Current Mac Silicon desktops - which "best" for Bridge/Camera Raw/Photoshop..?

[davidl23817660]

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…?

[Ben M]

I think anyone of those you are looking at would be more than enough for Photoshop, CR, and Bridge. Davinci is video editing software and I would suspect that the M3 Ultra may be able to handle some of those tasks better much as if you compared Premiere or AE on the same benchmark. The only thing I would consider upgrading on any of those machines is the storage. 512GB is on the lower side. I would try to go to 1TB or 2TB SSD.

[davidl23817660]

This is pretty much my thinking... That the increased graphiocs capabilty of an M3 Ultra is not really leveraged by the photoshop ecosystem and that it more comes into its own with (as you say) apps like Premiere...

... and I was wondering about the disk size, also... My workflow tends to be on my archive, which is all on external disks...

So I was not thinking of having anything other than the latest project on the drive of the machine, so I was thinking 512 would be OK for applications, the latest project, and still have 350 plus for the scratch drive...?

Are we still saying 1TB is better...?

[Ben M]

Yes I would definitely say 1TB is better. I currently have an M2 Max MBP that runs Photoshop perfectly fine with 1TB SSD. Looking at storage, MacOS + System Data is 100GB of my 1TB system. If you consider PS system requirements it requires 100GB + scratch disk. So at most you are down to 312GB - scratch disk not including other applications or files on the computer. If you want the computer to last longer the cost of going from 512gb to 1TB is minimal considering what you will gain in longevity of the computer's life as there may be additional files you need to keep or additional applications you need to install, etc.

[ExUSA]

M3 Ultra is going to be more for video, 3D, AI, and development workloads. The M4 Max will be more than enough for Photoshop. I'd go with the M4 and probably 64GB or 96GB of RAM. Spend the extra money on internal storage and good displays.