Blackmagic Forum

Good morning, I'm purchasing the new Mac Studio Ultra to upgrade my color grading station. However, I have a doubt: can I drive the reference monitor directly with the Mac Studio GPU or would it be better to use an external card (such as the Blackmagic UltraStudio 4K Mini)?
Is the mac studio gpu 10 bit?
I thank in advance anyone who wants to give me some suggestions.

You can drive the reference monitor given the proper cable, but you would still be subject to MacOS ColorSync and the behavior of the color profiles. With an UltraStudio 4k Mini you can bypass that.

I believe the MacOS video frameworks, M2 Ultra GPU and the Thunderbolt output support 10-bit video. However this doesn't matter if the monitor doesn't support it.

If you're doing serious color grading I'd suggest getting an Ultra Studio 4k Mini and use a calibrated monitor.

joema4 wrote:You can drive the reference monitor given the proper cable, but you would still be subject to MacOS ColorSync and the behavior of the color profiles. With an UltraStudio 4k Mini you can bypass that.

I believe the MacOS video frameworks, M2 Ultra GPU and the Thunderbolt output support 10-bit video. However this doesn't matter if the monitor doesn't support it.

If you're doing serious color grading I'd suggest getting an Ultra Studio 4k Mini and use a calibrated monitor.

Thanks for your kind reply.
I use a benq sw271 monitor which is 10 bit as a reference monitor and will be changing it to a superior one very soon. That's why I want to make sure I'm driving it with a 10-bit GPU. Unfortunately, from the technical data available for the Mac Studio I could not find the color depth of the GPU (8 bit or 10 bit) and this leaves me with a doubt.
Another concern is that if the blackmagic studio ultra bypasses the mac studio GPU, its 76 core GPU will not be used to aid real-time color grading effects. Or am I wrong?

Can't say for sure about your first point, but you don't need to be concerned about the second one.
The I/O device is only used for output, all calculations will still use the GPU cores.

One suggestion regarding RAM (if you didn't order yet): please check that you have at least 1.5 GB RAM per GPU core, better 2. For complex operations, like decoding 8K Canon RAW (for example), plus NR, Speed Warp, Enhanced Super scale etc. the computer will use most of that. If the RAM doesn't suffice, it'll still work, but silently swap to the internal SSD. That will not only make things much slower, but ruin the SSD in the long run. Rather save on internal SSD than on RAM. You'll never have enough storage when working with video anyway

Uli Plank wrote:Can't say for sure about your first point, but you don't need to be concerned about the second one.
The I/O device is only used for output, all calculations will still use the GPU cores.

One suggestion regarding RAM (if you didn't order yet): please check that you have at least 1.5 GB RAM per GPU core, better 2. For complex operations, like decoding 8K Canon RAW (for example), plus NR, Speed Warp, Enhanced Super scale etc. the computer will use most of that. If the RAM doesn't suffice, it'll still work, but silently swap to the internal SSD. That will not only make things much slower, but ruin the SSD in the long run. Rather save on internal SSD than on RAM. You'll never have enough storage when working with video anyway

Thank you for your kind reply.
I had this doubt because if I remember correctly from Davinci Reoslve you have to choose whether to use the internal GPU or an external GPU. So by choosing blackmagic studio, I thought I would completely bypass the internal GPU of the Mac.
As for the RAM, I configured the Mac Studio with the maximum possible RAM, i.e. 192GB. The GPU has 76 cores. I hope they're good for a few years.

There is no external or even separate GPU for the new Macs, and there’ll probably never be one. The SoC is much faster in data transfer.
The I/O devices by BM are no GPUs at all.

LucaItaly wrote:Good morning, I'm purchasing the new Mac Studio Ultra to upgrade my color grading station. However, I have a doubt: can I drive the reference monitor directly with the Mac Studio GPU or would it be better to use an external card (such as the Blackmagic UltraStudio 4K Mini)? Is the mac studio gpu 10 bit?

It's not exactly a GPU per se. It's an external graphics card that actually bypasses the operating system and color manages the signal going to the color display.

If you want to know more, read page 2851 of the Resolve 18.6 manual, "Limitations When Grading With the Viewer on a Computer Display." This explains why it's unwise to try to use a computer display for final color correction. The same problem also exists with the "Clean Feed" output, since it's not color managed.

Important safety tip: don't make color judgements on uncalibrated GUI displays. That will lead down a perilous road of pain and suffering. And if you do look at anything in the GUI display, don't compare it to what you see in Resolve.

I will certainly do it, thanks so much for the suggestions. The important thing is to know that everything will still be managed by Mac Studio.