Which Mac Studio for Lightroom?
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Re: Which Mac Studio for Lightroom?Reply #2 on: June 12, 2023 at 4:26 pm
That’s the problem with the Max…you can only add 64GB of ram…that’s a limit of the architecture Apple designed. The ram limit is why I went with the Ultra to get 128GBs of ram. Also, the speed of the internal SSD makes a compelling case to max out the internal storage.
Re: Which Mac Studio for Lightroom?Reply #3 on: June 12, 2023 at 5:09 pmHi Jeff, Interesting test result, as that’s quite a big difference of speeds for both read and write. But comment/question:
(1) I think it fair to imply the test is between storage architecture only, not differences in the amount of RAM. And if so, seems sensible.
(2) On relative amounts of RAM, I’m wondering how much performance difference one would see for various tasks between 64GB and 128GB RAM. I’m aware this RAM is being shared between the OS and the GPU, but still, 64 GB is A LOT of RAM. And I’m aware it probably depends heavily on the kind of task and size of the file. But on the whole does 128GB make that much of a real-world difference often enough to make the large cost difference worthwhile?
(3) Depending on what these applications are designed to take advantage of these days, I have the same question about the optimal number of cores, but I too bought the Ultra for the extra capacity and performance features mentioned just below.
(4) I think the 48 or 64 GPU cores in the Ultra compared with lesser amounts in the Max, along with twice the memory bandwidth and the doubling of the number of transistors in the Ultra’s combined chip could also make a noticeable performance difference.
After looking at relative costs and consulting some people for views about how much RAM and processing cores should be enough over the horizon of several years – nobody knows for sure of course, but I settled on 64GB RAM and 20 CPU/efficiency cores, 48 GPU cores, with 4TB internal storage. This takes into account that most of the time my files are within a narrow range around 123MB (Sony A7R4 processed in LR), with the Panos I make from a number of those files reaching into 1GB or a bit more – seldom more than 1.5 GB.My experience processing these files indicates that speed and stability are very good. Could it be better had I spec’d the machine higher ?- maybe, but for now I’m finding the capacity I’m using darn adequate. It flies at pano-stitching and sends files to the printer pretty darn fast. I think the two dimensions of decision-making for this stuff are (i) how much do I need (quite subjective) and (ii) cost differences relative to performance differences related to (i). As it’s hard to estimate these parameters and given that amortized over years the cost differences are on the whole not that huge, it probably makes sense to go for a little more than a little less, provided one can afford it.
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