M2 Max Mac Studio - more ram vs GPU cores?

[Todashi]

So I'm going to buy a Mac Studio this week, but just a basic entry level model.

To be clear, I don't really NEED this machine. It's a 'nice' to have, not 'need' to have purchase, but I've worked hard, have the money and want to buy myself something nice to make up for the hours I spend at my desk etc. I frequently have five or ten apps open, with twenty Safari tabs etc - nothing too extreme. I also do some 4K video editing and some gaming.

I'm aware that a Mac Studio is overkill for my needs, but I'm sort of seeing this as a future proofing purchase, a machine I expect to use for five years or more. So I wondering if it's worth throwing a little extra money at it at purchase, as I can't upgrade later.

So this is my question.

It costs $200 to upgrade an entry level M2 Max Mac Studio to a chip with better GPU count (30 vs 38 GPU cores).

It costs $400 to upgrade the same entry level machine from 32Gbs of Ram to 64Gbs. Which would be the better purchase to make the machine perform faster, render video faster and generally future proof it a bit more than an entry level model with no upgrades on it?

My instinct is that more RAM is more RAM and you can never have too much RAM, but I don't really know what real world impact having 8 extra GPU cores would have on a machine, for the uses I have for it?

Which would you opt for?

 

[b17777]

I was in the same situation when I bought my M1 Studio Max, coming from a 2011 iMac. I went with 64, 32 and 2TB to future proof as I will be keeping this for a long time.

 

[casperes1996]

It really depends. If you have *enough* RAM then more doesn't really help. If you don't have enough, more will help a lot. There's some caveats to that with respect to RAM-disks, memory based caching and the like but as a rule of thumb it holds.

More GPU cores will speed up any task that uses the GPU core, but do nothing for tasks that do not. So games will run at better frame rates, complex renders will happen faster - Assuming you also have enough RAM.

I have 16GB of RAM on my work laptop, and it's almost always in yellow memory pressure. I have 32GB of RAM on my personal Macs (both of them) and neither are ever really pushed into the yellow, aside from when I accidentally write a severe memory leak. I would personally opt for more GPU cores, but it is quite an individual matter which is a better choice.

If you already have a Mac, see what your memory pressure looks like with its RAM and judge based on that.
Also evaluate if you may be better served by not upgrading either and putting the savings into saving up for an M7 Mac Studio or whatever in the future.

On that note, if it's something you want here and now, go for it. But M3 Max has been released in the MBP and if I were to guess I'd say we're half a year from M3 Max/Ultra Mac Studio and Mac Pro. It would also be an option to wait on that; I anticipate a small price increase for those however, but with more baseline RAM.

 

[dasjati]

Also evaluate if you may be better served by not upgrading either and putting the savings into saving up for an M7 Mac Studio or whatever in the future.

I like that! I also think that the base Mac Studio is already an amazing device and should serve OP's needs well.

 

[shinkansenwarrior]

So I'm going to buy a Mac Studio this week, but just a basic entry level model.

To be clear, I don't really NEED this machine. It's a 'nice' to have, not 'need' to have purchase, but I've worked hard, have the money and want to buy myself something nice to make up for the hours I spend at my desk etc. I frequently have five or ten apps open, with twenty Safari tabs etc - nothing too extreme. I also do some 4K video editing and some gaming.

I'm aware that a Mac Studio is overkill for my needs, but I'm sort of seeing this as a future proofing purchase, a machine I expect to use for five years or more. So I wondering if it's worth throwing a little extra money at it at purchase, as I can't upgrade later.

So this is my question.

It costs $200 to upgrade an entry level M2 Max Mac Studio to a chip with better GPU count (30 vs 38 GPU cores).

It costs $400 to upgrade the same entry level machine from 32Gbs of Ram to 64Gbs. Which would be the better purchase to make the machine perform faster, render video faster and generally future proof it a bit more than an entry level model with no upgrades on it?

My instinct is that more RAM is more RAM and you can never have too much RAM, but I don't really know what real world impact having 8 extra GPU cores would have on a machine, for the uses I have for it?

Which would you opt for?

This may help you in your decision.

 

[dasjati]

This may help you in your decision.

Summary of the video by Kagi in case someone finds that useful:

• The video compares the performance of the M2 MacBook Pro with 30GPU vs 38GPU configurations, to see if the extra $200 for 8 more GPU cores is worth it.
• Most photo editing tasks like Lightroom Classic previews and exports show minimal performance gains (under 10%) from 30GPU to 38GPU. The gains are not significant enough to justify the extra cost.
• Tasks that fully utilize the GPU like Lightroom CC exports see larger gains around 18%, so the 38GPU may be worth it for heavy Lightroom CC users.
• Capture One performance is nearly identical between the two configurations, so the 38GPU is not recommended when using Capture One.
• For most photo workflows, the money is better spent upgrading other components like RAM or storage instead of the GPU.
• Refurbished M1 Max machines offer similar performance at a significantly lower price than the M2 Max configurations.
• 32GB of RAM is recommended as the minimum for photo pros to avoid memory limitations.
• SSD speed has little impact on performance for most tasks except very large Photoshop files.
• The M1 Ultra remains the top performer but is overkill for most photo workflows.
• An upgrade path is recommended only if it provides clear performance or functionality gains, not just for newer hardware.