Video editing rig question: 10-core M2 Pro MBP vs Dell Precision 5480 (i7-13800H + RTX 2000 Ada)?

[jameszhan]

Hi guys! My company is offering the below two laptops for me for 1080p video editing and light to moderate motion graphic design (in PP + AE). I would like to hear some thoughts from you guys as to which one is better.

	M2 Pro 14" MBP	Dell Precision 5480
CPU	M2 Pro (6p, 4e)	i7-13800H (6p, 8e)
RAM	32GB (unified, 6400MT/s)	32GB (traditional, 6000MT/s)
GPU	Integrated	NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada
Storage	1TB SSD	1TB SSD (M.2 2280, Gen 4, class 40)
Media Engine	2	none
Display	3024 x 1964, XDR, calibrated, P3, 120Hz	1920 x 1080, sRGB, non-calibrated, 60Hz

My verdict is that the Mac is better, but I would love some scrutiny over my analysis to make sure I'm not misinformed:

• Display: We can probably all agree that the MBP's display is superior. This is a major plus from the MBP for me. I've been color grading on my own M1 Max MBP display and I find it to be very accurate without doing extra calibration on my own, and the "reference modes" really come in handy.
• CPU: The 5480 has 4 more efficiency cores and higher clock speed than the M2 Pro chip. On paper, I think the 5480 wins out here.
• Media Engine: This is another important component. In my personal experience, and as tested by many YouTubers, the media engine makes a huge difference in editing and rendering when your footage is H.264 and ProRes. I wonder if this makes up for the M2 Pro chip being weaker?
• Thermal efficiency/throttling: I think it's widely known that laptops with Intel chips get thermal throttled like hell under heavy load, and even the most powerful chip drops significantly in performance when the laptop is unplugged. In contrast, the Apple Silicon laptops have shown to be extremely power efficient, and unplugging the laptop doesn't affect the performance much (if at all).
• GPU: This is the biggest blind spot for me. From some of the benchmarks I've seen, the RTX 2000 Ada seems to be rather powerful, but I'm not sure how much those 26 RT cores would be used in a video editing scenario? Would this GPU beat out the M2 Pro chip in a video editing scenario? I also wonder how much of its performance would be throttled due to thermal issues and when the laptop is unplugged.

Keep in mind that these are the configurations I was given, so let's just say we can't change any of the specs.

Your input would be greatly appreciated!

 

[MacPoulet]

I'd say the monitor alone would put you in the MBP camp. I find a 1080p screen very cramped for editing video (maybe they can spring for a second external display?).

What type of footage are you working with? If it's something like ProRes, then the Mac will likely be better because of optimizations.

 

[Adult80HD]

I can't speak to the video editing, but I did some testing on a similarly-configured Lenovo ThinkPad with some CPU and GPU intensive tasks in Photoshop and Lightroom and it was literally night and day. The performance is massively handicapped in battery mode on the Intel and not at all on the MBP; when I turned off the throttling on the Lenovo it absolutely destroyed the battery. The noise from the fans was....annoying. It was like a PTSD flashback to the 2019 MacBook Pro I had--loud, hot, and a battery hog for so-so performance.

You can't overlook the performance gains you get from the media engines, the higher screen resolution and better quality screen either. Memory speed favors the Mac; the other system architecture bottlenecks mean that the Intel processor really can't use that bandwidth anywhere as efficiently as the M2 can.

I think the Intel laptops right now perform better "on paper" but in real-world scenarios, my experience is that they still lag significantly. If you're used to an M1 Max MBP you already know some of this, but I think you'll be gravely disappointed with the PC. I know I was; I only bought it because there's a software package that is PC-only at my business. It was the first PC laptop I've owned in years and I really had hopes things had changed a lot more but they have not.

 

[Fravin]

• GPU: This is the biggest blind spot for me. From some of the benchmarks I've seen, the RTX 2000 Ada seems to be rather powerful, but I'm not sure how much those 26 RT cores would be used in a video editing scenario? Would this GPU beat out the M2 Pro chip in a video editing scenario? I also wonder how much of its performance would be throttled due to thermal issues and when the laptop is unplugged.

For video workload on After Effects and Premiere Pro, the Nvidia RTX2000 Ada is absolutely a winner. Let me point two important things.

1. Nvidia has partnered with Adobe to build Studio Drivers which sre developed to give raw power to the software, as we know these are 3D video cards, built and designed to accelerate 3D rendering. But Nvidia developed a way to translate this immense computational power to accelerate video decoding and render. Check this out. it‘s really good.
Apple’s M2 is amazing, don’t get me wrong. But video creators should be open to try Nvidia GPUs teamed with Adobe’s software.

2. Nvidia RTX2000 ada is much more powerful than you thought. You listed it as having 26 RT cores. This is not true. It has 3072 CUDA cores. Another 96 tensor cores are dedicated to machine learning, something specially important in video creation on windows, as some of the plugins we use does benefit from it. And it also haves 26 RT cores, specifically for ray tracing and light reflections in 3d rendering.
So it uses those 3072 all together to render your video output, when paired with Adobe software and Studio Drivers.

The RTX2000 has two media engines, a 5th gen encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and 4th gen decoder. Comparable to those embedded in M2.
And we must talk about VRAM, as the RTX 2000 has 8Gb of vRAM, dedicated to the GPU workload. You know how vRAM is useful while video creation.

You should look for the 13800H proccessing power and benchmark it agains M2Pro.

Of course M2 has better performance, or should I say, efficiencie?
A windows laptop like this one is a mobile workstation, not designed to be used on battery power. At least not for video editing. In the other hand, Apple’s MacbookPro could handle light video workloads on battery. But since the two machines are hooked up that would be another history.

 

[jameszhan]

For video workload on After Effects and Premiere Pro, the Nvidia RTX2000 Ada is absolutely a winner. Let me point two important things.

1. Nvidia has partnered with Adobe to build Studio Drivers which sre developed to give raw power to the software, as we know these are 3D video cards, built and designed to accelerate 3D rendering. But Nvidia developed a way to translate this immense computational power to accelerate video decoding and render. Check this out. it‘s really good.
Apple’s M2 is amazing, don’t get me wrong. But video creators should be open to try Nvidia GPUs teamed with Adobe’s software.

2. Nvidia RTX2000 ada is much more powerful than you thought. You listed it as having 26 RT cores. This is not true. It has 3072 CUDA cores. Another 96 tensor cores are dedicated to machine learning, something specially important in video creation on windows, as some of the plugins we use does benefit from it. And it also haves 26 RT cores, specifically for ray tracing and light reflections in 3d rendering.
So it uses those 3072 all together to render your video output, when paired with Adobe software and Studio Drivers.

The RTX2000 has two media engines, a 5th gen encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and 4th gen decoder. Comparable to those embedded in M2.
And we must talk about VRAM, as the RTX 2000 has 8Gb of vRAM, dedicated to the GPU workload. You know how vRAM is useful while video creation.

You should look for the 13800H proccessing power and benchmark it agains M2Pro.

Of course M2 has better performance, or should I say, efficiencie?
A windows laptop like this one is a mobile workstation, not designed to be used on battery power. At least not for video editing. In the other hand, Apple’s MacbookPro could handle light video workloads on battery. But since the two machines are hooked up that would be another history.

Studio Drivers definitely look very interesting! Will have to look into that. I have a custom build PC at home with an RTX 2060 and I certainly wouldn't mind give it a try.

A few things:

1. Could you link me where you read that RTX 2000 Ada has 2 media engines? I had trouble finding any info on this on Google.
2. RTX2000 Ada sounds awesome on paper, but once again, efficiency matters a LOT on a laptop. Can this graphics card perform as powerfully as you (and NVIDIA) claims on battery? I do plan to do professional video work on it on battery. Also, given how much power wattage the intel CPU + RTX2000 will consume, how loud will the Dell laptop be under heavy load?
3. I have a M1 Max MBP and I can tell you that it can handle heavy video/audio/graphic workloads on battery. I suspect the 10-core M2 Pro MBP can do more or less the same, but can the Dell 5480 do it?

 

[Adult80HD]

For video workload on After Effects and Premiere Pro, the Nvidia RTX2000 Ada is absolutely a winner. Let me point two important things.

1. Nvidia has partnered with Adobe to build Studio Drivers which sre developed to give raw power to the software, as we know these are 3D video cards, built and designed to accelerate 3D rendering. But Nvidia developed a way to translate this immense computational power to accelerate video decoding and render. Check this out. it‘s really good.
Apple’s M2 is amazing, don’t get me wrong. But video creators should be open to try Nvidia GPUs teamed with Adobe’s software.

2. Nvidia RTX2000 ada is much more powerful than you thought. You listed it as having 26 RT cores. This is not true. It has 3072 CUDA cores. Another 96 tensor cores are dedicated to machine learning, something specially important in video creation on windows, as some of the plugins we use does benefit from it. And it also haves 26 RT cores, specifically for ray tracing and light reflections in 3d rendering.
So it uses those 3072 all together to render your video output, when paired with Adobe software and Studio Drivers.

The RTX2000 has two media engines, a 5th gen encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and 4th gen decoder. Comparable to those embedded in M2.
And we must talk about VRAM, as the RTX 2000 has 8Gb of vRAM, dedicated to the GPU workload. You know how vRAM is useful while video creation.

You should look for the 13800H proccessing power and benchmark it agains M2Pro.

Of course M2 has better performance, or should I say, efficiencie?
A windows laptop like this one is a mobile workstation, not designed to be used on battery power. At least not for video editing. In the other hand, Apple’s MacbookPro could handle light video workloads on battery. But since the two machines are hooked up that would be another history.

Uhh, yeah, still a no. The Nvidia page you linked conveniently compares the M2 Pro and M2 Max to the 4000 series desktop processors--and BTW, the M2 Max beats them all at the video tasks. Yes, OP is being offered a Pro. But the RTX 2000 is slower than the cards in the graphs from Nvidia, in part due to 20% slower clock speed. So I doubt it will perform any better than an M2 Pro.

You mention VRAM--sure, 8GB is nice but....the M2 has access to all of the 32GB in his system. That wins out handily.

Oh and guess what? The performance unplugged is identical. People who haven't owned and used both just don't get it. When you do, it's really mind-blowing. It's not that Apple Silicon is efficient--it's that its so efficient that even on battery it matches or easily beats anything Intel and Nvidia offer in laptops for almost every single task you can imagine with the exception of 3D rendering optimized for CUDA. That's it. Period.

 

[Fravin]

I do plan to do professional video work on it on battery.

Nvidia does not has a marketing team as good as Apple one. So you will need to dig for information about its GPUs using technical datasheets. Identify the GPU chip and look fir its tech spechs. In this resource you can find which GPUs has or not Media engines.

The Dell Workstation is not designed to work as a laptop. It has a laptop form factor, but it is supposed to deliver powerful tools while hooked. In fact, Apple’s vision is a way different: Apple looks to offer everyone a powerful solution to get things done with no compromise, you can edit a video using you iphone, for instance, you don‘t need to be a video editor to do that. That‘s what Apple believes (I am very grateful for that).

The other side’s vision appears to be offering exquisite tools for each use. And it demands knowledge for it.

If you plan edit video on battery power, there isn’t anything to be said. Just choose the Mac and get your job done.