Apple Announces M1 Ultra CPU, Mac Studio and Studio Display

[Leesureone]

M1 Ultra has twice everything, since it is basically two M1 Max stitched together.
But this extra bandwidth comes with the additional requirement of crossing from one M1 Max core to the other, and benchmarking M1 Pro/Max already showed that the M1 Max could not make full use of its extra bandwidth over the M1 Pro.

Wondering the same as @pastrychef

 

[pieropontra]

I have a similar system (7900X + 64GB + WD750 SSD + 1080Ti), and I wouldn’t swap yet.

1. Storage; 9TB+ on SATA ports, 1TB on NVME SSDs, and 4TB RAID on Hyper M.2 V2 card
2. PCIe; I use several audio accelerator cards to run my audio FX and expand the system
3. Ports; Mac Studio has plenty of ports, but you've got to give some up and get hubs if you’re doing multi-monitor setups. That’s unless you go with pricey thunderbolt monitors.
4. Memory; If you need more, forget it. Im only using half of my slots.

A Mac Studio is definitely in my future, wouldn’t be practical to build another hack. Its faster, smaller, quieter, more stable, future-proof, cost-effective. But unless it solves a problem that you currently have, you should wait.

Yep, considering this route...

Anyway, you can buy an USB-c to HDMI / DP cable / adapter and it will work with TB4 ports.

 

[etorix]

Which benchmarks?

Fair request… Hopefully it wasn't too hard for me to find my source back:

Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights

www.anandtech.com

Relevant quotes (my emphasis):

Unfortunately, the news here isn’t the best case-scenario that we hoped for, as the M1 Max isn’t able to fully saturate the SoC bandwidth from just the CPU side

[…]

It’s only when the E-cores, which are in their own cluster, are added in, when the bandwidth is able to jump up again, to a maximum of 243GB/s.

While 243GB/s is massive, and overshadows any other design in the industry, it’s still quite far from the 409GB/s the chip is capable of. More importantly for the M1 Max, it’s only slightly higher than the 204GB/s limit of the M1 Pro, so from a CPU-only workload perspective, it doesn’t appear to make sense to get the Max if one is focused just on CPU bandwidth.

That begs the question, why does the M1 Max have such massive bandwidth? The GPU naturally comes to mind, however in my testing, I’ve had extreme trouble to find workloads that would stress the GPU sufficiently to take advantage of the available bandwidth. Granted, this is also an issue of lacking workloads, but for actual 3D rendering and benchmarks, I haven’t seen the GPU use more than 90GB/s (measured via system performance counters). While I’m sure there’s some productivity workload out there where the GPU is able to stretch its legs, we haven’t been able to identify them yet.

Let's wait for the corresponding dissection of the M1 Ultra…

 

[hisartwork]

Fair request… Hopefully it wasn't too hard for me to find my source back:

Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights

www.anandtech.com

Relevant quotes (my emphasis):


Let's wait for the corresponding dissection of the M1 Ultra…

I'm probably out of my league in this convo, but wouldn't the fact that this article and benchmarks are for the M1 Max in the MBP make it not a fair assessment of the M1 Max in the studio which should be capable of more power being its in a desktop with dedicated psu and better cooling?

 

[fvklies]

There is this:

M1 Ultra Outperforms 28-Core Intel Mac Pro in First Leaked Benchmark

The first benchmark for Apple's M1 Ultra chip popped up on Geekbench following today's event, confirming that the doubled-up M1 Max is indeed...

www.macrumors.com

 

[pastrychef]

Fair request… Hopefully it wasn't too hard for me to find my source back:

Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights

www.anandtech.com

Relevant quotes (my emphasis):


Let's wait for the corresponding dissection of the M1 Ultra…

The article primarily focuses on the CPU being able to take advantage of the bandwidth. I was suggesting that the bandwidth could benefit the GPU. When it came to GPU, the author just said he wasn't able to find anything to saturate the bandwidth yet. That's very different from the SoC being unable to take advantage of the bandwidth.

 

[pastrychef]

I'm probably out of my league in this convo, but wouldn't the fact that this article and benchmarks are for the M1 Max in the MBP make it not a fair assessment of the M1 Max in the studio which should be capable of more power being its in a desktop with dedicated psu and better cooling?

I don't think cooling would change the findings any. I don't think power would make any difference either.

 

[c-o-pr]

My hazy belief is that every high-end macbook (and most of the rest) has been power/cooling limited. This has several dimensions, max clock, charging, battery supplementing AC power in, fan noise, throttling, power states, battery life, life of battery — many angles, very complex.

Until the M1 Max.

In the M1 Max they figured out the total package, where you can run it full load (plugged in) and cooling keeps up, battery can push chips full tilt boogie, etc.

The Mac Studio form-factor relaxes constraints, so with new macbook pro, they released the hard case first.

Studio can throw power/cooling as needed, hence the Ultra.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I'm kind of interested in what is making the Mac Studio 4" tall. That fly-thru video advert seemed to imply there was a lot of space above the motherboard. If it is for heatsinks, as some have suggested, then I think there would need to be bigger air-intakes and fans to feed them and send the air out through the base perforations. Just my ruminations.

 

[c-o-pr]

I'm kind of interested in what is making the Mac Studio 4" tall. That fly-thru video advert seemed to imply there was a lot of space above the motherboard. If it is for heatsinks, as some have suggested, then I think there would need to be bigger air-intakes and fans to feed them and send the air out through the base perforations. Just my ruminations.

This caught my eye...

M1 Mac Mini Mod Reduces Size

Modders Shrunk The M1 Mac Mini, And It's Awesome

M1 Mac mini is much larger than it needs to be.

screenrant.com

Macrumors reference to same:

YouTuber Modifies M1 Mac Mini to Be 78% Smaller

A YouTuber has successfully made the M1 Mac mini 78% smaller and added MagSafe in a unique DIY project, highlighting Apple's iterative approach...

www.macrumors.com