What should I upgrade on the Studio M2 Max?

[jnhaswell]

I'm thinking of making the switch from my current 2020 27-inch iMac (3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4) to the upcoming Studio M2 Max. The majority of my heavy lifting is doing video/graphic editing (After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, etc) and having multiple Adobe apps open at the same time. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the upgrade, and if I do, should I also go from the base memory of 32GB to the 64GB like I did with my current iMac? Is it worth the extra $200 to go from the 30-core GPU to the 38-core GPU? Thanks!!

 

[AlphaCentauri]

You can add external storage later, but RAM is not upgradable. My advice - buy as much RAM as you can afford, 64 or even 128GB.

 

[designerdave72]

You can add external storage later, but RAM is not upgradable. My advice - buy as much RAM as you can afford, 64 or even 128GB.

👆🏻 This 100%

 

[jnhaswell]

Thanks!! I'll definitely do at least 64 and maybe more. How about that upgrade from 30-core GPU to 38? What does that mostly affect with performance?

 

[CPmav]

Definitely upgrade the ram! I bought the base Mac Studio last year and I’m really starting to regret it.

 

[designerdave72]

64gb is workable depending workload/tasks/budget because it works so much better with M1 than it used to with the Intel architecture. 96gb should be more than enough for your needs if, you can afford it.

 

[Lucas Curious]

You can add external storage later, but RAM is not upgradable. My advice - buy as much RAM as you can afford, 64 or even 128GB.

I second this. I tested how many streams of video I can run at same time on a M1 Pro and the 16gb of ram chokes the whole system while the cores arent going past 50%. If I was buying to use for a long time, I would go for 64gb RAM

 

[yadmonkey]

Maybe a dumb question, but is the 512GB storage as fast as the 1TB?

 

[ErneX]

Maybe a dumb question, but is the 512GB storage as fast as the 1TB?

Not a dumb question at all, since the new MBP with 512GB has slower SSD speeds than the 1TB or higher models.

I haven’t found any review yet of the 512GB model that features this test yet. Hopefully today one will show up.

 

[yadmonkey]

Not a dumb question at all, since the new MBP with 512GB has slower SSD speeds than the 1TB or higher models.

I haven’t found any review yet of the 512GB model that features this test yet. Hopefully today one will show up.

I didn't find anything on it today, but I did see something about the MBA being slower in its 256GB config, so I went ahead and ordered 1TB, which is more than I need but I didn't want to wait anymore.