I have an 2022 MacBook Pro M1, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 10 CPU and 16 GPU cores.
Export of a 40MP image from my Fujifilm X-T5 takes about 20 seconds per image.
How much faster exports can I expect from the M4 or M4 Pro Mac Mini? I would be considering the base model for the M4P or some SSD upgrade with the regular M4.
Substantially if you are using DeepPRIME or DeepPRIME XD, and if you use the Neural Engine (NE). If I recall correctly, the upgrade on the NE cores between M1 and M3 generations was 60%.
If not using the NE or not using DeepPRIME/XD then I am sure they will still be markedly faster but I don’t know by how much.
Anecdotally, I just today moved to an M4 Pro from M3 Pro and based on what I’ve heard since M4 launched, I expect I will even see improvement in general performance from one generation to the next.
Note that if you use the NE, there is no advantage to the M4 Pro over M4. All NE cores in a generation are equal. Unless you get an Mx Ultra chip, in which case you get twice the number of NE cores.
I did some testing on my new M4 Pro tonight.
There seems to be some variation between tests on the same settings, but <10 seconds always. I settled for changing the settings then restarting PL each time, even though that’s not needed when simply changing the number of simultaneous images setting.
Interestingly with the NE, the number of simultaneous images doesn’t seem to make a substantial difference. For 3 through 8 I was getting roughly the same time, around 1:35 to export 13 high ISO 24 Mpix images to 6 Mpix JPEGs. All had DeepPRIME XD2s.
Switching to GPU, the time increased a little to 1:56. Of note, towards the end of this run, the fans started to become audible. I never heard them with the NE.
Switching to CPU, the time ballooned out to 4:10! No fans, though.
I then went back to my old M3 Pro and tried 3 simultaneous with the NE and got a time of 2:09, so there is a useful speed up just between M3 and M4.
Given the NE (16 cores) is clearly faster than either GPU (16 cores) or CPU (4x efficiency and 8x high performance cores), then any M4 chip will outperform any M3 chip, excepting that an Ultra has 32 NE cores which would likely beat any 16 core one. Then again… the consistency of my results suggests maybe not!
After collating all this and getting core counts etc, I wondered what would happen if I set 12 simultaneous images. 1:52, so it does tail off!
Thanks a lot for sharing your test results. I think I would even benefit from the standard M4. The M4 Pro would be a big improvement. I’ll keep this in mind for my next purchase.
The takeaway is that the NE beats GPU at least on my M4 Pro. If a higher GPU core count than the Pro is out of the question, then the plain M4 will give the same performance. That doesn’t take into account the ability of the rest of the system to feed the NE, but I suspect it’s not a significant factor.
In other words, don’t buy the Pro in the expectation it will outperform the base model for DeepPRIME processing.
I wonder if the extra GPU cores in the Pro makes a difference with overall useability of PL, particularly with 4k or higher screens, and/or multiple monitors.
ie Do the Pro’s extra GPU cores make the app more responsive/render images more quickly when there are more screen pixels to display.
It’s pretty darned responsive on the M3 Pro and I don’t recall any issues with PL7 on the plain M1.
It can’t hurt, but I don’t think I’d justify the Pro for this. The only reason I had the M3 Pro and now M4 Pro is because I have to in order to get 4TB onboard storage.
I also have a very capable PC (Ryzen 5900x with a dedicated Radeon 5700 GPU) and was hoping to replace it with a smaller Mac Mini. It could replace it but seems at this point a waste of money. My M1 Pro is a work laptop so I want to keep it separate from personal stuff. If I ever want to upgrade my PC, I replace it with a Mac Mini Pro or Studio. For now, there is not enough performance gain to justify the expense.
How Ryzen 5900x compares to the MacBook when exporting from Photolab and Pure Raw?
I have an old Zbook G1 and want to do some upgrade. Never worked with Mac but I can try.