Apple Announces M1 Ultra CPU, Mac Studio and Studio Display

[etorix]

AnandTech published a review of Intel's latest Alder Lake mobile announcement, which I think pertains to this topic because it's what PC OEMs will soon be offering in the market segment which Apple M1 Max participates — this is Intel's M1 Max

Intel Launches Alder Lake-HX Series Core Processors: 55W and PCIe 5.0 For High-End Mobile

www.anandtech.com

Please see the whole article for its many details and observations.

My brain, already challenged by the idea of a "mobile" 157 W CPU—to be paired with a similarly power-hungry GPU—and stumbling upon the side-by-side table for the HX and H families, totally melted when I eventually realised there were NO TYPOS in the HX specification table:
The 12950HX and 12850HX differ from the 12900HX and 12800HX in having vPro and ECC support (so far so good…) but then the 12650HX and 12450HX lack these two features while the 12600HX has them. So many digits and not even a hit of consistency!

Intel is at complete loss here, and tries to hide it by confusing prospective customers with a mess of a product stack.
At this point, the next step is to take dance lessons from Steve Ballmer… (Apologies to the forum readers who were not yet born in the 1990s and were thus spared the indignity of watching THIS )

Who still want to complain about the "M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra" naming scheme?

 

[craighazan]

My brain, already challenged by the idea of a "mobile" 157 W CPU—to be paired with a similarly power-hungry GPU—and stumbling upon the side-by-side table for the HX and H families, totally melted when I eventually realised there were NO TYPOS in the HX specification table:
The 12950HX and 12850HX differ from the 12900HX and 12800HX in having vPro and ECC support (so far so good…) but then the 12650HX and 12450HX lack these two features while the 12600HX has them. So many digits and not even a hit of consistency!

Intel is at complete loss here, and tries to hide it by confusing prospective customers with a mess of a product stack.
At this point, the next step is to take dance lessons from Steve Ballmer… (Apologies to the forum readers who were not yet born in the 1990s and were thus spared the indignity of watching THIS )

Who still want to complain about the "M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra" naming scheme?

We also have this chestnut from 2011, a fine example of utter cluelessness from the top. And that seems to have set the road map for Intel and Microsoft on the path of higher and higher TDP, while Apple and AMD went the other way. Thanks for that clip @etorix, it's fun and cringeworthy watching a sweaty ape embarrass himself.

 

[NZRichard]

For my eyes, native 4K res on 31.5-32" is the sweet spot

What have you found to be the best monitor for the Mac Studio, and how is your system working out?

TIA

 

[pastrychef]

What have you found to be the best monitor for the Mac Studio, and how is your system working out?

TIA

I'm just using my old AOC 31.5". It isn't the best but fine for my needs. There are plenty of much better, newer monitors out there now...

I'm in love with my Mac Studio. I did have to make some adjustments because I'm coming from a hackintosh build that had 3x3.5" HDDs, 2x2.5" SSDs, and 2xNVMe SSDs installed. At first, I tried to use the 3.5" HDDs in an external USB3 enclosure and kept getting the "was not ejected properly" messages everytime the system woke from sleep. Next, I tried using eSATA which proved to be unstable. Eventually, I just put the drives in to my NAS and created a new storage volume to use as my Time Machine and local temp/junk storage. This also cleared up A LOT of desk space for me.

Performance-wise, the M1 Max has been everything I envisioned it to be and everything has been buttery smooth. The very fast SSD in the Mac Studio really contributes to the perception of snappiness. Boot times are silly fast. Booting is several magnitudes faster than on my hack. All my apps have been running as well as they ever have, including those that require Rosetta 2.

I have experienced a few weird anomalies that I have not been able to reproduce... Once an iPad app (Yahoo Finance app) refused to launch and said it was not compatible with this system. Rebooting fixed it and I have not come across this again. Firefox has randomly crashed a few times, something I never saw happen on my hack.

I've also been spending more time than I should playing old PS2 games on the aetherSX2 emulator. It's amazing how great these old games look when upscaled to 4K and how smooth they run on Apple Silicon. Extremely impressive.

My apartment has also been noticeably cooler since switching from my hack to the Mac Studio. I have yet to see my Mac Studio pull more than about 50W where as my hack used to idle at approx 100W and I keep my primary system up 24/7.

I have been finding less and less reasons to keep my hack around... I've been seriously considering repurposing the hardware from that hack and using it to upgrade my NAS but I will have to purchase an i5-9500T to replace the i9-9900K because I don't need all that power and I want the system to run cooler.

 

[NZRichard]

I'm in love with my Mac Studio

Wow! Sounds like you're smitten!

Are you thinking TB4 for a future monitor or is HDMI a better way to go?

Thanks for a great review.

 

[pastrychef]

Wow! Sounds like you're smitten!

Are you thinking TB4 for a future monitor or is HDMI a better way to go?

Thanks for a great review.

Since my monitor only has one HDMI and one DisplayPort, I picked up a USB-C to DisplayPort adaptor so that I can use the HDMI for my Raspberry Pi. It worked fine except one day, it just didn't produce an output and I had to unplug/replug the adaptor to get it working again. Since then, I went back to HDMI... I don't want to have to deal with that issue again.

 

[etorix]

I've been seriously considering repurposing the hardware from that hack and using it to upgrade my NAS but I will have to purchase an i5-9500T to replace the i9-9900K because I don't need all that power and I want the system to run cooler.

Don't bother changing the CPU.
All over the TrueNAS forum the advice is NOT to use "T" CPUs. A NAS idles most of the time; serving a request just causes a spike of activity. The 9900K ramps up to full speed, completes the task and quickly goes back to sleep. The 9500T ramps up to a lower clock and thus takes longer to complete: Because the most powerful CPU wins the "race to idle", it generally consumes less energy overall than the "T" CPU with its lower TDP and lower clock.

And because SMB is single-threaded, this protocol is best served by a CPU with the highest possible clock—but possibly few cores.

The advice should hold irrespective of the NAS OS.

 

[valvator]

I'm thinking of leaving my old hackintosh, for several reasons:
Mainly with the false reason that hackintosh is easier for upgrades, it's not like that, we can change graphics, but whenever I upgraded a processor, it has to be also to mb+ memories, because nothing is compatible.
Then the announcing end of support for x86.
The excessive price of components.
Who has already bought a mac studio are satisfied?
do we have a machine for a few years?
thanks

 

[Stork]

Who has already bought a mac studio are satisfied?
do we have a machine for a few years?

@pastrychef and I have a Studio. Mine is the entry level model, and it suits my needs. However, my current Thunderball III build works great, I'll also use it until there's no longer Intel support.

 

[pastrychef]

Who has already bought a mac studio are satisfied?

I've already retired most of my hackintoshes in favor of my Mac Studio. I absolutely love the Mac Studio. It outperforms the hackintoshes it replaces, sips power, and does it all silently.