Mac Studio upgrade from Mac Pro 5.1 for creative apps?

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Mac Studio upgrade from Mac Pro 5.1 for creative apps?

Will Mac Studio be drastic upgrade coming from old Mac Pro 5.1 Tower?

I've been milking my old Mac Pro Tower for far to long. I've upgraded all components to their max and it's served me well, but I'm falling too far behind in OS and software compatibility... I also suspect in processing power too.

Looking at all of my options, the new Mac Pro's look amazing, but not "budget wise". The new Studios look far more impressive than my current Pro Tower. The prices are great too. I'd like to get up to date for 3 primary purposes: Adobe Design Suite; Logic multi-track recording; and Video Editing (mostly Premiere) - priority of performance in that order.

My current setup is:

Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
48 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX SSD 2TB
Radeon RX 580 8192 MB

I'm planning to buy the following Mac studio:

Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
64GB unified memory
2TB SSD storage

Considering that I will be doing heavy work in Adobe and Logic multitrack recording, will I be limited by the Studio models rather than the new Mac Pros? It's a genuine question... meaning that I've been rocking pretty well with my current set-up. The only issues I get is with heavy Premiere video editing. I don't consider my setup "slow", but genuinely sense I've gotten antiquated without noticing.

I'm not up to date on specs and tech talk. Do these new Studio's blow away an old Mac Pro tower?

Mac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jan 12, 2026 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 12, 2026 1:43 PM in response to freshchops

For fun, you should google this: "performance comparison 2010 mac pro vs 2025 Mac studio" and have a look at the results.

In short, yes, the 2025 Studio will blow away the 2010 Mac Pro.

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Answer 2

Jan 12, 2026 4:32 PM in response to freshchops

freshchops wrote:

Considering that I will be doing heavy work in Adobe and Logic multitrack recording, will I be limited by the Studio models rather than the new Mac Pros?

The design of the Mac Pro has changed over the years.

The 2006 - 2012 Mac Pros were highly-expandable, well-designed Intel-based minitowers. You could easily add SATA drives, PCIe graphics cards, and RAM. The cases weighed a ton but were the envy of many a Windows PC user who wished they had cases that were as well designed for their machines.
The 2013 Mac Pro ("black trash can") sacrificed a lot of internal expandability in favor of a compact form factor, dual GPUs, and Thunderbolt 2 ports. A lot of software didn't make good use of two GPUs, and Apple reportedly got a lot of feedback from people who wanted to be able to add one high-end GPU.
The 2019 Mac Pro returned to the idea of a very expandable minitower. Although it jettisoned SATA drive bays in favor of a fast SSD, it featured very nice integration between standard PCIe slots and Thunderbolt 3.

The design changed again with the M2 Ultra Mac Pro. This machine

Does not have upgradable RAM.
Can take a maximum of 192 GB of RAM (compared to 1.5 TB on the 2019 Mac Pro).
Uses SSD modules that are Apple-specific. If you want to upgrade the internal Apple SSD after purchase, it will cost a lot – and you will need the assistance of a second Mac to get yours working again after the upgrade.
Has PCIe slots, but does not support PCIe graphics cards or MPX graphics modules.

If you don't need those PCIe slots, you're better off with a Mac Studio. Currently,

Mac Pro minitowers start at $6999 USD, have M2 Ultra chips, and can be ordered with up to 192 GB of RAM.
High-end Mac Studios start at $3999 USD, have M3 Ultra chips, and can be ordered with up to 512 GB of RAM.

As a practical matter, it probably makes more sense for you to look at a high-end (M4 Pro) Mac mini, or a low-end (M4 Max) Mac Studio. For a custom-order (64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD configuration),

A M4 Pro Mac mini with 20 GPU cores would cost $2799 USD.
A M4 Max Mac Studio with 40 GPU cores would cost $3299 USD.

(In both cases, before adding sales tax, keyboard, mouse, and monitor(s))

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Answer 3

Jan 12, 2026 4:11 PM in response to freshchops

freshchops wrote:

I'm planning to buy the following Mac studio:

Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

• 64GB unified memory

• 2TB SSD storage

Mac Studios do not come with M4 Pro chips. A M4 Pro chip that has a 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine would be a custom-order option for a high-end Mac mini.

Low-end Mac Studios come with M4 Max chips. There the choices are 14 CPU cores and 32 GPU cores – or 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores. If you go with the latter, you can custom-order up to 128 GB of RAM.

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