upgrade to a multi SoC model, M3 or so...? ;^p
If I was buying a Mac Studio, this is also the config I would get.
- Maximize the chip
- Bump the boot drive to 1tb. Use thunderbolt external storage for everything else.
 
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If I was buying a Mac Studio, this is also the config I would get.
- Maximize the chip
- Bump the boot drive to 1tb. Use thunderbolt external storage for everything else.

I would love to go the full 64GB for the RAM with the M1 Max, but I feel that $400 is better spent on the GPU cores & storage upgrades...

I am hoping a third-party can make a Thunderbolt storage expansion chassis that matches the footprint & design of the Mac Studio; I would like to see two M.2 NVMe SSD slots (project/media files) and a 3.5" SATAIII HDD slot (Time Machine backups), I don't need it to be a hub...
 
I would love to go the full 64GB for the RAM with the M1 Max, but I feel that $400 is better spent on the GPU cores & storage upgrades...

I am hoping a third-party can make a Thunderbolt storage expansion chassis that matches the footprint & design of the Mac Studio; I would like to see two M.2 NVMe SSD slots (project/media files) and a 3.5" SATAIII HDD slot (Time Machine backups), I don't need it to be a hub...
It has the exact same dimensions as the Mac mini, except height. So any dock can be used that matches the M1 Mac mini, like the OWC miniStack STX.
 
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Very interested to see how the Studio and the MBP‘s compare and if there is a performance difference with exact same specs between mobile and desktop machine.
 
Very interested to see how the Studio and the MBP‘s compare and if there is a performance difference with exact same specs between mobile and desktop machine.
They are clocked the same, so don't think there would be a difference. Perhaps if you compare the 14" to the Studio but that would come down to throttling.
 
Mmm. Should be interesting - I mean, the Studio has a massive fan and exhaust, and also doesn’t have a battery to worry about. It probably wouldn’t jump much if it did.
M2 should be interesting. Looking at the Max and the Ultra, you can see how the M2 will slot right between 10/20 and 24/48 (ie a 16 core CPU/40 core GPU Max M2)
 
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