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Buying Advice - M4 Pro - 12 core or 14 core
- Thread starter kshitijshah
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Agreed. The base model Mac mini is plenty for nearly everybody's use case, sure add more storage (or hang an SSD off the back and save a boat load of money) if you need it - but more compute or RAM is lost on pretty much everyone. Those who need it know they need it and don't ask on MacRumors forums.
Yep, I recommended this channel not long ago to @Chuckeee and I’m glad to see he has a new video on the M4 family. Really eager to see his first hand-on real life tests with the different configurations.
My guess is either spring or near summer, before WWDC 2025, but of course this is a wild guess, I have no idea.
What seems likely however, is that next M4 MBA will be released next spring and that’s going to be a great machine.
Keep an eye on the buyer's guide here, my guess is within 6 months. At the latest, WWDC.
Great guy! TLDR of his videos is that any M specced machine is a beast with 32GB of RAM. All the below numbers gave him 1-5 second slowdown on his huge panorama stitch and brush application.
So if you are the person to stitch 6-40 Nikon D800 images each at 48MP and use brush on that thing - you will appreciate 32GB of RAM. Also if you have gygabytes of layers in photoshop as well.
The point is, with the old M2 Pro Mini, although the top “stock” model is a lot less than the Studio if you upgrade that to the full CPU/GPU and upgrade the RAM* then it ends up costing the same $1999 as the base Mac Studio, but still only has the M2 Pro vs. the Studios M2 Max.
The cost of the M4 pro with upgraded CPU and RAM is also $1999 although the new RAM configuration does get you 48GB vs. the likely 36GB of the base M4 Max.
Despite what I said above, that’s kinda irrelevant at the moment since theres no M4 Max Studio to buy yet and we don’t know if/when it will appear, what the base price will be or where the design geniuses at Apple will move the power button to. If you’re not going to wait for a new M4 Studio then, today, the M4 Pro Mini is going to clean the M2 Max Studio’s clock in most respects.
Since the M3, the Max is a proportionately more powerful than the Pro and, ISTR that the M3 Max MBP already got a $100 price bump vs. The M3 Pro - we never got any M3 Minis or Studios to compare so that price bump hasn’t got to the Mini/Studio range yet.
Until the new studio does come out, there’s no need to consider the M2 Studio unless you have to get an urgent like-for-like replacement and/or would rather put up with an M2 Max than get stuck with Apple’s “worse is the new better” design improvements.
M1 Air 8/8/16 w/16 gb of ram. I do photography. Modest micro-four thirds files. The M1 handled it with aplomb. Then came AI. Today I batch processed 26 files thru Pure Raw. 15 minutes. I didn’t forsee AI. Nor did I foresee considering moving back to full frame. I just finished a weeks rental with a 61 MP camera I was evaluating. It brought the Air to its knees. Those unanticipated changes can quickly make a money saving decision a trade-in.
I’m waiting for more data but I suspect I’ll order a pretty near maxed out Pro. And those T'bolt 5 ports are what will save me from Apple's egregious ssd pricing. OWC has compatible drives on pre-order.
I’m waiting for more data but I suspect I’ll order a pretty near maxed out Pro. And those T'bolt 5 ports are what will save me from Apple's egregious ssd pricing. OWC has compatible drives on pre-order.
Found this spreadsheet, which implies that gpu matters the most followed by cpu/ram.
DxO DeepPRIME Processing Times
M1 air is a great machine as a standalone device and never feels slow until one finds the edge like in your case.
Running 4-8 tabs of youtube 4K - Air m1 8/8 stutters while driving that in 4k 27 external.
The same load and m1 pro mbp 8/14 doesn’t break a sweat.
Also mbp of the same gen is faster when having 4k screen connected for work versus m1 air.
At the same time, windows with intel cpu, dedicated graphics, 144hz fast response screen was noticeably faster than m1 air but lacking in noise, heat, battery life and portability in my day to day tasks while connected to 4k and 1080p screens.