p.4 #1 · MacMini vs MacStudio for photography: worth the pain?
I just did exactly these upgrades. I upgraded an i5 MB air to an M4 MBP and questioned whether I needed to bother upgrading my i7 mini. In my case I decided to get a new desktop and go with the 14” MBP for easier travel convenience — I didn’t want to go bigger for my travel machine. Next I went with an M4 Studio. After comparing prices of it and a mini with 64GB ram and 1TB drives, the cost difference was insignificant to me for the added ports alone on the Studio, the better GPU being a bonus.
Result? Both are insanely faster than what they replaced. While I think ram is important, I think there’s also a point of diminishing returns, especially with current imaging software that utilizes GPU more efficiently now. I maxed out both my lower-midrange builds, 48gb in the MBP and 64 in the Studio. I don’t do video, so didn’t feel compelled to go bigger on either machine.
One other comment. The new MBP displays are difficult to use outside profile hardware on. Apple has deactivated conventional profiling access and uses their own proprietary on MBP’s, allowing only a few tools to attach and work with colorsync. On the upside, the native choices of “Photo 600 nit” is very, very good. I ended up bumping the warmth 1 honeycomb on the Apple tweak interface and am satisfied with my results. I assume if I plug in my external monitor, I could profile that normally, but I haven’t bothered since it does profile fine/normally on the Studio.
PS: The Studio arrived a day before my MBP. I used my old Mini’s Time Machine back-up to build the new studio OS (after the normal OS update required) and it worked flawlessly. When the MBP arrived and fresh OS loaded, I connected it to the Studio via TB, and the full transfer build took less than 5 minutes(!)
p.4 #2 · MacMini vs MacStudio for photography: worth the pain?
pjmsj21 wrote:
I'm resurrecting this thread, as I am trying to narrow down the best balance of specs/performance and dollars. I am moving from a five year old dell XPS laptop with 32mg of ram. Budget ideally would be in the $2500 range, not including any periferals, as I would like to keep using my Dell Ultrasharp.
I shoot with the A7RV, and primarily use LR but some PS.
I would appreciate any input on this configuration:
Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 1T of disk space, and 64G of RAM.
TIA
.
This configuration of the Mini M4 Pro appears to be $2400. The same storage and RAM specs with the Studio will be $2900. The extra $500 buys you 2x the GPU cores, more ports and probably better thermal control to allow the processor to run at full speed without throttling.
Whether the extra GPU performance is worthwhile likely depends on how much you do batch processing of large image sets with AI Denoise applied, as one example.
Based on some comparisons done by Art Is Right on YouTube, across all the Apple Silicon generations, it appears that the Max/Ultra configurations 'age' better, in that they remain usable/fast longer than the Pro/non-Pro chips, but it's also dependent on whether a process is CPU or GPU intensive. And also dependent on how sensitive you are to any lagginess that might be more apparent with the lower-end processor options
In my case, a 2021 vintage M1 Pro MacBook Pro was becoming quite laggy using LRC with 45MP Canon files, whereas previously it was quite usable with 24MP files. I opted for a refurbished Studio M4 Max but wasn't fast enough to snag the 1TB/64GB configuration and ended up with 1TB/48GB while they were available (I'm guessing they pop up from time to time). In any case, it's very fast with the 45MP files. AI Denoise is about 2.5-3x faster than the M1 Pro, image rendering is snappy, etc.
If you didn't know, Apple allows you to return a system within two weeks for full refund. Others here have used this to 'test the waters' and figure out if the configuration that suits their budget meets their expectations.
p.4 #3 · MacMini vs MacStudio for photography: worth the pain?
Thanks so much for your very informative assessment. I especially appreciate the comments about the Max configuration "aging better" . Any other suggestions are greatly appreicated.
Pat
rscheffler wrote:
This configuration of the Mini M4 Pro appears to be $2400. The same storage and RAM specs with the Studio will be $2900. The extra $500 buys you 2x the GPU cores, more ports and probably better thermal control to allow the processor to run at full speed without throttling.
Whether the extra GPU performance is worthwhile likely depends on how much you do batch processing of large image sets with AI Denoise applied, as one example.
Based on some comparisons done by Art Is Right on YouTube, across all the Apple Silicon generations, it appears that the Max/Ultra configurations 'age' better, in that they remain usable/fast longer than the Pro/non-Pro chips, but it's also dependent on whether a process is CPU or GPU intensive. And also dependent on how sensitive you are to any lagginess that might be more apparent with the lower-end processor options
In my case, a 2021 vintage M1 Pro MacBook Pro was becoming quite laggy using LRC with 45MP Canon files, whereas previously it was quite usable with 24MP files. I opted for a refurbished Studio M4 Max but wasn't fast enough to snag the 1TB/64GB configuration and ended up with 1TB/48GB while they were available (I'm guessing they pop up from time to time). In any case, it's very fast with the 45MP files. AI Denoise is about 2.5-3x faster than the M1 Pro, image rendering is snappy, etc.
If you didn't know, Apple allows you to return a system within two weeks for full refund. Others here have used this to 'test the waters' and figure out if the configuration that suits their budget meets their expectations. ...Show more →
There's also a refurbished M1 Ultra 20/48 1TB/64GB configuration for $2600 or $2900 for 2TB.
Based on Art is Right's comparisons, the M2 Ultra above would be about 15% faster than an M4 Max 16/40 cores for LRC AI Noise reduction, which is GPU intensive. The M1 Ultra 20/48 is about 5% slower than the M4 Max 16/40. And M4 Max 14/32 is about 18% slower than the M4 Max 16/40.
An M4 Max gives you the latest silicon and highest CPU-based performance (if evaluating single core performance). It will also give you the longest OS update support if you plan to keep it a long time. This is kind of important in conjunction with Adobe software because Adobe appears to not go back many versions for OS support if you want to keep updating to the most recent app versions. The M2 Ultra in the Art is Right tests seemed to be pretty much neck and neck in many cases and slightly edged the M4 Max for GPU performance.
The upside of going with an Ultra is all USB-C type ports are Thunderbolt 4 (the 2 on the front of the Max versions are only USB-C).
All that said, I'm not disappointed I went with the M4 Max 16/40 over an M2 Ultra as I think the performance is pretty comparable and it will have longer OS update support. When I bought it, the refurbished store had a bunch of M4 Max configurations available. But those sold out pretty quickly with only the base M4 Max 14/32 cores 512GB/36GB configuration now available for $1700. While it's a bit slower at GPU tasks than the M4 Max 16/40, it still smokes the Mac Mini M4 Pro at nearly 2x faster (LRC GPU intensive tasks and LRC image exports). Interestingly the base M3 Ultra is also available refurbished.
But again, how much this matters will depend on your processing workload. If you're doing single images or a few dozen at a time, eeking out the best performance might not matter as much. In my case, I'm sometimes processing multi-hundred or even a few thousand images through AI Denoise and faster is definitely better. But my budget didn't suit going Ultra.
But my budget didn't suit going Ultra. 