Mark Aceto

So there's one.

hence the m4 MBP from my POV, the studio is only a good option if you need more that 128gb memory (which VW does not need) if you need a good GPU (also not for VW), get a PC (best of both worlds)

if i had to get a mac studio, i would spec this but the memory is overkill for VW alone: my M2 Max MBP handles VW fine, so my recommendation would be to get this instead (zero bottlenecks for VW alone): and for anyone use apps like Rhino, Blender, Unreal, TwinMotion, Carbon for Unreal... get a PC the other cool thing about having a PC is you get to use windows-only apps and then you can also get into SMB file sharing or a NAS between the 2 machines (another way to save on apple storage upgreeds) also PC's don't have scaling issues, so they look gorgeous on any monitor... on that note, every mac user with an external display should check out BetterDisplay (absolute life saver from an amazing indie developer)

OHMYGOD WHAAAATTTT???? 1500 bucks!!!!!! The 4090 FE sold for 1600! The 5090 FE sells for 2000!!! I'm sorry but on general principle nobody should give apple this money. Absolutely not! Also, they're pulling that same iPad scam of forcing you to upgrade to the 1500 chip to get more memory. If anyone is this serious about spending money on hardware, I'd love to have a conversion about building a PC. If nothing else, just head to Puget. That's what I did in 2023, and have no regrets. In fact, I found out about them here in the forum, so I have another VW user to thank for opening my eyes (and shutting my wallet).

Yes but I think the real question is, "How much?" Probably not much. That's kind of what I meant about bottlenecks (although I can't find that post, so maybe it got deleted). When forking over cash for a non-upgradable desktop, and backing into a budget, I look carefully at the ROI. With (Apple) storage upgreeds, the ROI is terrible. And this is the one thing that's sort of modular and upgradable if it's external. Also, it can be purchased and upgraded at any time to offset the cost of a new computer purchase. With (Apple) memory, you have to future proof it, so if you need 96gb now, get 128. If you need 128, get 192. If you need 192, get 256... Thankfully, (M series) single core performance is the same across all configs in each gen. M4 is faster than M3 but all the M3's are pretty much the same. If you're a FQRW architect with 200-sheet sets filled with sections, get as many cores as possible. The Cinema engine will peg every single core for maximum ROI. But if you're a Shaded renderer, extra cores would be a diminishing ROI (money better spent on the GPU). But as for that (Apple) GPU... this has been a paradoxical pain point ever since Apple split with NVIDIA. On the one hand, it's such a crippled GPU to begin with, you sort of have to max it out just to compete with the low end of NIVIDIA and AMD. On the other hand, maybe that money would be better spend on more memory or CPU cores... I tend to look at a big purchase like this as backing into a budget. So if the magic number is 6k (or whatever), it would be easier to weigh in on specific upgreed choices of the total package.

that said, cable bandwidth can also refer to pixels and FPS, so the new TB5 protocol is also meets the DP 2.1 standard which will be fantastic if mac's ever ship with a decent GPU for a real world example, my current external monitor is capable of 240hz with DP 2.1 but my RTX 4090 only has DP 1.4, so i'm "stuck" at 120hz (totally fine for my needs). however, the new blackwell GPU's all come with DP 2.1, so that won't be the bottleneck** anymore so, it's great to see apple finally getting back to being an early adopter of next gen I/O with TB5 but it's only useful in those goofy marketing examples of "connect up to 6 4k displays... " they gotta give customers a reason to completely replace their entire system a few years from now... ** identifying the bottlenecks and deciding where to spend our hard earned money is the name of the game... sometimes it's CPU single core, sometimes it's multicore (Renderworks), sometimes it's the GPU (redshift, unreal engine, twinmotion, carbon for unreal...), sometimes it's RAM or VRAM, sometimes it's the cable, sometimes it's the read/write speed, and sometimes.... it's *cough* the software code *cough*... and with the apple tax and upgreeds, it's always the budget (and the GPU because of their beef with NVIDIA)

ha i added a zero... yeah this is the thing to look for:

60gb/s is impressive this is a nice little summary of what to expect from each confusing cable gen (assuming the drive read / write speed can keep up with the cable bandwidth):

search the forum for "lens glow texture color workflow" there are a couple threads that explain it i use it with every file in fact, i think it was astera titans that started it for me too

Wanna trade?

Decided to test the MBP M2 Max internal disk against the Samsung T7. Hopefully, if you click on the first image and then arrow back and forth you can see the difference.

Also, there's a completely unintuitive UI/UX to back up external drives to TM (gee, I wonder why that is... ). Basically you have to add them to the excluded list, and the hit the minus sign (similar to resetting the spotlight index workflow). So you're effectively excluding it from the exclusion. I hate them so much...

So the thing about this... the read/write speed is less than T5 (or T4), so it's fantastic future proofing that Apple is offering T5 but the SSD's have some catching up to do before the cable is the bottleneck. But video editors use these things like hotcakes, so they don't suck. And Apple's upgrade cash grabbing is criminal.

Short answers: yes, maybe, depends... I got the one in the photo above after I bought that MBP. Didn't know they existed before I spec'd it, so I'm using for Time Machine. I'm sure there are disk read / write benchmarks out there but my gut says I would use it for non-active projects. It's also especially appealing for the Mini and Studio that are parked at your desk vs traveling with a laptop (and, in my case, potentially losing it somewhere because I'm an idiot). Plus, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, you can buy 2 Mac Mini's for the less than the cost of a storage upgrade in 1 Mac Mini.

Removable in a Mac? This is what I was referring to: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/external-hard-drives-portable-usb/ci/6543?filters=fct_capacity_844%3A4tb%2Cfct_drive-type_4391%3Assd-flash%2Cfct_form-factor_936%3Aportable%2Cfct_system-connection_9815%3Ausb-c-3.2-gen-2-x6