Video Games Tutorials and News - Apple Makes My Brain Hurt. Peek Performance Event
Intro
You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like, and it is chunky. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of a stubby G4 Cube. Both powered by Apple silicon, they're set to usher in a new era of performance for Apple enthusiasts, but the way Apple's gone about this makes things so much more complicated, unlike our sponsor.
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Mac studio - the mini pro
There's actually a lot going for this design. You get 10 gigabit Ethernet as standard, thank you Apple.
The rest of the rear i/o is rearranged but looks basically the same as the Intel Mac Mini, with a high impedance pro audio output that I suspect is the same as on the new Macbook Pros. Turn it around, however, and you'll see that Apple has finally acquiesced and added front-facing connectors, two USB type-C 10 gigabit ports, and an SDXC reader.
While support for the brand new SD Express format would have been nice to see as a future proofing measure, what we're getting is tracks with the larger MacBook Pros. If you pick up an M1 Ultra-equipped Max studio, those type-c ports up front turn into Thunderbolt ports.
M1 ultra
Yeah, turns out Apple's been holding out on us and their M1 Max chips had an unused interconnect called Ultra Fusion that allows for a chiplet style connection between two M1 Maxes to make up an M1 Ultra.
The effective result is a single SOC as far as software is concerned and gives a metric bug load of CPU and GPU cores, doubling the already very impressive media engine on the M1 Max and doubling the maximum memory capacity at 800 gigabytes per second. That is faster memory than the GDDR6X that is used on Nvidia's RTX 3080 and 3090.
That is pretty amazing, and even more amazing is that the memory itself isn't even clocked faster. There's just that many more channels to work with if you believe what Apple has to say. The M1 Ultra is up to 60 faster than the Mac Pro equipped with 28 Xeon W cores and 80 faster than that machine's fastest GPU, the Radeon w6900x. Do they still sell those ?.
Apple's up to their usual tricks.
By the way, something about those claims, though this doesn't really pass the sniff test. Part of that claim is that it's also 90 times faster than a 16-core desktop CPU while drawing 100 watts less power. You might think that's referring to the only current 16-core desktop CPU, the Ryzen 9 5950x, but in fact they are talking about the core I9 12900k, which is an 8+8-core CPU with performance and efficiency cores much like Apple silicon.
What's more, max turbo power on the 12900k is 241 watts, so we can surmise based on Apple's own data that the M1 Ultra draws around 140 watts, which is still a lot of watts. The 12900k TDP at base clock is 125 watts and I can guarantee you the M1 Ultra doesn't draw just 25 watts.
M1 ultra gpu and media engine
But that's The CPU's 128 gigs of unified memory offers an unprecedented amount of potential vram to the GPU.
Apple's right in that the biggest workstation card on the market right now, the RTX a6000, caps out at a meager 48 gigs. Sure, you can connect multiple a6000s together via Envy link, but having that much memory in a single package is a significant feather in Apple's cap. They're also making some interesting claims about beating the highest-end discrete GPU while also using 200 watts less power.
The footnote says they're talking about the RTX 3090 using select industry standard benchmarks, so take from that what you will. I expect performance to be decent either way, but it's very possible this specific claim leans on the media engine as Apple has done in the past and they're not talking about raw compute performance.
I'd like to be wrong, though. Speaking of the doubled up media engine, it is now capable of running 18 simultaneous 8K prores 422 streams, so it really does sound like an ideal workstation for most professionals, especially as software support comes online, like with Blender 3.1, you'll be able to make use of it too, up to four Pro display XDRs and a 4K HDMI device simultaneously.
That is more battle stations and certainly more pixels than Apple has ever officially announced.
Storage is pricey and maybe buy a ups
Supported internal storage doesn't look expandable, however, so you'll need to add over two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars for eight terabytes if you don't want external storage. A fact made worse by recent revelations that Apple's SSD performance isn't as good as they claim it is. They're cheating and, in the process, putting data at risk if an unexpected shutdown occurs.
The onboard battery in a Macbook makes this a non-issue, but on a stationary machine plugged into wall power. Well, make sure that you combine the Mac Studio with a battery backup. That'll add to the already high price tag for the M1 Ultra variant, but if you take Apple at their word, it's the most powerful machine you can buy for the money.
Get subscribed because we are definitely putting that claim to the test.
Studio display
You might also want to combine the Mac Studio with a new studio display. Apple certainly wants you to. The panel itself seems suspiciously similar to the existing LG ultrafine 5K with a slight bump in peak brightness and 10 gig type-c ports instead of 5.
It even has similar power delivery capabilities to the recent models, so it seems like a bit of a cop-out, until you get under the hood from ltdstore, Com. Hey, I got it in there. What makes the studio display special, aside from the aluminum and glass construction, is the a13 bionic chip, powering a plethora of onboard goodies.
It's got a very similar speaker array on paper to the 24 inch M1 iMac, complete with spatial audio. A three-mic array, presumably with noise suppression and an integrated 12 megapixel FaceTime camera capable of Center Stage, which means you can finally use Center Stage on a Mac, the one place it makes a lot of sense.
Not to mention, the a13 provides the image signal processing we've come to expect from Apple silicon. That means that the Mac itself doesn't need to do any of the work, freeing up the neural engine for other tasks. It even makes these AI features usable on Intel Max as old as 2016. Now the studio display XDR comes with three mounting options.
A 30 degree tilt adjustable stand pro display xdr like stand except without rotation support and an ugly vase amount, although it looks like you need to choose what you want out of the factory because, unlike the produce xdr, there isn't a user-accessible mounting mechanism on the display itself. Thankfully, the Vasa Mount and tilt adjustable stand are options that don't add to the already lofty 1599 price tag, but the tilt and height adjustable stand cost an extra 400 bucks.
