What are people doing with these CPUs on a desktop? I'm just watching videos, surfing, and doing some programming -- on a 5 year old Ryzen with 32GB and it seems perfectly fine. For my productivity needs, performance is mostly about I/O speed and so switching to SSD and then NVME was the biggest boost for me (Linux at work).
When I get home, it's all about the GPU on my gaming PC (Windows). It's just that CPU just doesn't seem to be a huge bottleneck for me on the desktop anymore. Are Mac's different somehow where they need more CPU?
The Mac studio seems targeted at pro users doing things like video editing and CAD. The M1 regular is good but its insufficient in a lot of ways. It can only power one video output, it's capped at 16GB memory, and if you try to do anything sufficiently demanding like gaming, it really shows its limits.
If you are doing CAD, things like fluid/particle physics simulations can really slam the CPU. The M1 Ultra isn't marketed to the normal user just doing some web browsing. Its the top tier chip for people who find the M1 insufficient.
For compiling c++ code, this really matters. At home, I have a 16 core 5950x and at the office an 8 core 2700x, and it is a night and day difference. Even if it's just a few minutes of compile time, it creates a different mindset. At home: Yeah, let's just recompile and see the changes. At the office: Oh no I have to recompile, let's go to the kitchen and grab a coffee or so, I have the time.
When I get home, it's all about the GPU on my gaming PC (Windows). It's just that CPU just doesn't seem to be a huge bottleneck for me on the desktop anymore. Are Mac's different somehow where they need more CPU?