@Propi wrote:
1. Is my computer correctly optimized and is this the performance I should expect from such specs? If not, what is my bottleneck?
Hard to say without seeing times against other PC laptops. You have lots of RAM, fast storage, and a powerful GPU. But for export it isn’t a GPU issue because Lightroom Classic doesn’t use the GPU much for export; it primarily uses the CPU. One factor there is that your laptop is putting 6 Xeon CPU cores up against 10 M1 Max cores (which are actually 8 high-performance cores doing the exports, freed up a little more by handing OS and low-priority tasks to 2 high-efficiency cores).
@Propi wrote:
2. Are the Macs really that much faster?
The answer to that question has changed radically in the last 14 months or so. Before then, for many years, the answer was no, Macs aren’t really that much faster. Traditionally it was not hard to find a Windows laptop that was faster for less money, especially if the PC had better cooling than the older ultrathin MacBook Pros, allowing less thermal throttling for higher sustained performance.
It started changing in late 2020 when Apple released the first Apple Silicon Macs using the M1 processor. The M1 has significantly higher performance per watt than Intel/AMD, so it achieves similar performance at much lower wattage, avoiding so many heat and power issues that for the last year, the entry level M1 MacBook Air has been able to beat similarly priced Windows laptops, and it doesn’t even have a fan.
A couple months ago, Apple released the next wave of M1 processors called the M1 Pro and M1 Max with significantely higher multi-core and GPU scores, and put them into new MacBook Pro designs with optimized cooling. That sort of took the gloves off so those MacBook Pros are even more competitive, turning in results like what you witnessed against your friend’s Mac. The margin against the latest Intel/AMD laptops is somewhat less than what you saw, but it is still there. If you want to see a comparison against a more current Windows laptop, MaxTech tested Lightroom Classic on a MacBook Pro M1 Max vs a Razer Blade Advanced 15 with an RTX 3080 GPU. In their test exporting fifty 42 megapixel raw files, the score was:
Razer Blade: 1 minute 54 seconds
MacBook Pro M1 Max: 1 minute 21 seconds
(The Razer did beat the Mac in the Super Resolution test, which is interesting…against other Windows laptops the M1 Mac usually wins that one.)
If you want to read how Apple acheived this, the general tech site Anandtech has a pretty good writeup: Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights.
One place where Intel/AMD laptops are still superior is if they have a powerful GPU and you do work where raw GPU power is used most of the time, like in gaming and 3D. Or for those who require being able to upgrade some internal components. But for CPU-intensive tasks like Lightroom Classic export, it’s hard to beat the M1 Pro/M1 Max right now.
@Propi wrote:
…and should I consider purchasing, say, an iMac mini and use it as my Lightroom workhorse?
You could. If you just wanted to try it out, you could get the current Mac mini M1. But if you want performance like you saw with the newer M1 Max processor in your friend’s MacBook Pro, you might want to wait.
The current Mac mini, released over a year ago, uses the first generation M1, while your friend’s MacBook Pro uses the latest M1 Max. Apple is halfway through a two-year transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, so Mac desktops are not yet fully migrated to the latest M1 processors. Rumors are strong that the Mac mini will eventually get upgraded to an M1 Pro or Max in the next few months.
Another reason to wait is because of the new Alder Lake processors from Intel, which have impressed many. If those new CPUs make it possible to have a compact NUC-type PC that could perform like an M1 Mac Mini, maybe you could stay on Windows. But chances are they will use more power and run hotter than an M1.
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