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Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Tell me about your experience in Lightroom CC? Looking at specs alone, PC's look like they would be a lot faster and they sure cost a lot less. I've used Macs since 2009, but Apple prices are pushing me away. Thanks for any feedback!

Jan 19, 2023 at 04:58 PM

RustyBug
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
Looking at specs alone

Don't do that.

Jan 19, 2023 at 08:25 PM

armd
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

I use them on both a MBP M1pro and an Intel i7 PC desktop. What do you want to know? There are many things the MBP does better probably due to faster memory, more memory bandwidth, more memory channels better integration of memory, etc. If you want to consider an i9 processor and are willing to spec up a PC you could eclipse the M1pro easily though it will cost you.

Jan 19, 2023 at 09:32 PM

ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

I’m just looking at the fact that a mac studio ultra is like, $6000? I can’t upgrade it. I assume a $4k pc, maybe even a $3k pc, will wreck the mac studio.

But I’ve never worked on a pc in my life. I edit over 100,000 pics/year and spend 4-8 hours a day in LR. So I’m just hoping the pc is snappy in LR and very stable.

Very few people edit on pc’s so it’s hard to get any info

Jan 19, 2023 at 09:48 PM

jhapeman
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
I’m just looking at the fact that a mac studio ultra is like, $6000? I can’t upgrade it. I assume a $4k pc, maybe even a $3k pc, will wreck the mac studio.

But I’ve never worked on a pc in my life. I edit over 100,000 pics/year and spend 4-8 hours a day in LR. So I’m just hoping the pc is snappy in LR and very stable.

Very few people edit on pc’s so it’s hard to get any info

Yeah, wrong. I benchmarked my two Studio Ultras against a $15,000 PC (64-core AMD Threadripper Pro) I have for 3D rendering that has a top of the line 48GB Nvidia graphics card and for every single task but one--exports of huge numbers of jpegs--the Studio outperformed the PC, and often by a significant margin. Even on the exports it was a very close race. It was not at all what I expected, but I ran the tests because the Studio also demolished my 28-core MacPro with the W6800X Duo, so I wondered if it was a MacOS thing or something else. The optimization of Adobe's products for Apple Silicon is that good, and the performance of that high-speed memory makes a huge difference.

Even the 64GB version of the Ultra I have outperformed the PC and Mac Pro. For the price, the performance on this computer is incredible. The upgradeability is a red herring; if you've been using Macs since 2009 most of your time has been under a regime of machines with extremely limited to no upgradeability anyway, and the reality is even in the PC world the vast majority of people never upgrade. With TB for external storage, there's no need for a huge internal drive, so storage is very "upgradeable."

If you wanted to go cheaper, take a look at the new M2 Mac Mini. Based on initial numbers floating around out there a loaded up one with the upgraded CPU and memory should perform very similarly to the base Mac Studio, and can be had for just $2199. You'll be very hard-pressed to find a PC that cheap that will match its performance, or even come close. Never mind the fact it will big, loud and hot.

My experience is that even with a $5000 GPU, a 64-core top of the line AMD processor and a ton of RAM, running on a PCIe 4 super fast SSD, Lightroom is still smoother, more responsive and performs the major tasks I need *faster* on the base version of a Mac Studio Ultra. Lightroom itself looks and feels pretty identical on both platforms but the whole rest of the PC experience is so depressingly bad--and I say this as someone who spent 20 years in the technology field working with PCs. I don't think you'll find the grass over there very green, and the savings are mostly false economies--if you really want to match the performance and quality, you have to spend pretty much the same amount of money.

Jan 19, 2023 at 10:28 PM

ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Just out of curiosity, do you know geekbench scores of the threadripper? I’m not familiar with that cpu. The new intel cpus have higher geekbench scores than the m1 ultra. But maybe that doesn’t actually matter compared to real life LR performance

Jan 19, 2023 at 10:43 PM

jhapeman
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
Just out of curiosity, do you know geekbench scores of the threadripper? I’m not familiar with that cpu. The new intel cpus have higher geekbench scores than the m1 ultra. But maybe that doesn’t actually matter compared to real life LR performance

All of those synthetic benchmarks are pretty poor measures of real-world performance. There's a bunch of technical reasons why that's the case, but it's true. It's precisely why I was doing my own application-based testing that was based on tasks I do on a daily basis. For example, batch exports from Lightroom to jpeg, or batch processing of images in Topaz DeNoise. Those are intense sustained tasks, vs. the benchmarks which try to do a bunch of tiny tests pretty quickly and then extrapolate from that. It just doesn't reflect real-world use.

That said, the Mac Pro averages about 1,160 on single core and 16,000 on multicore and 140,000 on compute; the TR averages 1,260 on single core and 24,500 multicore and 160,000 compute; and finally the Studio Ultra with 64GPU cores averages 1,770 on single core, 23,500 on multicore and 107,000 on compute. Based on these you'd think the Studio should not outperform the AMD or the MacPro in Lightroom, and yet it frequently did, even on multi-core enabled tasks. The GPU in the PC is massively better on the benchmark, but even with GPU-enabled tasks becoming more and more common in Lightroom and PS, the Studio still handily wins out. A great example is doing healing brush edits of images; for work we have to clone out dust spots in product images and sometimes there can be hundreds of them. On the PC it will get laggy as you do more and more of them, even with a 48GB Nvidia RTX6000 graphics card--but never on the Studio, even the Studio with only 64GB of total memory both for the applications and graphics. That shared memory bandwidth and direct connection to the CPU just make that much of a difference in overall performance.

The performance of Apple Silicon is really just remarkable, and I say this as someone who started out as huge skeptic. I only got one because my wife's MacBook died right after the M1 launch, and I was stunned at how fast it did everything, even stuff run through x86 emulation. When the Max version of the MBP came out I got one and was amazed even further, and then with the Studio launch I was stunned to find myself retiring a very expensive 2019 Mac Pro because the Studio was so much faster.

Jan 19, 2023 at 11:07 PM

dclark
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

You can get some good guidance on how to configure a LR PC at the Puget Systems web site. Here is a link to an article about LR, Hardware Recommendations for Adobe Lightroom Classic. Puget Systems sells PC workstations and they publish a lot of benchmark results for a variety of applications. I use their web site to learn more about how to optimally configure a PC, but I build my own for considerably less than they charge, and continuously upgrade as new stuff is introduced. @jhapeman has a $15,000 PC that looks to have been sub-optimally configured for LR. For that kind of money I can build multiple PC's with good LR performance.

Puget Systems publishes their benchmarking software, but unfortunately it does not work for Mac's. It would be interesting to see some real benchmark data. Since Puget Systems only sells PC systems they have little or no incentive to extend their benchmarks to Mac's. The GeekBench software is interesting but not specific to applications like LR. It seems to be more useful for component testing.

Jan 19, 2023 at 11:56 PM

RustyBug
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
Very few people edit on pc’s so it’s hard to get any info

Maybe there's something to be considered by this statement.

I've been editing on PC's ... and am about to pick up a MBP.

BTW, you didn't mention what your current Apple rig is that you'd be upgrading from. Wondering how it might compare the M1 / M2 MBP.

Given that you're mentioning LR (i.e. not video), and 100,000+ edits a year, then you're doing 500+ edits a day (assuming 200 day/yr), and on a 4 hour day, that's about 120 edits an hour, or 30 seconds an edit. Numbers vary, but my point is that this seems like high volume, low performance needs, just a lot of repetition. If your current system is achieving that already, then where is the main concern about getting a PC based rig, instead of, say a well built MBP for $4K ... with the premise that an M1 / M2 MBP (or other) will be an improvement over your current Apple rig?

Anecdotal reports are that power users here have said the new MBP's trump their previous Mac systems, significantly. I think I'd explore that first (i.e. buy what you can afford in Mac) and get something to try out (Apple's great return policy @ 14 days). Then you'd know how it is in real world for you. IF it doesn't suit your needs, then look at other options ... but, it sounds like you're eager to skip on past Mac, before finding out what it WILL DO within your desired price point.

From a "SPEC" comparison point ... I'd start with learning what the "new spec" of SOC Mac's CAN do. Kinda like comparing a 60W tungsten bulb to a 22W LED. Sure, the 60W uses more power, and creates more heat ... but, which one puts out more lumens. And, and pair of 22W LED's (44W) vs. a 60W tungsten ... well, lets just say, there's something to be said for efficient use of input energy. On spec, the 60W is more powerful (well it gets filled with more power), but it loses some of the energy to heat generation, and some remains for actual desired output. Whereas the 22W generates far less heat, thus more energy retained for the desired output.

I wouldn't be so eager to give up on your Mac options, just yet.

Just some .02.

Edited on Jan 20, 2023 at 12:15 AM · View previous versions

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:00 AM

RustyBug
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:05 AM

dclark
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

RustyBug wrote:
I have good regard for Puget Systems, and POURED over their benchmarks, and the numbers seemed like there were better PC results than how the Mac's scored. This was BEFORE I actually used the M1. Folks had said that I couldn't go by the PS numbers ... and I can say, that my experience with the Mac was much better than I would have thought, for a given "benchmark".

So, +1 at benchmarks with a grain of salt.

So, yeah

You found Mac benchmarks on the Puget Systems website??!!

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:09 AM

RustyBug
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

dclark wrote:
You found Mac benchmarks on the Puget Systems website??!!

Yes, in their searchable database.

https://benchmarks.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/?age=30&benchmark=&application=&specs=APPLE+m1#results-table

Type in "Apple M1" in the System Specs search parameter field. That'll get you started.

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:16 AM

ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

I shoot and cull 100,000 pics/year. More if I count portrait/engagement sessions. Which is scary now that I think about it. But it’s true that I don’t edit 100,000. We deliver around 35-45,000 pics/year. There’s also two of us editing simultaneously.

We have 2020 imacs with i9’s/4tbssd/128gbram/16gb5700xts. I installed the ram myself.I bought them refurbished for something like $3600. We also have bootcamp and can boot into windows on both and run literally anything. Not to mention, we have the same 27” 5k screen that Mr. Cook currently charges $1699 for. He charges more if you want to adjust it.

I have an entire collection of vintage macs/ipods/iphones (some in sealed boxes)that I won’t go into. At most, I’ve had 6 new macs running in my studio at one time. I currently have 3 total.

But consider this:

1) We all have to buy monitors now. So Apple has no advantage in this respect.

2) We all have to buy box computers now. There is no all in one solution. So when you look at a $6000 studio max (granted I would buy refurbished for less) with no upgrade path, I want to know that the performance I’m getting is worth an additional $3000. Because I could build a lovely PC with a strong upgrade path for $3000. It would (possibly) be slower but… $3000 slower?

Apple’s value proposition just isn’t a factor anymore. So they’ve got to really wow me with performance if I’m going to stay with them.

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:53 AM

wcj0
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

I have a 16 core alder lake i7 with 128 gigs of ram and an 8gig video card and have absolutly no problem ripping through any editing necessary in lightroom or photoshop and any of the topaz programs. I have a 1tb m.2 for the primary drive, 2 14tb spinners and 2 16tb spinners. cost me about 3,000 to build on an Asus board. forgot about my 2tb m.2 for various data. processor is liquid cooled with thermaltake closed system all in a full tower. So performance can be had with a PC. Also do some video with Divinci Resolve, no problem.

Jan 20, 2023 at 01:18 AM

dclark
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

RustyBug wrote:
Yes, in their searchable database.

https://benchmarks.pugetsystems.com/benchmarks/?age=30&benchmark=&application=&specs=APPLE+m1#results-table

Type in "Apple M1" in the System Specs search parameter field. That'll get you started.

Yes, I have seen those lists but I don't see any Lightroom tests. Mostly Adobe Premiere and After Effects, and a few Photoshop.
I don't see much in the way of measurements that help with the question of whether current PC and Mac systems at similar costs have similar LR performance.

Jan 20, 2023 at 02:50 AM

mcbroomf
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Here's the link from last year where Jeff and I tested a few flavors of M1 Macs (mainly) and Win machines (no new PC configs though). Jeff has a new M2 MBP on the way as well. Read to the end as the thread evolves.
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1748848/0

Jan 20, 2023 at 05:11 AM

Tony Ross
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
Tell me about your experience in Lightroom CC? Looking at specs alone, PC's look like they would be a lot faster and they sure cost a lot less. I've used Macs since 2009, but Apple prices are pushing me away. Thanks for any feedback!

I have switched between PC and Mac more than once, but the last time I did so was CS6, I think.

I'm using a Mac Studio for Photoshop. Just an M1 Max, not an Ultra. It's a superb machine for processing photographs.

All the reviews I have seen of the Mac Studio compare it to ridiculously expensive PCs, which get spanked by it.

Jan 20, 2023 at 05:27 AM

RustyBug
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
Apple’s value proposition just isn’t a factor anymore. So they’ve got to really wow me with performance if I’m going to stay with them.

I understand ... but, the piece of the puzzle you have to have to make that "valuation" is the $$$ / Performance

Bristol
Talladega
Daytona
1/4 Mile
1/8 Mile
Road Course
Baja

How you setup for one track, may not make for the best performance on a different track. Going by spec alone, doesn't tell the story of how something is going to respond / handle in that realm of performance. Sure, plenty of ways to try and benchmark test reports / etc. But, until you get behind the wheel of what's out there ... you won't know how it feels to drive it on the course you want to run it

Lots of folks run the LR course ... and tons of folks are anecdotally saying, "It Rocks". I poured over the spec and test data for months (coming from the other direction of PC > Mac). So, I thought I new what to expect regarding speed / performance / processing times, etc.

That was reasonably straight forward when I finally got my hands on things. BUT, what I didn't anticipate, was how SMOOOOOOOTH my operations and transitions were. To borrow from the racing analogy, the way it handled the curves, and I could "toss it around".

So, here again ... until you put the new Mac's through the paces ... you CAN'T make a VALUE proposition, since you don't have the back end information on performance (speed / ease of handling / learning curve / heat buildup / noise / etc.)

Simply put ... you gotta drive the new ones, to understand what that VALUE proposition is. Cost / Spec ... is NOT value proposition, imo. Cost / performance / time / ease of use / output is the end game. Spec is just a variety of different approaches to getting their. Mac's underlying architecture is DIFFERENT than PC. You already know this. And the new ones have (imo) finally harnessed that architecture to some serious power. I can't imagine you needing to make a move to PC.

A straight six cylinder, turbocharged has fewer cylinders than a V-8, naturally aspirated. One has more cylinders, and can have more cylinder capacity. Yet, the VE (Volumetric Efficiency) and gearing on the build can easily make the "lesser spec" perform different from the larger one.

Are you having some "sticker shock" ... yeah, I get that. Drive it, then sit back and grin.

THEN, think about whether or not, that "sticker" produces a good value proposition. Gotta try it BEFORE you go chasing PC spec, imo.

HTH

Jan 20, 2023 at 08:06 AM

jhapeman
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

dclark wrote:
You can get some good guidance on how to configure a LR PC at the Puget Systems web site. Here is a link to an article about LR, Hardware Recommendations for Adobe Lightroom Classic. Puget Systems sells PC workstations and they publish a lot of benchmark results for a variety of applications. I use their web site to learn more about how to optimally configure a PC, but I build my own for considerably less than they charge, and continuously upgrade as new stuff is introduced. @jhapeman@ has a $15,000 PC that looks to have been sub-optimally configured for LR....Show more →

Actually it wasn't "sub-optimally configured for LR;" it was optimally configured for 3D rendering. That said, the same huge horsepower it had in the GPU and CPU *should* have given it in an edge in most of the LR and PS tests. Yes, one could get similar performance for less money. However, we were also talking benchmarks and my data was showing that synthetic benchmarks implied that the PC should have crushed the Mac Studio and yet it did not.

This also applies to the Mac Studio BTW; there's not necessarily a need to buy the fully-loaded $6000 version; the base Ultra will get you 95% of the performance for 33% less money. So really you can get top of the line performance for $4000. To get a PC with similar performance you will end up spending almost exactly the same amount, and upgradeability in most PCs is also pretty limited these days; most will only support a max of 128GB of RAM, there are typically only a couple of internal PCIe slots, one of which will be used by your graphics card, and if you like super fast TB peripherals, you have to buy one of the very few top of the line boards like the ASUS ProArt that have TB capabilities. For someone shooting that many photos, fast external TB storage has to be one of the most important priorities; I shoot a similar number of photos and it certainly is for me.

Things to keep in mind are that there are just huge performance advantages to the memory being all pooled. For one, a the Ultra version of the M1 you get 800GB/s of memory bandwidth. For GPU tasks that's a HUGE advantage. Even PCIe 5.0 x16 caps at 128GB/s; for tasks that are GPU intensive they have to round-robin back and forth to the CPU and that 6.25x speed difference is very noticeable in real-world use.

This isn't just fanboying or empty comparisons; for my work I have employees who have to use Windows PCs, and very powerful ones at that. Before the Studio was released, I was getting pretty frustrated with the wait for an update in the MacPro space and how slow some of the tasks in LR ran, so I did a lot of extensive testing and configuration of PCs to compare. I'm completely capable of building a high-end PC and have been doing so since 1993, so I know how to squeeze out the best performance for a dollar. What I found is that it was a false economy on the PC side; to get the features I wanted to match a Mac I had to spend nearly the same amount all for a machine that was bigger, louder (a lot, even with "quiet" fans), hotter and quite frankly just uglier.

Then to top it all off, Windows just remains Windows. The new UI is frankly garbage, with some stuff in a new design, and other settings buried in old menus and old UI styles, making changes much more frustrating than needed. In daily use, we have much more problems with the one Windows machine we run LR on than the Mac; we have to quit Lightroom at least once a day as it gets a little flaky, and the computer itself behaves better if you reboot it daily. Meanwhile, I will leave my Macs running without a reboot for months on end.

I made a career for 20 years in the Windows world, and to be honest, I don't hate it like many Mac users do, but it is really hard to go back to using it when the user experience is so inelegant and clunky in comparison. I "daily drove" the PC for a while when I was doing testing thinking I could maybe make a switch back. I figured it wouldn't matter since I spend so much time in LR anyway, and its all but identical on both platforms...but the reality is that on the Mac everything else just was so seamless I didn't notice it, but it was annoying on a PC. The complete integration of my Mail, favorites in browser, cut and paste between Mac and iPhone, Airdrop files, etc. made my overall workflow and daily use experience so much better. At the end of the day from a work perspective having the OS and daily tasks just get out of my way and better yet streamline my workflow was a big advance on the Mac side.

BTW, I'm very intrigued to see what the new M2 Max Mac Mini can do. I suspect the loaded version--which you can build out for $2299--will have some serious performance for things like LR and Photoshop, and in a tiny silent package. One last thing, the OP mentions monitors. Personally having used 5K retina displays since 2014 and the 6K Pro Display XDR since 2019, I can't stand going back down to only 4K resolution. The BenQ we have for the PC is a great display but just not in the same league a real 5K/6K display. For photo editing of high-megapixel camera images that monitor resolution is very useful IMO.

Jan 20, 2023 at 09:41 AM

bjhurley
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

jhapeman wrote:
Then to top it all off, Windows just remains Windows. The new UI is frankly garbage, with some stuff in a new design, and other settings buried in old menus and old UI styles, making changes much more frustrating than needed. In daily use, we have much more problems with the one Windows machine we run LR on than the Mac; we have to quit Lightroom at least once a day as it gets a little flaky, and the computer itself behaves better if you reboot it daily. Meanwhile, I will leave my Macs running without a reboot for months...Show more →

I was going to bring up this point too but hoped you would since you have much more street cred in this department.

I also use my computers for music recording, editing and mixing, and for video editing, color grading, and a bit of Fusion in DaVinci Resolve. I use Windows and Mac, and from a total-cost-of-ownership perspective, including maximizing productivity time, the Mac has consistently won for me.

We recorded an album a few years ago for a friend of mine who runs a professional Windows-based studio, and his machine crashed (not just the recording software but Windows itself) three times during our recording sessions and we had to redo takes. The last time OSX crashed on me was in 2007 or 2008 (OS 9 used to crash all the time). For one of my audio interfaces to work in Windows I had to follow a seven-page set of instructions; on the Mac it was "plug it in and get to work."

Jan 20, 2023 at 10:06 AM

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