M2 mac advise request

[samplaire]

I’m going to change my Mac Pro 5,1 to a new shiny Mac mini m2 pro. I’ve heard that the Apple Silicon equipped macs have a good memory management so if you have 8GB of ram is like you had 16gb on an Intel mac. As choosing the right amount is crucial because of the fact a Mac mini M1 or M2 can’t be upgraded in the future I’d like to know if having a Mac Mini M2 Pro 16GB/512GB is the right choice? I use Pro Tools for post production / sound design meaning almost no use of instruments which I know can consume lots of RAM. I compose in Logic.

So - is the 16GB enough?

Thanks in advance.

[its2loud]

16GB will not be enough. Go for a minimum of 32.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by samplaire

I’ve heard that the Apple Silicon equipped macs have a good memory management so if you have 8GB of ram is like you had 16gb on an Intel mac.

This is not true. More marketing than anything.
Go for 32GB. Pro Tools also seems to have a slightly larger memory footprint on native than Intel (or it may just be Pro Tools is just taking up more space.)

[samplaire]

Thanks for the answer! 32GB means 550 euro more in my country… and adding about 200 euro more I can have a Mac Studio which has 32GB in standard (studio m1)

So, another question. What about a plain Mac Mini M2? The not Pro one? 24GB?

[its2loud]

Buying into more RAM is considered an investment in your hardware. If you have working jobs that will pay for it over time, it's worth it.

The Mac Studios will probably get an update soon to the M2 chips, although this is not a guarantee.

I've been using the standard M1 Mac Mini since 2021 and it's biggest limitation has been the 16GB of RAM. There are some benchmarks out there that compare the base Mac Studio to the M2 Mac Mini Pro and the Pro wins out over the Mac Studio in some areas.

This is a hard one to answer. There are some folks who are on the DUC who have been using the base Mac Studio so perhaps they'll chime in.

Personally, I like the form factor and the quiet operation of the Mac Mini. That's not to say the Mac Studio is loud but there is more hardware inside that box. I personally don't have any experience with it.

I don't think you'll lose out either way whether you go with the Mac Studio or Mac Mini Pro. You just might be kicking yourself is Apple announces the M2 Mac Studios at their WWDC next month.

I'd also like to point out the Avid Video Engine has not been ported to Apple Silicon Native yet. While Pro Tools itself is, if you use the Video Engine for video playback, that is the most inefficient part of Pro Tools. On my system the Video Engine alone uses 4.8GB of RAM and Pro Tools is hovering at around 4.2GB for a basic 5.1 session. This doesn't give you much room for running any other applications at the same time as Pro Tools.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by samplaire

Thanks for the answer! 32GB means 550 euro more in my country… and adding about 200 euro more I can have a Mac Studio which has 32GB in standard (studio m1)

So, another question. What about a plain Mac Mini M2? The not Pro one? 24GB?

The non-M2 Pro loses thunderbolt ports. It is also limited elsewhere. The M2 Pro mini pretty much beats the Studio M1 Max. You have to go up to the Studio M1 Ultra to be ahead of the M2 Pro.

There's lots of rumours there will be no M2 version of the Studio and that it'll next be upgraded (if at all) when the M3 is available. But if it is going to happen, it'll happen at WWDC coming in June.

[Darryl Ramm]

^^^ and some expectations that lots of Apple products waiting for M3 upgrades are slipping significantly as TSMC has issues delivering from 3nm fabs, and Apple has to prioritize future iPhone silicon.

Whenever it happens M3 is where it will really be at, hopefully a much more significant upgrade over the M2 which was a minor upgrade to the M1 (as I think BScout has mentioned himself elsewhere). We'll see. I would not be buying anything now and waiting to see what happens at WWDC, even though I've toned down my expectations for anything at this WWDC.

On the Mac Pro we very likely won't be getting at WWDC... It's pretty sad you can't even buy a ATP Podcast Mac Pro "Believe" t-shirt any more. https://cottonbureau.com/p/TR4KZV/sh...rcent-cotton-s I so wanted to believe...

I'll add my voice to the be careful about under-configuring memory, one leading issue there with folks claiming you can get away with less memory on Apple silicon systems is they do not understand how much memory is needed on their past Intel systems. And proponents making claims about this are sometimes confused by how demand paged operating systems work. If they currently say run on 32GB Intel systems but only really need say 18GB then a 24GB system will seem like it's magical more efficient with memory. You won't know how much or little memory a systems really needs until it's put under some memory pressure and the operating system starts having to free memory, until then any application is likely to just sprawl and consume as much memory as it can, and the OS will often report low sizes for "free" memory, a very meaningless thing to look at. Folks can see a value of free memo on an intel system with some about of memory and a similar value of free mem on a Apple silicon system with less physical memory and think that latter means a lot, it does not. Apple silicon systems do have more efficient demand paging that older systems, but you don't want to be pushing an application like Pro Tools, with real-time constraints into a regime where macOS is having to page memory out and in. The one simple obvious rule is if your current Intel mac is running OK with some amount of memory then an Apple Silicon Mac is likely to run OK with the same amount of memory (especially when running native apps), but that might leave no space for future needs.

If folks want to make technically accurate comparison of memory use you need to be doing things like running Pro Tools on systems and reducing the amount of memory available until you see problems. And the memory pressure metric, not free memory is the first thing to look at.

With or without doing all that, I'd err on the side of over-configuring systems memory and internal fast SSD. Yes it's not commodity priced, but that's the Apple tax we pay. You want these systems to last several years and nobody can predict the future and you can't upgrade RAM or internal SSD. That all are key parts of a useful computer, it's not just the CPU.

[sdelsolray]

The Mac mini M2 with 24 Gb memory may be your sweet spot. There is not much difference between the single core performance of the M2 CPU versus the M2 Pro CPU.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by sdelsolray

The Mac mini M2 with 24 Gb memory may be your sweet spot. There is not much difference between the single core performance of the M2 CPU versus the M2 Pro CPU.

There is zero difference (it's the same core.) But that discounts multiple cores found in the M2 Pro. So this is kind of a dumb comparison.

(This is true for all gen of Apple ARM. Single core performance is the same for each gen. whether Standard, Pro, Max, or Ultra. But that is meaningless after you get over that.)

[samplaire]

Wow, Thanks for all theese valuable information, comparisons and opinions! I’ve also read a pro tools expert Mac mini comparison article. The decision is not easy. If it comes to specs I should go for Mac mini M2 pro 32/512 but my wallet says ‚buy the Mac mini m2 32/512’. One thing is important - thanks to you I won’t make the mistake to go 16GB.