Mac Studio M2 - Help me spend my $$

[digitalcarbon]

Planing on retiring my Mac Pro Late 2013 and getting the Mac Studio M2.  

It says that it can run 5 monitors. (I would like to see the set up)

I run 3 monitors. (I would still like to see the set up)

Anyone have any comments about this?

 

Obviously the question is, "How does VW work on this compared to my current mac?"  

 

 

[Christiaan]

It says 8 displays with the Ultra. How does that work? Can you daisy chain them?

[zoomer]

Not only that,

it says 8x 6k (!) monitors for the Ultra and a mere 6x 6k monitors for the Studio Max.

So I would not mind that Studio would not support multiple monitors.

 

Aside from that, for VW or other CAD Apps, I always read about VW problems and

crashes of multiple monitor users only, that I do not experience with my old school

single monitor setup.

 

In my opinion, the M2 (or even M1 Studio or MBP) Is a great top of the line VW

and other 3D/CAD App hardware. Just that the Ultra may last a bit longer,

with the upgrade or more than 64 GB of memory, making sense if you can

make need of it already.

2 years later, I am still on my 16 GB M1 Mac Mini daily, although just meant for testing

and a 1 year live span and it is not really limiting me.

 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by zoomer

[Andrew Pollock]

My M1 Max MacBook Pro is in a different class from my 2017 iMac Pro. Hard to go back. I still haven't heard the fan come on except for long renders.

 

[digitalcarbon]

9 minutes ago, zoomer said:

not really limiting me

ok good to know, thanks 

[zoomer]

And now I read both, Max and Ultra, support 8x 4k monitors.

 

I imagine 2 vertically stacked rows of 2x4 curved monitors forming a half circle 🙂

 

 

EDIT :

 

Sorry, I think I got that wrong and mixed up Max/Ultra with Studio and Mac Pro .....

 

Here are the official display combinations :

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213681

Edited June 14, 2023 by zoomer

[AN Design]

My mac studio M2 max arrived this week, awesome, retiring my M1 max, macbook Pro 14” as a back up. I have 3 different offices I work out of, Business office, Home office and my beach home office, all set up the same with the following-Uplift desks, Back up batteries, Kensington SlimBlades, Extended keyboards, 8TB G-Drives on site, 43” LG monitors, use my Ipad pro in side car mode. I started w/ Vectorworks in 1987, but it was called Blueprint 2.0 back then, then Mini Cad, then vectorworks in late 90’s. Over the years I always chose the largest monitor I could afford, 30” apple cinema display, Ben Q’s at 32”, but the LG’s preform wonderful, and with that massive screen which causes you to back up a bit 22 / 24” I could not imagine that multiple screens could offer more. I set up the trackball to open up dashboard with a click, and have 4 screens set up in dashboard ( VW /. Mail, calendar & messages / Safari. and Client notes on the last.

I generally buy the latest MAC every year, (write off) and ever since I had the Trash Can Mac, I switched to lap tops, which thus far handled the load that VW thru at it, But I never used the screen, so rather than going for the the M2 macbook pro, I decided on the Studio - More Power Vs Portability

Mac Studio

With the following configuration:

Apple M2 Max with 12‑core CPU, 38‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine

96GB unified memory

2TB SSD storage

Front: Two USB-C ports, one SDXC card slot

Back: Four Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, one HDMI port, one 10Gb Ethernet port, one 3.5 mm headphone jack

 

I would highly recommend going this way if you rarely use the lap top as a lap top, It fits in my brief case fine, just ordered 3 power cables, 1 for each office, and set up is just a few min.  Hope this helps

 

[digitalcarbon]

On 6/17/2023 at 8:00 PM, AN Design said:

just ordered 3 power cables

so i have 3 DVI monitors. so do i get cables that are DVI to Thunderbolt 4?

[digitalcarbon]

This is working well so far...

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by digitalcarbon

[digitalcarbon]

The 3 monitors are DVI so I got 3 DVI to USB-C cables and its all working.  The cables are not Thunderbolt but I am using 3 of the 5 Thunderbolt ports in the back.

 

 

[Peter Neufeld.]

Hello,

Not that anyone in this thread is contemplating one, but be aware that a 5K monitor has 88% more pixels than a 4K one. With Unified Memory (UM) shared by the GPU and CPU you have to balance everything up.

 

Digitalcarbon's 3 displays above add up to an agreeable 6,220,800 pixels. So his 64GB UM is great. However be tempted to get a single Apple Studio 5K display and your machine has to deal with 14,745,600 pixels (edit: just for the one screen). 

 

I had someone the other day with both 5K and 4K screens plugged in. Apple told him that 32GB UM was fine. Which it is to an extent. However have a few programs open, and maybe a lot of transparencies or multiviews and whatnot, the memory gets used up pretty quickly trying to cope with 23,040,00 pixels.  He really should have gone for 64GB or 96GB with that combination. Begs the question anyway - are 5K screens worth the overhead unless you're a video editor?!

 

Cheers,

Peter

[E|FA]

27 minutes ago, Peter Neufeld. said:

are 5K screens worth the overhead

I'm interested if anyone has experience with side by side comparison working on 4K & 5K screens.  I'm working on a 27" 5K iMac, and love the clarity and crispness working on VW drawings.  I'm nervous that switching to a 4K screen will be disappointing and harder on my eyes.

[Peter Neufeld.]

HI,

That's a very good point because the Studio display is also 27". I'm sorry to have sounded alarmist. I'm definitely not saying the 5K is no good, of course not and apologies for the lack of clarity. I suppose it was the additional 4K screen with only 32GB of shared 'fluid' memory that's the issue.

 

Those 5K iMacs have 8GB or 16GB dedicated VRAM wholly for the GPU. If you had 32GB UM and many other tasks going on, then with a 4K plugged in as well as the 5K, the performance could at times be an issue. Not just with Vectorworks but any program. The point is with multiple monitors these things need to be considered.

 

Cheers,

Peter

[digitalcarbon]