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Tag: Mac Studio

  • No, the Mac Studio Storage Is Not Upgradeable

    No, the Mac Studio Storage Is Not Upgradeable

    Experts at the venerable teardown site iFixIt have weighed in, and the Mac Studio storage is not upgradeable…with one major caveat.

    The Mac Studio was unveiled at Apple’s Peak Performance event in early March, and finally brought a professional grade Mac powered by the M1 line of chips. In fact, high-end Studios are powered by the M1 Ultra, the fusion of two M1 Max chips. Early adopters quickly noticed a second storage slot, upon disassembly, leading some to believe it might be possible to upgrade the storage. Turns out, that’s not the case.

    iFixIt Mac Studio Teardown

    iFixIt did one of their comprehensive teardowns of the new Mac, and came to the conclusion that upgrading the storage is not possible at this time. Yes, the new machines come with a second storage slot, but that is primarily for configurations that include 4GB or more of internal storage. Simply throwing another SSD into that extra slot doesn’t work and results in DFU restore errors. In fact, the only way to get the Studio to recognize a new SSD was to make sure it was the same capacity as the one that shipped with it.

    No matter the configuration, we haven’t gotten two base model drives to boot simultaneously in a single machine. However, when we swapped the spare Studio’s drive for the one in the teardown unit, and used Configurator to do a DFU restore … it worked! Storage swaps are possible, at least between two drives of the same size. But the jury’s still out on upgrades. Hopefully a software update will make the spare slot worthwhile, but it’s always a bummer to see repair and upgrades at the end of the priority list.

    It’s unfortunate to see the Studio crippled by such an arbitrary limitation, and hopefully a future software update will fix the issue and add some additional longevity to the machine.

    Overall, iFixIt gave the Mac Studio a repairability score of 6 out of 10.

  • Apple’s M1 Ultra Is a CPU Beast, But GPU Not So Much

    Apple’s M1 Ultra Is a CPU Beast, But GPU Not So Much

    Apple’s latest M1 processor is an absolute beast in CPU performance, but its graphics performance doesn’t quite live up to expectations.

    Apple unveiled the M1 Ultra as part of its Peak Performance event on March 8. The new processor powers the Mac Studio, Apple’s new machine aimed at creative professionals. As part of its unveiling, Apple execs touted the Ultra’s performance, even pitting it against the Nvidia RTX 3090.

    There’s just one problem: In real-world usage, the M1 Ultra doesn’t even come close to the RTX 3090 in performance. In their comprehensive review of the new Mac Studio, The Verge delved into the chip’s performance, confirming the CPU performed every bit as good as Apple described.

    “The suite of benchmarks we ran largely backed up our team’s findings,” writes Monica Chin. “In CPU performance, the M1 Ultra is in a league of its own. Compare this to our Mac Pro model with a 16-core Intel Xeon W, and across our CPU benchmarks, there was really no contest: the Xeon is outclassed.”

    When it came to GPU performance, however, the M1 Ultra lagged behind the RTX 3090 by a wide margin, and was even bested by Apple’s Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro in some cases.

    “On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the RTX was also a solid 30 frames per second faster,” Chin continued. “Now, this is Apple gaming, of course, so Tomb Raider was not a perfect or even particularly good experience: there was substantial, noticeable micro stutter at every resolution we tried. This is not at all a computer that anyone would buy for gaming. But it does emphasize that if you’re running a computing load that relies primarily on a heavy-duty GPU, the Mac Studio is probably not the best choice. “

    Given the M1’s impressive performance, Apple has not had to exaggerate benchmarks, and has largely taken an understated approach to describing the M1’s performance. It’s unfortunate the company chose to pit the M1 Ultra vs the RTX 3090, a contest Apple’s latest chip isn’t quite up for.

  • Apple Peak Performance: The M1 Ultra and Mac Studio

    Apple Peak Performance: The M1 Ultra and Mac Studio

    Apple unveiled “one last chip” in the M1 family, the M1 Ultra, building on what has already been a powerhouse line of processors.

    The M1 is based on the same A-Series chips that have powered the iPhone and iPad for years, but scaled up to handle the demands of desktop computing.

    According to Apple’s Johny Srouji, the M1 Ultra features something the company has never talked about before…UltraFusion. This is Apple’s way of connecting two processor dies, a method that is much faster than the traditional way of simply joining two dies on the same motherboard.

    The M1 Ultra supports up to 128 GB of Unified memory, and has a 20-core CPU. The cores include 16 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores. In addition, the Ultra features a 64-core GPU.

    The Ultra’s design helps it offer 90% higher performance than leading PC chips at similar power levels. Put another way, the chip can deliver comparable performance while using 100W less power. Similarly, the Ultra’s GPU provides the same performance as leading GPUs on one-third the power, or the same performance as the very best GPUs while consuming 200W less power.

    The new chip will be used in an all new Mac, the Mac Studio. The Mac Studio looks very much like two Mac minis stacked on top of each other. The new computer is designed to offer the power and connectivity professional users need. When paired with the M1 Ultra, the Mac Studio is 60% faster than the Mac Pro with the 28-core Xeon option.