Mac Studio M3 Ultra 28/60 96GB RAM or M4 Max 16/40 128GB RAM for AE?

[UnderTheStairs]

Hi

Any advice please on which will be the best performing for my AE workflow.

I spend most of my time on a job animating, tweaking, RAM previewing, tweaking, RAM previewing, tweaking etc. Some jobs are light, others can be heavy with many 2D layers, large 3D bitmap layers, cameras and effects. I mostly still work at 1080p 25fps. The machine needs to be future proof and last for many years.

I'm considering either a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 28/60 96GB RAM or an M4 Max 16/40 with 128GB RAM.

My first priority is a machine that builds RAM previews the fastest (afaik a multi core task), second priority is a reponsive UI (single core task). So I'm confused as I know the M4 Max is faster on single core tasks and the Ultra is faster on multi core tasks - but in the tests I've seen, the multi core on the M3 Ultra isn't hugely faster than the M4 Max. But maybe someone can offer some insight that I've not gained yet. 

Thanks.

[nishu_kush]

Moving your post to the Video Hardware community.

Thanks,
Nishu

[UnderTheStairs]

Thank you.

[Peru Bob]

@Warren Heaton 

[Warren Heaton]

I'm pretty sure the M3 Ultra will still outperform the M4 Max, but I don't have one to test firsthand.

Here are some results for the After Effects Pulse Benchmark project that you might find helpful:

• 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
  2 minutes 50 seconds
• AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990Xv 64-Core Processor 2.90 GHz, 128GB RAM
  3 minutes 56 seconds
• 2019 Mac Pro 3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W, 192GB of RAM
  5 minutes 51 seconds
• M1 Max, 32GB
  6 minutes and 44 seconds
• M1, 16GB
  14 minutes 5 seconds

Other results can be found here:  https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/multi-frame-rendering-is-here-aka-the-...

[UnderTheStairs]

Thanks for the link and the info Warren, appreciated. 

I'll keep an eye on that thread for the Ultra results when they appear.

[UnderTheStairs]

To come back to this Warren and without any test results available, in theory which machine 'should' build RAM previews faster taking into account AE's MFR capabilities - M3U 28/60 96GB RAM or M4M 16/40 with 128GB RAM? Thanks.

[Warren Heaton]

We're comparing $3,699 to $3,999, right?  And maybe even upgrading the M4M to 128Gb/2TB for $4,099.

Taking a guess here:  After Effects and Premiere Pro (and Media Encoder and Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign and Audition) are going to run great on both and faster on the M3U.

Do you happen to have a Costco membership?  The base M3U is $3,799, purhasing it online extends the 1-year warranty a second year (but, I'm not sure it's as good as AppleCare+), and you have 90 days to return it.

[UnderTheStairs]

Thanks, this helps. And thanks for the Costco tip but I'm in the UK and this is a business purchase so it goes against tax anyway. But thank you!

Out of interest I've just found this channel and the guy compares the top end of both machines in AE. The results seem to suggest that the M4 Max is incredibly close in AE performance to the top end Ultra when testing in the current Beta. Not sure if the beta will get further tweaks for the Ultra by the time it gets to full release but this would push me towards the top end M4 Max over the base Ultra.

https://youtu.be/0UOA7crCmXI?si=y1iSMuxAag73yMye 

[Warren Heaton]

@UnderTheStairs 

It is interesting to see how well the top M4M configuration compares to the top M3U configuration - especially with After Effects (Beta).

I would like to see the M4M base (or the M4M with the RAM ugraded to 128GB) compares to the M3U base. 

Have you a Mac Studio yet?

[UnderTheStairs]

I'd like to see that too. 

I'm poised but haven't yet bought a Mac Studio. I'll wait for this guy to do his mega review using the newly released version of AE and then I'll decide on which model. It's looking like the performance of the M4M 16 core 128GB RAM on the latest AE will be so close to the M3U 28 core 96 GB RAM that the extra cost of the Ultra will be hard to justify. The difficulty lies with needing the extra capacity of the Ultra for 3D work.