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kyle8179578
Participant
November 8, 2023
Question

Considering M2 Max vs M3 Pro MacBook Pro

  • November 8, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 4377 views

I'm racking my brain trying to figure out which route to go and there are not many M3 Pro real world benchmarks yet.

 

M2 Max 12 CPU (8/4), 30 GPU, 32GB RAM, (400GBps Memory Bandwidth)

M3 Pro 12 CPU (6/6), 18 GPU, 36GB RAM, (150GBps Membory Bandwidth)

 

Essentially I can get both of these for the same price at my budget limit so I'm curious what is going to benefit me more with my use case. Heavy Lightroom Classic with Sony RAW and NegativeLab Pro film scan conversions. Also some Davinci Resolve with UHD 24fps in various camera formats and I tinker around in Ableton Live. But mostly Lightroom/Photoshop.

 

Mostly curious if Lightroom (Classic) will benefit for having 30 (slightly older) GPU cores or if the M3 Pro is really that much more efficient... M3 Pro does have a mere 4GB more RAM going for it...

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    2 replies

    P
    Petr36050552a8q8
    Participant
    March 13, 2024

    Hello,

    I am just standing before same decision. Is here somebody else who already made the decision and already have some experience and opinion what to buy?

     

    thanks in advance.

    K
    kyle8179578Author
    Participant
    March 13, 2024
    I went for the 14" M2 Max w/ 30 GPUs and 32GB RAM, refurb direct from apple
    and have been completely satisfied with it thus far and I'm pretty certain
    it would beat the M3 Pro at nearly anything you'd throw at it. Have worked
    with some large Lightroom libraries and outputs as well as some large
    Photoshop batches with some heavy background removal actions and was
    surprised at how quick it was. 100x 24MP camera raw files opened, AI bg
    removal with feathering, and saving as PSD took about 5 minutes total.

    If there was any regret it would be to have saved up more money and sprung
    for the 64GB RAM version. I have yet to see my 32GB get used in my
    workflows but it's more of a future-proof idea than anything.

    If you do creative tasks, I think the GPU core count + RAM amount makes a
    difference, especially in Adobe and Davinci. I know the M3 has the GPU
    dynamic caching and I'm sure all creative apps will come up with ways to
    utilize it down the road but still, 30GPUs over 14-18 in the M3 Pro is
    still double and that has to count for something...
    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 13, 2024
    quote
    30GPUs over 14-18 in the M3 Pro isstill double and that has to count for something...
    By @kyle8179578

     

    More GPU cores will have a direct effect on anything that is GPU-accelerated, but the catch is that not everything in Photoshop or Lightroom is GPU-accelerated. Today, where more GPU cores will probably make the most difference is AI features, especially AI Denoise. Also, the Develop module and Export are GPU-accelerated, but note that most other modules and views are not. For GPU-accelerated features, more GPU cores can make a lot of difference, while more CPU cores barely help at all.

     

    For actions that are not currently GPU-accelerated, the number of CPU cores may help. For example, in Lightroom Classic, preview generation is not yet GPU-accelerated, so if you are waiting for 250 previews to build, currently more CPU cores will help, but more GPU cores will not.

     

    GPU acceleration is definitely widely used in video editors like Resolve and Premiere Pro.

     

    Having more Unified Memory makes a difference for large document sizes, and also for whether the graphics hardware gets enough memory, because on Apple Silicon, the graphics hardware must get its memory from system memory. So for example if you might have bought a PC with 16GB RAM and a discrete graphics card with 8GB of dedicated video memory, if you wanted a Mac to roughly equal that you might order it with 24GB of Unified Memory. Apple specifically calls it Unified Memory and not just RAM, because Unified Memory is dynamically shared between the OS and graphics.

    L
    Laurens34447511702n
    Participant
    December 26, 2023

    Hi Kyle,

     

    I have exactly the same 'problem'. 

    Which one did you choose? 

     

    Kind regards Laurens 

      K
      kyle8179578Author
      Participant
      December 30, 2023

      I went with the Apple-certified refurb M2 Max 12 CPU/30 GPU & 32GB RAM. I decided on the Max for the additional GPUs. I'm coming from a 2015 Macbook Air Duo-core i7 with 8GB RAM so anything would have been perfectly fine - but I did a lot of benchmark comparison between the M3 Pro and M2 Max and the additional GPUs and better memory bandwidth is what sold me. If I had the budget I might have swung for a refurb with 64GB RAM but 32 should be perfectly fine for years and years of my workflow; heavy photography, light video.

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