Mac Studio, unified memory and chip advice

FWIW,

I also have a 2017 27" iMac i7 with 40 gb RAM and a 1 TB SSD.

I went with the Mac Studio M2 Max with 30 core GPU, 2 TB SSD and 32 GB of RAM

With the occasional photo and video editing I do, I never came close to maxing out the 40 RAM in the iMac so I went with 32 GB in the Studio and spent extra for the 2 TB SSD

<<. Is 'not enough real RAM to perform properly' an actual message using unified memory? >>

no you would see the use of SWAP growing, and your computer slowing down.

With separate display memory, the display memory was used only for display purposes. But we generally did not count display memory size when we cited overall memory. You described your current Mac as 32 GB, not 32 GB plus 8 GB of display memory.

Generally, that translates to LOTS of display memory when needed, but presents it own fragmentation problems. One reason we do not count display memory separately is that it is never made available for System data.

With unified memory all memory can be used for all purposes, so you have 8GB when needed for off-screen pre-draw so items 'snap into place' on the display. But when not doing that intensive off-screen work, the previously un-available empty display memory can now be used for system data.

Although you DO need to ADD to accommodate display memory, the amount you need to add is much more modest than previous high-end systems that added 8 GB just for display memory. [in my opinion] At around the 32 GB level, the amount you may need to add becomes almost negligible, unless doing complex wire-frames and shading, or full-motions pan and zoom like in games.

Lower limit: One static frame buffer for a 4K display is only three bytes per pixel, or about 12K. At 10 bits/pixel it is still under 16K. But there is lots of 'scratch paper' in use at all times, off-screen drawing intermediate objects and pre-rendering objects and Scaling (requires source and destination) that may require more.

It sounds as if you do not use Adobe applications - but just as reference point, Adobe recommends 16+ GB of RAM for their main photo applications (Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom).

The Capture One site lists minimum and recommended system requirements for Intel-based Macs, and says that "all releases from Capture One 21 (14.2.0) onwards provide native support for Apple Silicon."

https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002466277-Capture-One-system-requirements-and-OS-support

They didn't list requirements for Apple Silicon Macs in detail, but for Intel-based Macs, they recommended 16+ GB of RAM, and said that if you had a 4K monitor, they recommended "at least doubling the specification above". So I am going to take this to indicate that you would want 32+ GB of RAM for an Apple Silicon Mac which had a 4K or 5K monitor.

The Mac Studio comes with at least 32 GB of RAM – and I'd be very surprised if you had the sort of heavy workload that required 96+ GB.

What does the Memory Pressure graph show on your current Mac when you are doing work in Capture One? Does the graph stay in the green, or do you see yellows and reds? (If you saw yellows and reds, that might be a sign that you did not have enough RAM for your workload.)

Note that Apple has an "event" coming up in less than a week, on May 7.

I don't know what Apple is going to announce, but it might be worth waiting to see if they announce any M3-family Mac minis or Mac Studios.

There is no way to recover from 'not enough real RAM to perform properly'. Be sure to get enough for the work you do, as it can not be upgraded later. Your previous experience should be able to guide you.

if your boot drive ends up being on the small side, you can add some reasonably fast external drives, with sizes up to very large.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Lower limit: One static frame buffer for a 4K display is only three bytes per pixel, or about 12K. At 10 bits/pixel it is still under 16K. But there is lots of 'scratch paper' in use at all times, off-screen drawing intermediate objects and pre-rendering objects and Scaling (requires source and destination) that may require more.

A UHD 4K display has 3840 x 2160 pixels – or 8,294,400 pixels.

If we are working with 8-bit-per-channel color, and no alpha channel or padding, that gives us the three bytes per pixel that you describe, for a total of 24,883,200 bytes per static screen buffer.

1K of RAM = 1024 (2^10) bytes of RAM. So that static screen buffer requires 24,300K.

If you're looking at M2 Max versions of the Mac Studio, the GPU choices are 30 cores or 38 cores (+$200 USD). I'm going to assume that you don't need 96 GB of RAM (which would force selection of the 38-core version).

Let's say that you had a lengthy job (filter?) that relied on GPU speed – and that also made good use of all of the GPU cores. Then, best-case, the 38-core chip might finish it in 78.9% ((30/38) * 100%) of the time which it took the 30-core chip to do it. I don't see that as a make-or-break difference unless you are running lengthy filtering operations all day long, or, perhaps, driving a wall full of 4 or 5 displays.

Sevant of Cats--

You are quite right. My bad.

I did not think that through, thinking that 4K was the total size when in fact about 4K is the size of ONE ROW.

I stand corrected.

As you say, 24 MegaBytes is the correct number for one 4K display at 8-bit color.

24 MegaBytes is still far short of the 8GB that is sometimes supplied as private display RAM with some graphics cards, but the rest of my ramblings about what display RAM gets used for, and why you need MORE than just one screen buffer should withstand further scrutiny.

MrRoy wrote:

My 2017 27 inch iMac cannot upgrade to the latest OS and I am considering upgrading to Mac Studio.

Currently, my iMac has an Intel i7 cpu and 32 gb of ram. I do photo editing with Capture One, some graphics with GIMP, and not much with video.

Since you are currently on an i7 iMac with 32GB RAM using CaptureOnePro & GIMP, what is the reason you want to jump all the way to a Mac Studio? I would expect any current iMac (M3) or Mac mini (M2 or M2Pro) with 24GB or 32GB RAM to dance circles around that i7 and do it for considerably less money than a comparable Studio

On the other hand, a Studio with an M2Max, 32GB RAM & 1TB SSD comes in at only $300 more than a comparably configured M2Pro Mini, so why not go for the Studio anyway?

I went with Apple's Studio Display.