New Mac Studios Coming

[BigAl3D]

I might be in the market for a new Mac. I'm in deep in the Apple ecosystem, so let's not go there. ha.

Anyway, there are two new Mac Studios coming out next week. Since I do video editing, motion graphics, lots of Photoshop work and of course, Corona rendering, seems like the M3 Ultra SHOULD be the better choice. No benchmarks yet between the two to see if the the speed difference is worth the extra cost.

I found a Geekbench test that shows the M4 Max 16-core multicore score at around 25,913, while the M3 Ultra 32-core at 27,749 multicore. Not a massive difference to be honest. If I save 2 min. on a render that would be nice, but maybe not $2,000 USD nice. I'd have to have 20 render per day to save any significant time. ha.

The theory is that they are saving the M4 Ultra or maybe even a new M5 chip for the Mac Pro tower so they are trying to get more difference between the Studio and the insane cost of the tower. I used to live for getting the towers, but don't really need it so much anymore. Right now, the Studio outperforms it. Question is, how much better is the slightly older M3 vs. the newer M4 in real-world rendering tasks?

If anyone finds a real-world comparison out there, feel free to post it here.

[BigAl3D]

Whoops, didn't realize there was a hardware section.

I have read and seen more about these new Macs. Looking more and more like I would be better off with the cheaper M4 Max. Apparently, the M3 Ultra is said to be a great chip to get if you are heavily into A.i. setups or maybe even crypto mining. The only other thing I've seen is everyone keeps saying the Geekbench tests are flawed in that they don't do well above 16 cores, so take the results with a grain or two of salt.

[Nejc Kilar]

Honestly I've never owned a Mac so I can't really tell you much about the performance of these chips outside of what is available online. That said, I am pretty confident in saying that Geekbench isn't that usable of a benchmark for when it comes to assessing rendering performance.

I suppose it'll be best to wait for reviews / benchmark entries?

[BigAl3D]

Wait? You know we can't WAIT! ha. I know, but I like to wonder if things live up to the hype, not that Apple over-hypes anything (wink, wink). Seems that if anyone is in the market for one of these, and in particular coming from a much older machine, that the M4 Max would be the best bang for the buck. The M3 Ultra is two Max chips connected together, but their performance does not simply double because there are two CPUs. Back in the G5 days, two CPUs meant twice the speed.

I keep seeing that the M3 Ultra Studio can have an obscene amount of unified RAM and cores and large language model A.i. applications would benefit. I'm sure the extra cores would help 3D CPU rendering, but at such a crazy extra cost, not for me.

Solitaire will run at 240 fps so that will be nice too.

[Philw]

I’m currently trying to work out the real-world CPU multi-core difference - as I need to spend wisely too - but have been waiting for the new generation of Studio for a long time - I need a machine with decent multi-core CPU for Corona but also decent hardware enabled ray tracing for Redshift. The ability to spec the M4 Max Studio with 128GB of memory is great for heavy Corona scenes (it’s where my M1Max MBP gets the most upset with its 64GB).

Of course if money was no object the a flavour of M3 Ultra would be best but I feel that the M4 Max won’t be too shabby…

[Nejc Kilar]

Wait? You know we can't WAIT! ha. I know, but I like to wonder if things live up to the hype, not that Apple over-hypes anything (wink, wink). Seems that if anyone is in the market for one of these, and in particular coming from a much older machine, that the M4 Max would be the best bang for the buck. The M3 Ultra is two Max chips connected together, but their performance does not simply double because there are two CPUs. Back in the G5 days, two CPUs meant twice the speed.

I keep seeing that the M3 Ultra Studio can have an obscene amount of unified RAM and cores and large language model A.i. applications would benefit. I'm sure the extra cores would help 3D CPU rendering, but at such a crazy extra cost, not for me.

Solitaire will run at 240 fps so that will be nice too.

Hah yes, I completely understand :) I'm much the same when a new Threadripper or a Xeon (<- been a while) gets released. And then I'm incredibly disappointed to see just a single Cinebench run tested :D

Not to single out any of the reviewers but Tom's Hardware ran Blender tests so those can be indicative of the performance uplift number you can expect - ballpark numbers of course.

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/apple-mac-studio-early-2025-review

So unless I'm getting this wrong the 16 core M4 Max studio goes for around 2500$? If that is the case it might not be a bad deal for everyone that is on the Apple train?

I mean yes, any current gen 32 core Threadripper will be about 2.5x faster although more expensive (probably around 4000$ for the build)... And a 96 core Threadripper will probably be 4x+ faster but will cost a lot more (13000$ for a build)... But nonetheless having options in the lower / middle part of that budget segment is imho a good thing.

[smckenzie]

I just got a M3 Ultra Studio base 28/60.

Some Cinebench 2024 scores for you:

Cinebench Multicore CPU
MacPro 2019 16t/32c Xeon : 1169
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 28c: 2666
PC I9 14900KF: 2016

Very happy with it. Basically silent and doesn't get that hot or generate much heat when under full load.

[ASIMO]

Nice. Could you run the Corona Benchmark ? That would be great info. Thank you !