M4 Pro vs. M4 Max: Which MacBook Pro Upgrade for Faster AI Denoising/Gen Fill in Lightroom & Smoother Vision Pro VIrtual Display?

[ironhide0427]

I’m a wedding photographer currently using a MacBook Pro with an M1 Max (10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 32GB RAM). It’s handling my workload pretty well overall, but I’ve caught the upgrade bug!

Most of my work is in Lightroom and Photoshop, where I rely heavily on bulk AI denoising and generative fill tools. Processing 300+ photos per wedding with AI denoising takes hours, which my current MacBook Pro manages but not without some delays.

I’m considering either the M4 Pro (14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB RAM) or the M4 Max (14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 36GB RAM). Which setup would give me the most noticeable performance improvement?

Also, I regularly use the Apple Vision Pro for Mac Virtual Display, but I sometimes notice it isn’t as smooth as expected. Not sure if that’s an AVP or MacBook issue.

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[MallardDuck]

FWIW, The generative remove appears to be cloud based, so other than a faster network connection, I'm not sure you can do much to speed it up. noise reduction does appear to be local from what I can tell.

as for the choice, that's a tough one. I'd suggest using something like activity monitor to watch both RAM, CPU and GPU while you're doing a task and see what spikes. It's probably not a clear decision between the two, but my gut tells me for AI stuff, you'll be better off with more GPU cores (i.e. it's not likely to be memory bound, unless you're already hitting up against RAM limits)

 

[hoodlum90]

The denoise heavily uses the GPU cores. I am not familiar if the other items you mention are CPU or GPU sensitive. There will be reviews posted over the next 2 weeks as product will start shipping on Friday. I would keep an eye on Artisright as will be reviewing different configs of the M4 iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro that he has ordered and he will be comparing against older models. He is focusing on Photo and video editing that the comparisons will be based on that.

 

[ThreeD]

Also interested in exactly both use cases. M1 Max in use.

Hope someone can share some results and findings.

 

[ironhide0427]

I went with the Max and it's coming on Tuesday.... so we shall find out.

 

[Adult80HD]

My M4 Max just arrived and as I always do I'll be posting some graphs to a thread on the Fred Miranda photography forums with comparisons on Lightroom AI DeNoise, preview generation and jpeg export times. Early results from testing in progress is that it takes about 21s to denoise a 61-mpx Sony A7RIV file, or 36% faster than my older M1 Max with the 10-core CPU and the 32-core GPU, and that matches the speed of my M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU and 64-core GPU. That means the 40 GPU cores of the M4 are matching in the 64 of the M1 generation; Lightroom 14.0.1 does not use the ANE for DeNoise right now as Adobe was having issues with artifacts.

Edit to add that I got the nano screen and its AWESOME.

 

[ironhide0427]

My M4 Max just arrived and as I always do I'll be posting some graphs to a thread on the Fred Miranda photography forums with comparisons on Lightroom AI DeNoise, preview generation and jpeg export times. Early results from testing in progress is that it takes about 21s to denoise a 61-mpx Sony A7RIV file, or 36% faster than my older M1 Max with the 10-core CPU and the 32-core GPU, and that matches the speed of my M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU and 64-core GPU. That means the 40 GPU cores of the M4 are matching in the 64 of the M1 generation; Lightroom 14.0.1 does not use the ANE for DeNoise right now as Adobe was having issues with artifacts.

Edit to add that I got the nano screen and its AWESOME.

Thanks for this. That is pretty significant when you multiply 300+ photos. I am also coming from M1Max

 

[B.A.T]

I'd be curious how fast the denoise in Pure Raw compares to the speed of denoise in LR.

 

[Adult80HD]

And a new update...exporting 1465 Sony A1 files to full-sized jpegs takes a total of 13 minutes and 29 seconds, compared to 19 minutes and 54 seconds on the old M1 Max with the specs listed above. Rendering 1:1 previews the M4 Max clocks in at 13 minutes and 35 seconds vs. the M1 Max 35 minutes and 51 seconds.

For the previews the M4 Max beats my M2 Ultra with 24 cpu cores and 76 GPU cores; that's purely due to the faster clock speeds of the M4 cores and whatever under the hood updates have been done, as in Lightroom that task is 100% CPU only. It also is the only task to peg the CPU cores--for some reason Adobe throttles the E-cores when doing the other tasks but not preview rendering. As a result on any of the MacBooks that task does cause the fans to spin up and make noise. But outperforming an M2 Ultra??? That's amazing. One other note, using powermetrics to follow the CPU frequency, the machine is thermally throttled as the cores never went above about 3.887GHz. That means the same chip in the upcoming Mac Studio has room to perform even better.

 

[Adult80HD]

I'd be curious how fast the denoise in Pure Raw compares to the speed of denoise in LR.

So I have it and I just installed it to check. It took 9 seconds for DeepPrime Denoise and 24.5 seconds for DeepPrime XD (which is closer to the "extra details" Adobe's DeNoise does). So if you are OK with the older DeepPrime model only, it's a tiny bit faster--but that doesn't include any round-trip times in and out of Lightroom or any other DAM you might use. If you use the newer DeepPrimeXD its slower than Adobe but not by a lot.

The M3 Max takes 26.8 seconds for DeepPrimeXD and 9.8 seconds for DeepPrime. Not much of a gain compared to the gain in Adobe's DeNoise.

 

[B.A.T]

Thanks for doing that. Much appreciated and good to know.

 

[Adult80HD]

Thanks for doing that. Much appreciated and good to know.

Sure, I should point out that I don't have an M1 Max handy to compare it. I suspect it's a big boost from there. But overall, LR is very fast and very, very good. I stopped using DxO and/or Topaz because of how fast, good and easy the LR AI DeNoise is.

 

[hoodlum90]

At the 11:00 minute mark of this view he does a comparison of different tasks in Lightroom including Denoise between the M1 Max, M2 Ultra and M4 Max.

 

[Matck06]

I've just tested on my M3 max and my sony A1 with lightroom
denoise Lr raw file 50MP Sony A1 = 20,8 a 21.8 sec
denoise Lr raw file 33MP Sony A7IV= 13 a 13,6 sec

export of 100 Raw/DNG(dng denoise) sony A1 on Lr in 1min30

I tested a stack of 20 Raw to denoise on Lr of Sony A1 and continued to work on other photographs of sony A1 that denoise my 20 files without having latency on the adjustment of layers colors etc.

 

[ironhide0427]

These are amazing numbers, makes my purchase much more justifiable from the M1Max. Can't wait to get it!

 

[hoodlum90]

The denoise heavily uses the GPU cores. I am not familiar if the other items you mention are CPU or GPU sensitive. There will be reviews posted over the next 2 weeks as product will start shipping on Friday. I would keep an eye on Artisright as will be reviewing different configs of the M4 iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro that he has ordered and he will be comparing against older models. He is focusing on Photo and video editing that the comparisons will be based on that.

Artisright willing be posting his first comparison on Monday that includes the Mac Mini M4 vs M4 Pro vs Mac Studio M2 Max, along with older Mac Mini’s

 

[zarathu]

The denoise heavily uses the GPU cores. I am not familiar if the other items you mention are CPU or GPU sensitive. There will be reviews posted over the next 2 weeks as product will start shipping on Friday. I would keep an eye on Artisright as will be reviewing different configs of the M4 iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro that he has ordered and he will be comparing against older models. He is focusing on Photo and video editing that the comparisons will be based on that.

Art may be the only one who will do it with topaz. I would like to see a tone mapping on Affinity Photo with a 90 MP busy image. I saw one with a video, not by Art, and the M4max was only 4 seconds faster than the m3max. For me upgrading from an M1Pro, 4 second is not even noticeable. For that I would buy the M3 with more ram and a bigger SSD.

 

[zarathu]

Sure, I should point out that I don't have an M1 Max handy to compare it. I suspect it's a big boost from there. But overall, LR is very fast and very, very good. I stopped using DxO and/or Topaz because of how fast, good and easy the LR AI DeNoise is.

I would never pay a subscription fee for software.

 

[hoodlum90]

 

[chfilm]

A shame that he didn’t include the m4max! Though I think in tasks that are GPU reliant like the noise reduction in LR, it’ll probably be close to the m2ultra, which is just plain insane.

 

[hoodlum90]

A shame that he didn’t include the m4max! Though I think in tasks that are GPU reliant like the noise reduction in LR, it’ll probably be close to the m2ultra, which is just plain insane.

He is posting another comparison tomorrow that includes the MacBook Pro Max.

 

[hoodlum90]

Art compared all 3 MacBook Pro variants. Next video will be on the Mac.

 

[Chancha]

Just from the binned vs full M4 Pro comparison in the video, we can already safely conjecture the M4 Max will get a significant boost in AI related tasks (as long as the GPU cores are used not the NPU.)

 

[hoodlum90]

Art has posted the MacBook Max review showing results for both CPU/GPU configs along with comparing results with older MacBooks and all three M4 MacBook Pro configs. This is the most comprehensive photo/video editing review of the M4 MacBooks comparing all five CPU/GPU configs.