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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom from Tech Chap and I want to answer one simple question.
00:03Can this top-spec Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra and 128 gigs of unified memory
00:10really beat my desktop PC with a Ryzen 9 5950X and an RTX 3090?
00:18I must admit, I do think we have a bit of a David and Goliath situation going on here.
00:24I mean, in terms of size and portability, well, I think we know which one wins.
00:29And maybe that's a deciding factor for you, or maybe it doesn't really matter.
00:32But actually, it does highlight that however the Mac Studio ends up performing compared to the PC,
00:37it is tiny.
00:38And realistically, this should go up against the Mac Pro, Apple's desktop,
00:43which we're expecting a refresh for after WWDC in June.
00:47So really, that's the two that would go head-to-head.
00:49But for now, because we've got the new M1 Ultra,
00:52while this is arguably a bit academic, it's also a bit of fun.
00:55So let's see which is faster.
00:57Although first, let's talk about price.
01:00Because this Mac Studio on my desk right here is the best part of £7,000.
01:05It's £6,800.
01:06Although that is because it has 4TB of storage.
01:09If you stick to the standard 1TB with the M1 Ultra, it's £5,800.
01:14However, bear in mind that you cannot ever upgrade this,
01:18and you can't really even open it to clean the fans or anything.
01:21But let's go with that £5,800 price tag for the time being.
01:24And compared to my desktop PC, which I did actually build myself,
01:29I have just now specced a pretty much identical system with a popular UK retailer,
01:33and it comes out at about £4,000.
01:36Now, it is a bit tricky at the moment building your own PC
01:39because of component shortages, particularly GPUs,
01:42and getting a RRP graphics card is just not really realistic right now.
01:46But still, even a custom pre-build seems to be significantly cheaper than a Mac Studio.
01:50And of course, with a PC, you have infinite upgradability.
01:54You can add more RAM, storage, switch out the CPUs and GPUs.
01:58You can upgrade it bit by bit over time, which is a lot more affordable.
02:02Now, to be fair, I do only have 64GB of admittedly quite fast 3600MHz RAM in the PC.
02:08You could go crazy and add 128GB of DDR5, which would make a small difference,
02:13but it's still not really comparable with the unified memory
02:16we get in the Mac Studio or on any M1 powered Mac.
02:20But anyway, overall, in terms of cost and flexibility,
02:24really, I think there should be two points for team desktop PC.
02:27I say desktop PC. I do appreciate this is also sitting on my desktop
02:31and a Mac is a personal computer, but well, you know.
02:35In terms of power usage, though, it is a big win for the Mac
02:38because this is rated at 370W all-in.
02:42And that's actually the same for both the M1 Macs and the M1 Ultra versions.
02:46Whereas I actually have a 1000W PSU in my PC,
02:50mainly because it is good practice to have a PSU with a higher wattage than you need,
02:54especially as we don't have the benefit of the super efficient,
02:58non-fragmented Apple system, which we have in the studio here.
03:01In the PC, different components from different brands and offering different speeds
03:05all impact how much power it draws.
03:08But to give you an idea, the 3090 Founders Edition, which I have in this PC,
03:12is rated at 350W, which is almost the same as the entire Mac Studio.
03:19And that's before the 105W PSU and then the RAM, the SSD and all that extra stuff.
03:24Altogether, we're looking at roughly 2 to 2.5 times the power draw on the PC versus the Mac.
03:30That's crazy.
03:31And while I would say the advantage there is that it will save on your electricity bills,
03:34which it will a little bit,
03:36chances are if you're paying between, you know, 4 and 6 grand for a machine,
03:40then that's not really your top priority.
03:42Okay, let's get to the good bit.
03:44Which one is faster?
03:45Well, let's start with a couple of benchmarks.
03:48And in Cinebench R23, amazingly, they're neck and neck.
03:52The Mac Studio is just 1.5% faster in multicore,
03:56which is kind of incredible considering how vastly different the architectures are.
03:59And also the fact the M1 Ultra has 20 CPU cores to the 16 on the Ryzen.
04:06Okay, next up, Geekbench.
04:07And I know no one really likes this benchmark, so I'll keep it brief.
04:10We are seeing a 48% higher multicore score on the Mac, which is pretty huge.
04:16But then in the Geekbench Compute test, the RTX 3090 is 150% faster.
04:22Okay, let's move on to some proper tests.
04:24And firing up a bit of Blender,
04:26I've got this quite demanding Ripple demo project here.
04:29And I wanted to see how long it would take for each of them to render 1000 frames.
04:33And it turns out it's a pretty big win for the PC.
04:36It takes around half the time of the studio.
04:39This is definitely where the RTX GPU is having a big impact.
04:43Because in this BMW CPU only test, the PC is just 5% quicker.
04:48But then in the GPU version of the test, the PC is around three times faster.
04:53So a pretty big win for team PC when it comes to Blender.
04:56But what about video editing?
04:58Well, I think it's fair to say if you shoot in ProRes and edit in Final Cut,
05:02then you are going to get a better, much more optimized experience with the Mac.
05:06But for my workflow, I shoot with a Sony a7S III recording 10-bit 4K 60 video.
05:12And then I edit in Premiere Pro.
05:14And I'm also using the latest beta version.
05:16So a basic question for me is always, which one will export my project faster?
05:21Well, exporting in 4K H.264 with the max render and max depth settings checked,
05:27it's a big win for the Mac.
05:297 minutes 50 versus 10 minutes 30.
05:32Now, same thing, but this time exporting in 8K.
05:35And we're looking at 12 minutes 40 versus 18 minutes 15.
05:39Now, a good all-round 4K and 8K use case test in Premiere Pro
05:43is running the Puget Extended Benchmark.
05:45And once again, it's a pretty decisive win for the Mac.
05:48Only the GPU scores slightly higher on the PC.
05:52Wow. Okay.
05:53So if you're editing in, well, Final Cut, of course,
05:56or Premiere Pro, a cross-platform industry standard video editing app,
06:00then the Mac's your best bet.
06:02But what about Adobe Lightroom?
06:04Well, I loaded up 500 of my finest RAW photos
06:08and then exported them to JPEG,
06:09where the Mac Studio took 1 minute and 4 seconds to the PC's 1 minute 48.
06:14So another win for the Mac.
06:16Now, I do have a bit of a suspicion that the PC will be winning the next test.
06:21Gaming.
06:22Not only because of the obvious difference
06:24in the sheer volume of games available on PC versus Mac,
06:28but the RTX cards have a ton of gaming-focused features,
06:31including extras like ray tracing and DLSS support.
06:34Plus, we also have extremely good drivers.
06:37So firing up a bit of Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
06:40at highest settings, of course, and at 1080p,
06:42we're getting almost double the frame rate on the PC,
06:45although that is still a decent showing from the Mac.
06:47But it's in a totally different league in Metro Exodus.
06:50The PC is around three times faster, and that's without DLSS.
06:54Of course, you can cloud stream games on both Mac and PC,
06:58which realistically I think is the best way of gaming on a Mac,
07:01even with the performance of the M1 Ultra,
07:03simply because the games, the drivers, and the optimizations
07:06just aren't there.
07:08So obviously, I could test a million apps and programs,
07:11and it might all be a bit different.
07:12Your workflow, how you use your computer may be different.
07:15But from my tests and my experience so far,
07:18is the Mac Studio actually faster than my desktop PC?
07:21Well, specifically, is the M1 Ultra graphics
07:24faster than the RTX 3090 graphics?
07:26Well, no, it's not.
07:28However, as a whole, is the Mac faster than the PC?
07:32Well, yeah, it can be, notably in my Adobe tests.
07:35Now, to be fair, we are expecting to see
07:37a RTX 3090 Ti released very soon,
07:40although the report suggests it may have up to a 450-watt TDP
07:44or something like that.
07:45And of course, also maybe the 4000 series cards
07:49coming later in the year.
07:50So there could be some big gains there.
07:52But also, after WWDC in the summer,
07:55we should see a refreshed Mac Pro desktop,
07:58which, as I say at the beginning of the video,
08:00is really what you would be comparing
08:01to this desktop Windows PC.
08:04So it will be worth revisiting this video then.
08:06But right now, I do have to give Apple credit
08:08for designing something this small
08:10that uses roughly half the power of this
08:13and is also basically silent the entire time.
08:16And in some cases,
08:17it can still significantly outperform the PC.
08:20So where does that leave us?
08:22Well, I think you're going to be buying a system
08:23based on the software,
08:24whether you want macOS or Windows,
08:27rather than these sort of form factors
08:29and whether you want an RTX 3090
08:31or a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra.
08:33But it is very impressive,
08:35the efficiencies,
08:36the performance that we're seeing with this,
08:37and I cannot wait to see what Apple can do
08:39with a Mac Pro.
08:41So there isn't really a clear winner,
08:42obviously in terms of gaming
08:44and most graphically demanding tasks,
08:46you will want a PC with a high-end GPU.
08:48But for my workflow,
08:49it turns out the Mac Studio is significantly faster.
08:52And so I can tell you over the last couple of weeks
08:54since I've had this,
08:55the PC has been on the floor.
08:56I've only brought it back up to make this video
08:58and maybe play some games.
09:00But what do you think?
09:01If you could take one of these home with you right now,
09:03which would you go for?
09:05Let me know in the comments below.
09:06If you do fancy watching more of my videos,
09:08then don't forget to hit that subscribe button below
09:10and I'll see you next time right here on the Tech Chat.