p.2 #1 · MBP M4 Pro 48GB RAM vs M4 Max 36GB RAM for LR advice
jhapeman wrote:
IMO the difference is negligible because what most people don't realize is that glare *also* reduces your contrast. I just took this picture a moment ago in my living room. Both screens are at the same angle to try and catch just the background reflection of the wall and ceiling. Note that the nano on the left shows virtually no reflection at all, while the M3 Max on the right reflects the entire wall and ceiling. This isn't a direct light on the screen; this is the type of reflections you get all of the time, even in a relatively low-light room (only two 60W lights on in the entire room). Again, some people may just not like the matte look of the nano and that's fine...but I do think that at the end of the day you lose a lot more real contrast with glossy than you might realize.
Not much different than veiling glare in a lens, reducing overall contrast.
(imo) You don't have to have 42 Gazillion : 1 contrast ratio to have superb acutance. You can get there pretty darn good through glare reduction. Which is also a reason why folks have used hoods on monitors, etc. But, many consumey
Good to see Apple bringing the matte to the lap. That's probably a more compelling reason for an upgrade, than chip performance ... for the savvy person who spends a bit of time in front of the screen editing from there (vs. a pro external monitor). Pro's know it wears their eyes out.
I'm not planning on the upgrade to M4 (from M2) ... but, the matte display may put the M5 on my radar a bit sooner than I was thinking for my 5-8 year cycle on the M2 > M7+. Performance wise, I'm pretty good with my M2 Max / 64GB (rarely does it bottleneck me). Now, whether or not the matte display is worth a $$$ hit for the upgrade ... well, yeah I'll need some performance boost to make it worthwhile. It's not like I can just send my rig in to Apple and have them swap out the display for a matte one. THAT, I'd probably do and still keep my M2 Max.
p.2 #2 · MBP M4 Pro 48GB RAM vs M4 Max 36GB RAM for LR advice
Thanks for your advice @jhapeman. Will think more about matte screen. So you really think the max with 36gb RAM will perform better for me in LR than the Pro with 48gb Ram? Not want I wanted to hear, but I appreciate honesty. Is there any chance that the 14inch model would get throttled before I can experience the benefit over Pro model on battery power? I’m not importing or exporting more than 250 photos usually.
jhapeman wrote:
The nano/matte thing is very personal IMO. In a laptop I love it because I just can't stand glare in any way and with a laptop you frequently have no control over the nearby light. I do think the Apple Store is probably one of the worse places to judge it however, because the lighting there is pretty odd and not at all like the usual situations in which a laptop will be used. What I like about the nano is it just kills all of the odd off-axis glares that on the glossy screen reduce contrast or cause eye strain. Direct light right on the screen like you did is a bit of a red herring though--none of us will work with a bright light shining right on any screen; you move to get rid of that. One final thing I'd say about the nano is it looks best in dark mode, but I also always prefer using dark mode anyway. Those are the kinds of personal things that can affect how you feel about nano/matte vs. glossy.
As for your use case, if you are creating previews at import, etc. then honestly the Max will be superior for your use cases than the Pro with more RAM. Many of the tasks you listed are going to lean heavily on GPU cores as well and that's a big difference between the Pro and Max. As @RustyBug@ pointed out the memory bandwidth is also much higher in the Max vs. Pro and that will absolutely impact performance on tasks like masking, etc.
FWIW, I have a new OWC TB5 drive and honestly for day to day use you'll never notice the gain from TB4 to TB5. The real benefits in TB5 will be seen when doing mass migrations of large amounts of data or driving higher refresh rates on high-resolution external monitors. ...Show more →
p.2 #3 · MBP M4 Pro 48GB RAM vs M4 Max 36GB RAM for LR advice
ptakeuchi wrote:
Thanks for your advice @jhapeman. Will think more about matte screen. So you really think the max with 36gb RAM will perform better for me in LR than the Pro with 48gb Ram? Not want I wanted to hear, but I appreciate honesty. Is there any chance that the 14inch model would get throttled before I can experience the benefit over Pro model on battery power? I’m not importing or exporting more than 250 photos usually.
Those extra GPU cores do a LOT more work these days and there's a big difference there. A lot of the develop tools are leaning on the GPU these days. I don't see the RAM being the first thing that will hurt you vs. the speed you'll gain from the GPU cores. For small imports of 250 images no, you shouldn't see any real throttling. It might heat up a little and run the fans if you are rendering 1:1 previews at the same time, but that's also not 100% necessary either as the higher GPU core count and clock speed on the Max (and memory bandwidth) means 1:1 previews will render in near real time as you browse--just a tiny delay.
If you plan on keeping it a few years I'd find a way to dig into the pocket at tiny bit deeper and go Max with 48GB of RAM. If you are using external storage, 1TB is really enough on the local drive.
p.2 #4 · MBP M4 Pro 48GB RAM vs M4 Max 36GB RAM for LR advice
ptakeuchi wrote:
So you really think the max with 36gb RAM will perform better for me in LR than the Pro with 48gb Ram?
Total number of operations (if maxed out demand)
Pro with 48GB (capacity) * Bandwidth (Speed) 273 GB/s
Max with 36GB (capacity) * Bandwidth (Speed) 546 GB/s
The reduction in capacity is only 25% (i.e 36/48 = .75), while the difference in speed is 200% (i.e. 546/273). Taking a 25% hit on capacity, in trade for a 200% increase in memory bandwidth, seems like a bargain to me, if we're concerned about tapping out on how much / fast we can process operations in / out (back / forth) of memory.
I can have a 1 ton truck going down a 40 MPH road, or a 3/4 ton (75%) truck going down an 80 MPH (200%) highway.
Sure, I can carry a little bit more in one trip with the 1 ton (capacity), but it'll always take me twice as long to get there, for each trip, I need to make.
How much you can carry, and how fast you can transfer it ... well, hopefully you get the gist.
Also, more lanes (pipelines), means less congestion = better heat dissipation, across more chips.
I really appreciate you pointing out the benefits of the Max vs Pro. Makes more sense now. Will be looking for the lower end Max version now. Thank you.
RustyBug wrote:
Total number of operations (if maxed out demand)
Pro with 48GB (capacity) * Bandwidth (Speed) 273 GB/s
Max with 36GB (capacity) * Bandwidth (Speed) 546 GB/s
The reduction in capacity is only 25% (i.e 36/48 = .75), while the difference in speed is 200% (i.e. 546/273). Taking a 25% hit on capacity, in trade for a 200% increase in memory bandwidth, seems like a bargain to me, if we're concerned about tapping out on how much / fast we can process operations in / out (back / forth) of memory.
I can have a 1 ton truck going down a 40 MPH road, or a 3/4 ton (75%) truck going down an 80 MPH (200%) highway.
Sure, I can carry a little bit more in one trip with the 1 ton (capacity), but it'll always take me twice as long to get there, for each trip, I need to make.
How much you can carry, and how fast you can transfer it ... well, hopefully you get the gist.
Also, more lanes (pipelines), means less congestion = better heat dissipation, across more chips....Show more →
