I am looking to replace my old desktop Mac and am looking at the Mac Studio (M4 Max or M3 Ultra) or, possibly, the latest M4 Pro version of the Mac mini.
My use is for photography and my workflow is Bridge (to browse, manage, tag, etc), Camera Raw for basic clean up then Photoshop for specific file prep.
What is important to me is speedy browsing in Bridge (with fast thumbnail generation, and no lag when browsing quickly through full screen image previews to tag selections), rapid refreshing in camera raw as sliders are moved, speedy application of enhancements (like noise etc) and a smooth, glitch free photoshop using layers and masks.
When trying to assess the likely performance potential of the new machine (compared to the desktop and laptop that I have been using) I have been looking at Geekbench and PugetBench Photoshop benchmarks.
What is interesting is that Pugetbench Photoshop benchmarks seem to suggest that both the M4 Pro and M4 Max machines give “better” results than the more costly M3 Ultra. I assume that is because Photoshop leverages the faster single core processing power of the M4’s over the M3’s and that the M3 Ultra’s enhanced multi core and the graphics capability is less of a factor in the puget benchmark.
You can see, for instance, that if you look at the Davinci resolve puget benchmarks the M3 Ultra comes into its own then.
I was wondering how this translates to Bridge and Camera Raw. How much do Bridge and Camera Raw rely upon the graphics capability of a silicon Mac compared to the raw single core processing power.,..?
In other words, would an M3 Ultra actually be a retrograde step for Bridge/Camera Raw/Photoshop? I appreciate the M3 Ultra will be “better” with GPU heavy applications (as the puget resolve benchmark suggests).
I am also wondering how “extra” memory might impact if I ordered one with more than standard.
Machines I am looking at (with Apple UK pricing incl tax) are:
Mini Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine 48GB Unified Memory 512 GB SSD - £1,999
Studio Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine 32GB Unified Memory 512 GB SSD - £2,099
Studio Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine 48GB Unified Memory 512 GB SSD - £2,599
Studio Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine 64GB Unified Memory TB SSD - £2,999
Studio Apple M3 Ultra chip with 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine 96GB Unified Memory 1 TB SSD - £4,199
Just wondering what the community thoughts were on this…?
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