shorter Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio/10-core-cpu-24-core-gpu-16-core-neural-engine-32gb-memory-512gb Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 Some on this thread are, including Mark Aceto: Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 Hmmh, no, I do not. VW 2022 looks stable and OK on my aging M1 Mini 16 GB. But some users on the german forum moan about VW 2022 crashing on their Studios (even better specced ?) at least 2 times a day. I do not really see a valid reason for that behavior. There may be a reason for larger M1's (Max/Ultra) not scaling as expected (overflowing cache when Apps not optimized for tiled memory) or not. But I am also very curious if VW 2023 will not be just native Apple ARM but have even more in depth ARM optimizations. I currently still do not know if the current M2 architecture will solve M1 problems or will at least be more tolerant with not so optimized software. @shorter, what are the problems why you ask for user experience of that special Mac Studio config ? 1 Quote Link to comment
shorter Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 CLient asking what they should replace their ageing Intel Mac Minis with! They have a load of 2014 Mac Minis, would you believe, and were about to buy a new Intel Mac Mini so have stopped them pending further review of the M1 Mac Studio. They are runnning VW2021 at the moment but planning for 2023. Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 We're not getting anything with less than 128 GB RAM, which puts us perilously close to the price of a base model Mac Pro. So we're waiting to see what the new Mac Pros look like before we make a decision. I wouldn't recommend a configuration with less than 64 GB, but it depends on what kind of workflows are used. 1 Quote Link to comment
elepp Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 We are also thinking about purchasing new hardware and Apple is not making it easy. We plan to use it for 3 years and we were considering the bigger M1 Max with 64 GB. It seems to be the best compromise for now between affordability and performance. We do bigger residential buildings with file sizes that can reach over 2GB. Usually we have Vectorworks open, a browser and a pdf reader/ preview. The lack of dedicated ram for the gpu worries me a bit about our workflow. Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 (edited) 6 hours ago, elepp said: The lack of dedicated ram for the gpu worries me a bit about our workflow. Apple ARM has shared Memory. This uses fast RAM modules, not as fast as typical VRAM, but on the other side there is no need the CPU calculate in RAM and send the result back to VRAM for the GPU via PCI, which is faster. Also theoretically M Macs can use nearly the whole shared memory for the GPU, if needed. (Where do you find a PC GPU with about 96 GB of VRAM !) Edited June 28, 2022 by zoomer 1 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 5 hours ago, shorter said: replace their ageing Intel Mac Minis How many RAM do they use so far, maxed out to 128 GB RAM ? (or are these later Mac Minis ?) Nevertheless, the M1 GPU performance is much much better than the onboard Intel graphics in Intel Minis. If they are really still ok with 2014 Minis, I see no problem with the Studios and M1 Max. But if they will run these again another 8 years, it might be worth to add some more memory .... Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 5 hours ago, Christiaan said: We're not getting anything with less than 128 GB RAM I have still no clue if more memory would really eliminate my largest and worst Projects lacking on my M1 Mini 16 GB, as soon as memory pressure goes yellow. Do you have to also deal with non optimized drawings by Revit or IFC imports ? Does your memory pressure always stays green with your largest projects ? Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted June 29, 2022 Share Posted June 29, 2022 15 hours ago, zoomer said: I have still no clue if more memory would really eliminate my largest and worst Projects lacking on my M1 Mini 16 GB, as soon as memory pressure goes yellow. Do you have to also deal with non optimized drawings by Revit or IFC imports ? Does your memory pressure always stays green with your largest projects ? No I haven't had to deal with non-optimized Revit to IFC files. My RAM use has always been from rendering Sheet Layer Section Viewports. Each one eats up RAM and doesn't let it go. Eventually leading to the need to restart VW. I have no way to qualify this but there have been quite a few times in the past few years when I've seen people running into stability problems while we've avoided them and the variable that seems most plausible to me is the amount of RAM we have. 1 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted June 29, 2022 Share Posted June 29, 2022 I tested a bit today with SP4. For me Viewport Rendering on my M1 Mini 16 GB looks ok now. Memory Pressure gets brown of course but after each viewport it gives some memory back and it gets green for a moment. Also when I activate Viewport caching and file size rises. VW seems to be able to swap less important things so that memory pressure stays green and I can view navigate. Tested some bad RVT Imports too. 250 MB file size is quite OK. With 360 MB I start to get lags but I could basically work. 3 Quote Link to comment
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