How Does the iMac Pro Compare to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio?

Question

I am thinking to buy an iMac Pro, I am however ‘window shopping’ for an M1 Ultra Mac Studio as well. Performance-wise, how does the two compare?

Answer 1

The iMac Pro with special emphasis on the higher configurations still performs well in certain tasks compared to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio. Yes, the iMac Pro is likely to suffer in some applications such as Final Cut Pro which will run better on Apple Silicon due to the architecture having some optimizations, but the performance delta is not as large when the applications are Octane X or Blender, which run better on x86 architecture. The iMac Pro has its advantages as it can be more performant on a lower budget as the price to performance ratio is better when looking at the whole package price.

Comments

I'm a freelance editor and colorist, so I mainly work in Adobe and Davinci Resolve. I have a 16 inch MacBook Pro, the 8 core i9 version with 64 gb of ram and 8gb of video ram. Works well for a mobile machine. But my desktop was getting pretty weak, it's just a normal 5k iMac from 2017, quad core i7 with 32 gb of ram and the graphics isn't too bad with the radeon 580 also with 8gb of video ram. I was considering the Mac studio and getting a separate monitor. But ultimately for various reasons and the price, I felt it best to skip it for now. I had considered the iMac Pro, as it felt like a solid middle ground between the Mac Pro and what I have now, especially with the machine I needed basically being the holdover until my next big upgrade. But admittedly with iMacs, I don't like buying used. Never know how well someone cared for it, mainly in regards to utilizing fan speed apps to keep the cpu as cool as possible (apple allows CPU temps to get way too high), and also dust build up. I thought about refurbished from apple, but it was still very expensive. So I did some digging, and OWC is selling refurbished iMac Pros right now, for less than half the price. Some of the specifics confuse me, but OWC is obviously very reliable so I trusted them, and I don't regret it. What it seems is that I got refurbished unit, sealed by apple, but then upgraded by OWC, so it's as close to a new machine as possible. All of these refurbished models come with the 10 core xeon(my personal favorite since it has the highest turbo boost and still above 3ghz base clock) and the radeon Vega 56 graphics card, and 1tb of storage. This tells me these are base model machines from 2019 when apple cut off the 8 core model. The nice part however is OWC will open the machine up and upgrade the ram for you. So I put in 128gb of ram. Buying this exact model from apple would've cost nearly $7000, I got it for $2500. It runs very well, installing a fan speed app and setting it to max speed when it begins to heat up keeps temps below 75C under load, and ultimately it just works great for what I do

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It still sure is a powerful machine. My concern would be dropping 3 grand  on a computer that won’t get macOS updates in about a year from now

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the fact that there's no Apple Silicon 27" iMac basically saves this machine haha

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I'm not a video editor and own a 2017 iMac Pro 10 core, Vega 56, 32GB, 2TB where the most demanding applications I use are Lightroom and Mathematica. The day the studio display was announced, I immediately checked whether Apple still sold the VESA mount conversion kit for the iMac pro. They did, and now I have the iMac pro and studio display both hanging over my desk on a 2-arm mount working great as a two 27" screen system. This cost me about $1,800. An equivalent Mac studio Max and two studio displays and a VESA mount would have cost me $6,100. It's a little lopsided with the iMac chin on one screen, but I'm very happy with this setup.

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Luke, great content as usual. I am thinking of upgrading my 64GB 8-core trashcan for an iMac Pro with a Vega 64. For single core performance, is the 8-core better than the 10 core? I found one for $1400.

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But how long will Apple support it with MacOS? That’s what would put me off dropping 3k on an Intel Mac.

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Nice content Luke. Only concern I have is the impending demise of X86 support in future versions of MacOS with no hope of patching. Spending $3500 on a computer that's going to have support dropped by 2025 is a very poor value for someone like a musician who tends to keep computers until they are fully unsupported and then upgrade. Just a thought.

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Hmm invest that much money for x86 iMac? Unless someone really needs intel chips for some reason, it does not seem very reasonable. Apps will be optimized for Apple silicon and there is no guarantee that the intel mac support will last for a long period of time. If someone desperately needs a good performance all-in-one desktop right now for a span of three years, then maybe. But I would say get m1 max machine (macbook pro or mac studio) and get a third party monitor if needed.

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I would be concerned about how long Apple will support it and provide major version OS updates. It’s one of those things that sticks in my head when I shop for even slightly older Macs these days. That’s one thing that would push me towards Apple Silicon. Great content, keep it up.

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There was a good window between 2017 and 2020 where the iMac Pro really ruled, not only visually but also in productivity. A good late 27" with a 5700XT was easily better. The worst part about an old iMac is the display - If it was used heavily it will have magenta bleeding on all edges - i haven't seen an old iMac in production environments without it. That alone is a dealbreaker. The cheaper Pros now are mostly with 32Gb RAM - which would be a non-issue on normal iMacs, on the Pro there is no removable cover on the back - have fun cutting it open and getting the expensive old RAM to put in. Even the Vega64 is really outdated now while the power consumption and noise are not on par with the Studio - so while i dig the sentimental value it's time is way gone. Money is NEVER an actual decider - if you used your iMacPro for 5 years it is fiscally written off, same will happen to the Studio. You get the Ultra with 128Gb of that sweet unified memory (which is an absolute killer argument for some graphics areas) with the display and be done with it. Investing in obsolete tech is not a feasible decision when you want to make money of it. Regarding the benchmarks - we need to wait a bit until all the big developers bring native Mx apps that don't need to use the Rosetta crutch. Things are only going to get faster - but not on the iMac anymore ;)

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Literally just picked my 2017  Imac Pro 18 core vega 64 up  on Ebay for just under 4k, a few days ago and I AM IN LOVE! Of coarse it is unfortunate that this now sits on the cusp of obsolescence with Apple's software update, but this is the reality we live in.  Also currently building my first 5,1 right now! Thank you so much for all the info Luke, your channel is inspiring, your content is King, and I cannot express how happy I am with this upgrade!

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Something I found out is that the 2020 Intel iMac with the i9 and 5700 xt is actually faster than the maxed out imac pro for stuff like 3d rendering, gaming, editing. So now the question is, can the maxed out 2020 imac beat the maxed out m3 imac?

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Yes, you are right. But - if you rendering or gaming on your iMac Pro you have a "Jet-Fan-Plane" on the desk.
And if anyone buy a used iMac Pro jet, what is in the next year when the m2 and m3 released.
Next point is energy consumption, what is getting more importent.

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Comparing at price also gets us a better comparison at performance.  However, how does your iMac Pro compare to a buffed up m1 iMac?

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One reason I don't hear often enough: The screen! The blacks are so much better and the viewing angle is so much better than that of the M1 iMac.