The 512GB conundrum (again)

[macman4789]

Hi,

I know this has been asked before but I just want to clarify a few things. With the base M2 Max 512GB SSD, I know the 1TB will increase read/write speeds to almost double but would this only really be noticed in large file transfers?

Am I right in thinking that launching apps for example would be the same as this is more reliant on the single core performance of the CPU?

Any other tasks that would be noticed?

Thanks

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Launching apps will mostly rely on the speed of the drive, not the CPU. But you will likely not feel any difference.

 

[MarkC426]

Hi,

I know this has been asked before but I just want to clarify a few things. With the base M2 Max 512GB SSD, I know the 1TB will increase read/write speeds to almost double but would this only really be noticed in large file transfers?

Am I right in thinking that launching apps for example would be the same as this is more reliant on the single core performance of the CPU?

Any other tasks that would be noticed?

Thanks

Take into consideration your current Mac, and how it really isn't slow...

My case for example I went from a cMP to an M2 Studio.
My fastest drives in cMP are PCIe drives...500MB/s, and to me where more than fast enough for anything I do.

Moving to my Studio, the internal (512 drive) is 4800MB/s write, 3400MB/s read, which is ridiculous compared to my previous setup.

Simple answer....any Studio is damn fast compared to intel Macs

 

[macman4789]

Take into consideration your current Mac, and how it really isn't slow...

My case for example I went from a cMP to an M2 Studio.
My fastest drives in cMP are PCIe drives...500MB/s, and to me where more than fast enough for anything I do.

Moving to my Studio, the internal (512 drive) is 4800MB/s write, 3400MB/s read, which is ridiculous compared to my previous setup.

Simple answer....any Studio is damn fast compared to intel Macs

Are they the SATA drives from the 5,1 MP you referred?

Yeah I know they are still fast drives even though they are 512GB, I just wondered if it would influence day to day work.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[macman4789]

Launching apps will mostly rely on the speed of the drive, not the CPU. But you will likely not feel any difference.

Ah right, I thought it was the initial single core performance for things like loading apps. Thanks

 

[MarkC426]

Are they the SATA drives from the 5,1 MP you referred?

Yeah I know they are still fast drives even though they are 512GB, I just wondered if it would influence day to day work.

Thanks for the reply!

SATA drives on Sonnet Tempo card achieve 500MB/s in PCIe slot.

It depends what you actually do with your Mac.
I think if your editing 8k video, multiple streams in real time, then you may notice an improvement.

 

[Andrey84]

Hi,

I know this has been asked before but I just want to clarify a few things. With the base M2 Max 512GB SSD, I know the 1TB will increase read/write speeds to almost double but would this only really be noticed in large file transfers?

Am I right in thinking that launching apps for example would be the same as this is more reliant on the single core performance of the CPU?

Any other tasks that would be noticed?

Thanks

If you're in doubt about 512GB vs 1TB, just go for 1TB. The mental ease of getting the better setup, plus less hassle in 4-5 years when you run out of space, will definitely be worth the extra $200. You will also get a $100 higher re-sale value.

 

[Plutonius]

Another consideration on drive speed is how much RAM you have vs how much you need.

When you run out of physical RAM, you start using the SSD for RAM.

This is fairly common on 8 GB Macs but should not be an issue on the Studio because of the larger amount of base RAM..

I highly recommend buying refurbished from the Apple store and using the savings to get a larger drive.

 

[macman4789]

Another consideration on drive speed is how much RAM you have vs how much you need.

When you run out of physical RAM, you start using the SSD for RAM.

This is fairly common on 8 GB Macs but should not be an issue on the Studio because of the larger amount of base RAM..

I highly recommend buying refurbished from the Apple store and using the savings to get a larger drive.

Yes great point. Swap should be a lot less because of the 32GB RAM.

 

[macman4789]

If launching apps is down to the speed of the drive and not the single core speed, then I guess the next question would be how big are apps to open? If the 512GB drive reads at 3400MB a sec ish, how big is for example FCP to load or even MS Word?

 

[MarkC426]

If launching apps is down to the speed of the drive and not the single core speed, then I guess the next question would be how big are apps to open? If the 512GB drive reads at 3400MB a sec ish, how big is for example FCP to load or even MS Word?

Again....these speed obsessions get out of hand....🤣
My Mac Pro (with 500MB/s data drives and SATA 250MB/s system drive) was/is lightning fast IMHO.
Apps open almost instantly, so comparing between a 512/1024 Studio storage speeds seems pointless (as mentioned earlier), as this is 13x faster than my previous OS drive.....

Ok a 1tb drive IS faster than a 512gb, but in reality probably makes zero difference, unless you are literally pushing your Mac right over the edge daily.

 

[macman4789]

Again....these speed obsessions get out of hand....🤣
My Mac Pro (with 500MB/s data drives and SATA 250MB/s system drive) was/is lightning fast IMHO.
Apps open almost instantly, so comparing between a 512/1024 Studio storage speeds seems pointless (as mentioned earlier), as this is 13x faster than my previous OS drive.....

Ok a 1tb drive IS faster than a 512gb, but in reality probably makes zero difference, unless you are literally pushing your Mac right over the edge daily.

You make a good point. I suppose not many still have those drives to make a direct comparison and have at least an early to mid Intel based with soldered based SSD storage which pushes at least 1000MB+ sec read/write.

I suppose like everyone, you don’t want to regret in 2 years time having slow drives to launch apps etc and to meet your requirements.

 

[MarkC426]

I suppose like everyone, you don’t want to regret in 2 years time having slow drives to launch apps etc and to meet your requirements.

Agreed.
It took me much consideration moving from my Mac Pro (fully upgradeable) to a (fixed spec) Studio.

But my Mac usage (hobbyist) has dropped considerably recently due to work commitments etc, so a Studio was more than adequate for my needs.... and at the same time miles faster than my current machine.

 

[macman4789]

Agreed.
It took me much consideration moving from my Mac Pro (fully upgradeable) to a (fixed spec) Studio.

But my Mac usage (hobbyist) has dropped considerably recently due to work commitments etc, so a Studio was more than adequate for my needs.... and at the same time miles faster than my current machine.

Yes, I used to have the 5,1 Mac Pro. Just got to a point where you couldn’t upgrade it anymore and lacked things like airdrop and thunderbolt (although I know there are some workarounds).

Thanks for the input on this. I think the 512GB drives are more than quick enough for me and probably most people.

 

[Chancha]

The "nerfed" SSD in base 512GB is only slower with sequential transfers. Most computing tasks, including app launch which was asked in the OP, is more about random read access which is more or less equal on all Apple's SSD configs.

So which tasks are affected? Aside from the obvious bulk file transfer like dropping files to and from an external SSD, the most common one is exporting videos or photos from footage / RAWs that sit on the internal drive. So essentially any tasks that demand suddenly reading or dumping lots of GBs of files in and out of the internal drive, the speed of these are literally halved.

Apple does offer SSD upgrade options that are costly but in turn the benefits are considerable, namely in how fast they are (sequential). So for some workflow if you have TBs of assets and you don't want to be bottlenecked by the network or I/O, you can pay to get that. With how much Apple charges I'd say the sweetspot is between 1-2TB, where 4-8TB's asking price is way too exclusive unless you really need it.

I think the Studio starting at base 512GB is carefully placed on Apple's part. Even in professional environments, with a standard issue 10Gbe already on the ethernet port, a lot of deployments of these machines are not going to rely on the internal drives to store any data at all, as they are likely to be on an external DAS or network storage (NAS / SAS). In my case for example, Even before using my M1 Max Studio, the previous iMac 5k had a 10Gbe TB3 CalDigit card permanently connected to a 20G infrastructure of my studio network, majority of time accessing files on 20G/10G servers. The internal drives are for macOS, app installs, cache, and quick file management like unzipping etc.

 

[macman4789]

The "nerfed" SSD in base 512GB is only slower with sequential transfers. Most computing tasks, including app launch which was asked in the OP, is more about random read access which is more or less equal on all Apple's SSD configs.

So which tasks are affected? Aside from the obvious bulk file transfer like dropping files to and from an external SSD, the most common one is exporting videos or photos from footage / RAWs that sit on the internal drive. So essentially any tasks that demand suddenly reading or dumping lots of GBs of files in and out of the internal drive, the speed of these are literally halved.

Apple does offer SSD upgrade options that are costly but in turn the benefits are considerable, namely in how fast they are (sequential). So for some workflow if you have TBs of assets and you don't want to be bottlenecked by the network or I/O, you can pay to get that. With how much Apple charges I'd say the sweetspot is between 1-2TB, where 4-8TB's asking price is way too exclusive unless you really need it.

I think the Studio starting at base 512GB is carefully placed on Apple's part. Even in professional environments, with a standard issue 10Gbe already on the ethernet port, a lot of deployments of these machines are not going to rely on the internal drives to store any data at all, as they are likely to be on an external DAS or network storage (NAS / SAS). In my case for example, Even before using my M1 Max Studio, the previous iMac 5k had a 10Gbe TB3 CalDigit card permanently connected to a 20G infrastructure of my studio network, majority of time accessing files on 20G/10G servers. The internal drives are for macOS, app installs, cache, and quick file management like unzipping etc.

Thanks for this very detailed answer. So based on what you said, the likes of launching apps and day to day use is to quote you ‘random read access which is more or less equal on all Apple SSD’s’ regardless of size of the drives?

 

[Chancha]

Thanks for this very detailed answer. So based on what you said, the likes of launching apps and day to day use is to quote you ‘random read access which is more or less equal on all Apple SSD’s’ regardless of size of the drives?

Here are the disk speed tests of an assortment of Apple Silicon Macs in our studio, configs can be 256GB / 512GB / 1TB. The most relevant metric for general computing is the "Random 4K QD1"at the bottom, and notice how this is almost consistent across all Macs, unlike the top sequential one which impacts large transfers.

 

[macman4789]

Here are the disk speed tests of an assortment of Apple Silicon Macs in our studio, configs can be 256GB / 512GB / 1TB. The most relevant metric for general computing is the "Random 4K QD1"at the bottom, and notice how this is almost consistent across all Macs, unlike the top sequential one which impacts large transfers. View attachment 2328767

Thanks for this. That’s very interesting and great to compare. I noticed the M1 Max 512GB but then realised they used dual NAND chips for the first generation as I thought the sequential read/write was high! So, even the 256GB models from M2 with only one NAND chip seem to perform similarly across the board in the Random 4K QD1 part. Does that just imitate a day to day computing task?

 

[Chancha]

So, even the 256GB models from M2 with only one NAND chip seem to perform similarly across the board in the Random 4K QD1 part. Does that just imitate a day to day computing task?

This is what I have concluded. As a result I only deploy 256GB for the basic M2 machines in our studio, even for custom order of Mac minis with 16GB and 10Gbe, we skip the SSD upgrade.

With the M2 gen, the M2 Pro / Max machines all start with 512GB but number of NAND chips are nerfed, which we have deployed none. The M3 Pro / Max base models of 14" 16" are already show to go back to 4 NANDs of 128GB, and even the M3 base 14" has 2 of 256GBs as well. In other words this "concern" only exists in the M2 gen machines. I'd guess the base M3 Max Mac Studio will also not get nerfed despite staying at 512GB.

 

[macman4789]

It would be interesting to see where the M2 Max 512GB drive measures on this specific test for comparison against all of your results posted above. Like you say, if they are representative of day to day computing tasks there isn’t much difference whether dual or quad NAND chips.

Sounds like this fuss about the ‘nerfed’ SSD’s is not really an issue for all but the most specific transfer tasks.

 

[MarkC426]

M2 Max 512 results

 

[macman4789]

M2 Max 512 results

View attachment 2329521

Thanks for this, much appreciated. When compared to the other results shown above, this compares quite favourably. Particularly with the RND4K QD1 and QD64 tests (even the 1TB drives). I have very limited knowledge of these tests, only what I’ve been told in this thread, but it can’t be a bad thing that they are higher!