Photoshop is still slow on fast Computer?

Saving is unfortunately one of the things that a new computer is not going to help with much. Saving is not fully multithreaded, so it might never be able to take full advantage of all the CPU cores and SSD speed in an M3 Max, or a PC. If the main problem is that saving large files is slow, consider selecting Disable Compression of PSD and PSB Files, if you can live with the larger files. Also, some say saving large files is faster if you disable Save in Background.

The M3 Max is going to make the most difference with:

Fully multithreaded operations. Photoshop recently upgraded its compositing engine, which is why you see a new Multithreaded Compositing option in the Settings > Performance panel. But you might rarely see full use of the 14 M3 Max CPU cores in any application that edits still 2D images, because most of the time the pixels are just sitting there waiting for you to do something. The CPU cores in an M3 Max would be fully used for things like video editing and 3D graphics, where the computer needs to re-render many objects constantly, so those video frames or 3D objects can be distributed among the 14 cores.

Fully GPU-accelerated operations. Photoshop is increasing the number of features that are GPU-accelerated, but again, there is only so much you can do for a single still image document. One place where the extra GPU cores in the M3 Max can make a difference is AI processing, especially the AI Denoise feature in Adobe Camera Raw. The M3 Max is probably many times faster than the Intel Mac for those operations. But if you’re often just painting or moving sliders in Curves, extra GPU cores are not going to help all that much.

The M3 Max is a fantastic computer and I would always choose that over an old Intel Mac, but again, it really uses its full potential in video and 3D applications. For photo editing, higher single-core performance tends to help more than additional cores. An Apple Silicon M3 of any level does have much higher single-core performance than an Intel MacBook Pro, but the benefits are uneven depending on which part of the application it is, and saving documents is one of those things that may not be much faster on a newer computer. But at least you can try those settings.

Hi @Stjepan B Go to Photoshop Help Menu/System Info and copy/paste details in a reply. Post only once as the system takes time to process the large amount of data.

Two things jump out when I hear this - 1. GPU (not RAM) - you have an M3 so that should suffice. and 2. Where are the files while working - local or external, server, etc?