New Mac Computer

[ChipBPhoto]

Hi all,

 

It’s about time to upgrade my computer.  I currently have a 2020 16” MacBook Pro i9 that is fairly well loaded.  I work primarily in Lightroom and Photoshop, but am considering adding Final Cut for some video.  I use external SSDs for fast storage.  It works well, but the new M processors are a leap forward, especially now at 3 or 4 generations later.

 

I am considering a 16” MacBook Pro M3 Max (48GB, 14/40 core, 400 Gb/s bus speed)  Thanks to the new M4s, the M3s have dropped in price.  I’ve also found an Apple refurb Mac Studio M2 Ultra for the same price.  No portability, but 800 Gb/s bus and 60 GPU cores vs 40. (More relevant for video) 

 

Here’s my question…Does anyone have an hard info on the new M4s compared to the M3 Max?  I understand they’re literally only a few days old in the stores.  I’ve been digging through YouTube, but all I have found has been pretty general in nature and just the overall specs.  I know computers are always updating and we just have to jump on at some point, but as I don’t upgrade often and I’d like to try and get the best option I can.  From what I’ve found so far, it doesn’t seem the M4s are noticeably faster in real work applications vs the M3 Max, but I could be missing something.  Yes, the M4 does have Thunderbolt 5, vs TB 4 on the M3.

 

And please, I am not interested in switching to a PC.  I am bi-lingual in Mac and PC and have owned both.  I will stick with Mac for now.

 

Thanks in advance for any feedback you have on the great M3 / M4 question….

chip

 

Edited November 11 by ChipBPhoto

[Chris Ross]

I think for still images, these days it's not a very demanding task unless you are focus stacking or sometime like that with multiple images.  Otherwise fast storage helps load big files faster.  So the biggest gains would be in video rendering.

 

I don't now if your current Macbook  is portable size, but if I was considering it, I'd be inclined to go for a desktop and relegate the laptop to travel support.

[bghazzal]

One thing which might be interesting to take into account for video editing on a laptop:  running Final Cut from an external SDD drive, instead of internally will help a lot with processing speed.
This is how I manage to edit 4K video on a 2017 Macbook Air...

And nothing stops you from running Lightroom and Photoshop from the SSD ( I do this as well).

 

What I do is partition a Samsung T7 SSD, one small partition for running apps and one for storage (and FCP libraries), and just run from that.

 

 

cheers

Edited November 11 by bghazzal

[Chris Ross]

4 hours ago, bghazzal said:

One thing which might be interesting to take into account for video editing on a laptop:  running Final Cut from an external SDD drive, instead of internally will help a lot with processing speed.
This is how I manage to edit 4K video on a 2017 Macbook Air...

And nothing stops you from running Lightroom and Photoshop from the SSD ( I do this as well).

 

What I do is partition a Samsung T7 SSD, one small partition for running apps and one for storage (and FCP libraries), and just run from that.

 

 

cheers

Whether this is actually faster depends on the drive read/write speed rather than the bus speed.  The T7 SSD will read/write at around 0.5- 1 GB/sec according to specs I found.  Typically the internal NVMe SSD is faster at 2-3 GB/sec, the M3 is rated at 2.8 GB/sec.  Whether this translates into a faster experience on one or the other depends on a number of factors, mostly around overhead that the bus and processor are handling.  The Thunderbolt interface is very fast but typically it's not the limit.

[bghazzal]

1 hour ago, Chris Ross said:

Whether this is actually faster depends on the drive read/write speed rather than the bus speed.  The T7 SSD will read/write at around 0.5- 1 GB/sec according to specs I found.  Typically the internal NVMe SSD is faster at 2-3 GB/sec, the M3 is rated at 2.8 GB/sec.  Whether this translates into a faster experience on one or the other depends on a number of factors, mostly around overhead that the bus and processor are handling.  The Thunderbolt interface is very fast but typically it's not the limit.

For me more than speed, it's actually a question of making editing possible or not on my machine and its 8GB of ram for a 1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. If I am doing everything internally, it saturates all read/write buffers.

Running FCP and its library externally on an SSD works fine to edit 4K video (I do need to work with proxies for HEVC codecs though), so it might be worth a shot on a more powerful machine as well (there are plenty of videos on how to set this up, this one for instance)

DaVinci Resolve, however is not an option - I have never managed to get fluid playback, even after tweaking and working with proxy files.
 

Edited November 11 by bghazzal

[Chris Ross]

5 hours ago, bghazzal said:

For me more than speed, it's actually a question of making editing possible or not on my machine and its 8GB of ram for a 1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. If I am doing everything internally, it saturates all read/write buffers.

Running FCP and its library externally on an SSD works fine to edit 4K video (I do need to work with proxies for HEVC codecs though), so it might be worth a shot on a more powerful machine as well (there are plenty of videos on how to set this up, this one for instance)

DaVinci Resolve, however is not an option - I have never managed to get fluid playback, even after tweaking and working with proxy files.
 

I'm not sure I understand what the issue with this machine is, but it sounds to me like a workaround rather than something you'd want to adopt regardless on a more capable machine.

[Dave_Hicks]

Ignore all this info about bus speed as it will not make a significant difference in real world performance. Most external devices fail to meet theoretical maximums anyways. 

 

If you are ready to upgrade get the more recent M3 instead of an older M2 model. Support cycle lifetime and compatibility in the future will be more valuable than whatever benefits the higher end but older ultra model will deliver.

[Architeuthis]

I have Macbook M1 Pro, approx. four years old. Still very good for photo (LRc & Photoshop) and video editing (DaVinci freeware version). When the notebook was new, all LRc editing was fast as a flash, but in the meantime the AI based filters came out. These consume much more processor time. As I use the computer, the AI filters are the most demanding tasks. Processing a single photo (e.g. NR via AI) lasts up to a minute (estimated, A7R5). I guess with the new M4 Pro this may be half or even less of the time (I did not see benchmarks for these AI applications for comparison, but maybe someone has already tested.)...

New applications demand more power. 32 MB RAM are still sufficient and 2TB SSD is o.k. (I have programs and not yet finished projects on the SSD and this is approx. 1TB (only 1TB would be limiting for me).

I have the 14" version, as I find this much more convenient for traveling. At home, I connect the notebook to a calibrated 27" monitor...

 

Wolfgang

[Dave_Hicks]

FYI: You can find benchmarks comparing the M2/M3/M4 + Pro + Max here:

 

Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2024) review: the Pro for everyone - The Verge

 

[ChipBPhoto]

1 hour ago, Dave_Hicks said:

FYI: You can find benchmarks comparing the M2/M3/M4 + Pro + Max here:

 

Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2024) review: the Pro for everyone - The Verge

 

Aside from the normal theoretical speed increase, Thunderbolt 5 seems to be the big advance for the M4s.  Again, much of that is theoretical unless using dual 8K monitors and perhaps a few other minor options that may eventually become available.  
 

[Chris Ross]

1 hour ago, ChipBPhoto said:

Aside from the normal theoretical speed increase, Thunderbolt 5 seems to be the big advance for the M4s.  Again, much of that is theoretical unless using dual 8K monitors and perhaps a few other minor options that may eventually become available.  
 

Again the interface speed is much faster in general than what is connected to it.  I don't know what the price difference between the various models is but it always used to be the very top model was a sizable premium over a mid range one with a real world benefit that was rather small. 

Looking at those benchmarks if I'm reading them correctly, I'd be seriously looking at 3rd column 16C/40C model if could be had a decent discount, the last column M4 16C/40C model seems faster but not that much faster, and processing time seems connected to GPU cores for video rendering.  Unless of course you see a pair of 8K monitors in your near future.😂

[bghazzal]

5 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

I'm not sure I understand what the issue with this machine is, but it sounds to me like a workaround rather than something you'd want to adopt regardless on a more capable machine.

This type of workflow is very commonly recommended for video editing from a laptop (similarly, for desktop, dual drives setups are typically the way to go for video).

As you edit, the computer is reading  footage off the drive it was imported to. So importing to an SSD, and running everything from there saves a lot of internal HDD space (FCP library of imported work files and renders, FCPX's motion capture folder), and this essential on laptops with less than 5TB of disk space.
And as mentioned, on slower machines like mine, this workflow (editing from external) also helps the computer with buffering issues - it's really night and day for integrated software like FCPX (as in  I can't run FCPX and edit from libraries on the internal HDD without everything freezing as the project develops, but this doesn't happen when running from an external disk).

There are plenty of hits on this subjects explaining how to set this up and why:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=why+edit+video+from+external+hard+drive

 

So yes, it's certainly a workaround in a way, but pretty much a necessary one for regularly editing video on a laptop (one of the reasons prompting the upgrade) so it probably would be worth looking into even on a newer machines.
cheers

 

 

Edited November 12 by bghazzal

[Chris Ross]

56 minutes ago, bghazzal said:

This type of workflow is very commonly recommended for video editing from a laptop (similarly, for desktop, dual drives setups are typically the way to go for video).

As you edit, the computer is reading  footage off the drive it was imported to. So importing to an SSD, and running everything from there saves a lot of internal HDD space (FCP library of imported work files and renders, FCPX's motion capture folder), and this essential on laptops with less than 5TB of disk space.
And as mentioned, on slower machines like mine, this workflow (editing from external) also helps the computer with buffering issues - it's really night and day for integrated software like FCPX (as in  I can't run FCPX and edit from libraries on the internal HDD without everything freezing as the project develops, but this doesn't happen when running from an external disk).

There are plenty of hits on this subjects explaining how to set this up and why:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=why+edit+video+from+external+hard+drive

 

So yes, it's certainly a workaround in a way, but pretty much a necessary one for regularly editing video on a laptop (one of the reasons prompting the upgrade) so it probably would be worth looking into even on a newer machines.
cheers

 

 

I can see why they are recommending it - seems mostly around space due to big file sizes and relatively small SSD internal drives from the reading.  I do keep forgetting that you are quite constrained with a laptop, I do all my serious editing on a desktop and you can readily install a 4 or 8 TB SSD internally which you could edit from.

[ChipBPhoto]

8 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

Again the interface speed is much faster in general than what is connected to it.  I don't know what the price difference between the various models is but it always used to be the very top model was a sizable premium over a mid range one with a real world benefit that was rather small. 

Looking at those benchmarks if I'm reading them correctly, I'd be seriously looking at 3rd column 16C/40C model if could be had a decent discount, the last column M4 16C/40C model seems faster but not that much faster, and processing time seems connected to GPU cores for video rendering.  Unless of course you see a pair of 8K monitors in your near future.😂

Yes, the 3rd column M3 Max 16/40c is what I am planning to buy, although not with 128GB / 8TB.  It seems Thunderbolt 5 is a next gen advancement, but like clock speed between the M3 and M4, not a huge difference in real world application today. 
 

[JustinO]

FWIW, I bought an M3 Pro in May this year, and am really pleased with it - it is my first Mac, so I can't compare vs other models. However, it is very fast at exporting RAW to JPG, and removing dust and scratches, etc.   I keep my files on an external Samsung T9 SSD, and that works really well for me.   It also has an SD card slot inbuilt.  

Like Wofgang, I bought the 14" to take on travels and work - i find the ability to render detail on zooming in is instantaneous, and am happy with that compromise vs a bigger screen.  

 

I bought the Space Black version - contrary to claims, it does show up marks - but it doesn't scream "I'm a Mac" and as we divers all know, gear looking cool is the primary purchase consideration....!

[ChipBPhoto]

3 hours ago, JustinO said:

FWIW, I bought an M3 Pro in May this year, and am really pleased with it - it is my first Mac, so I can't compare vs other models. However, it is very fast at exporting RAW to JPG, and removing dust and scratches, etc.   I keep my files on an external Samsung T9 SSD, and that works really well for me.   It also has an SD card slot inbuilt.  

Like Wofgang, I bought the 14" to take on travels and work - i find the ability to render detail on zooming in is instantaneous, and am happy with that compromise vs a bigger screen.  

 

I bought the Space Black version - contrary to claims, it does show up marks - but it doesn't scream "I'm a Mac" and as we divers all know, gear looking cool is the primary purchase consideration....!

 

Great info, thanks!  And yes, looking cool is the top priority! 😆

[Kim R]

I just got an M3 Pro as well (14in). I always max out the specs as much as I can everytime I upgrade since I try to keep them 4-5 years. I also upgraded from a 2020 MBP and there is a huge difference. So far I've only really used Lightroom with it but it's really fast! I too keep all my flies and LR library on an external HD.