would there be significant difference between 10Core CPU and 12 Core CPU?

[AppleUser29912]

I am looking at the new MacBook Pros and there is a $450 price difference (CAD) if you pick 12 Core CPU and 19 Core GPU.

Is this a significant improvement to justify the $450?

 

[StellarVixen]

I am looking at the new MacBook Pros and there is a $450 price difference (CAD) if you pick 12 Core CPU and 19 Core GPU.

Is this a significant improvement to justify the $450?

View attachment 2154585

What will you be using your Mac for? Are you doing something intensive that can squeeze out some extra performance? (video editing, 3D rendering, etc)

If not, then in my humble opinion it's not worth it to spend extra $450

 

[AppleUser29912]

What will you be using your Mac for? Are you doing something intensive that can squeeze out some extra performance? (video editing, 3D rendering, etc)

If not, then in my humble opinion it's not worth it to spend extra $450

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.
For reference, I have a 2014 macbook pro which is 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 right now and the machine sometimes hangs and it takes long time to load some stuff.

 

[StellarVixen]

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.
For reference, I have a 2014 macbook pro which is 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 right now and the machine sometimes hangs and it takes long time to load some stuff.

Putting myself in your position, I would not spend extra.

Wait for more feedback if you wish and make your decision accordingly.

 

[AppleUser29912]

Putting myself in your position, I would not spend extra.

Wait for more feedback if you wish and make your decision accordingly.

Thank you, yeah, I am not sure if I should go for the upgrade. I am finally hoping to pull the trigger and buy a new macbook pro. My 2014 is slowly dying on me, the battery only lasts 30 min, and when put into sleep it always crashes and requires a restart. I am okay to spend the extra $450 as long as it is worth the performance improvement since I usually keep my laptops for long time - 9 years of usage for my current macbook pro is amazing!

 

[Juicy Box]

What will you be using your Mac for?

Yup, it depends on what one does with their Mac.

It is also pretty subjective, as even if one has a task that more cores would improve performance, is that improvement in performance worth the extra cost?

Is this a significant improvement to justify the $450?

What do you do with your Mac?

I recently got the M2 Pro Mac Mini with the 12c CPU and 19c GPU upgrade, it was $270 in the US with the Veteran discount.

With the stuff I plan on doing, the 10c CPU, 19c GPU M2 Pro would be more than adequate, but so would even the M1.

While I do a bunch of things, the primary stuff I do, beyond common workflows like web browsing, email, etc., is SW video encoding and some casual gaming.

I estimate that the 12c could give me about 20% faster SW encoding. In reality, I could just use a much cheaper M1 or even old Intel Macs, and the job will get done, just not as fast, but I am willing to pay the extra amount for the M2 Pro as well for the two extra CPU cores to get the faster encodes.

Although, if it was just more CPU cores, I would probably not pay the extra amount.

In addiction to the extra CPU cores, the three extra GPU cores, as well as the better GPU scaling of the M2 chips, makes the $270 upgrade worth it to me.

Think about it this way, in the Intel Mac days, to get about 20% increase in CPU multi-core performance, and almost 20% GPU performance would be a lot more then $270 US.

 

[Juicy Box]

What do you do with your Mac?

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.

I don't think there is any direct comparison, but you should check out some of Maxtech videos on YouTube.

They do a lot of real world tests beyond benchmarks, for example, here is a screenshot of the 12c CPU, 19c GPU M2 Pro upgrade in the Mac mini versus the M1 Max 24c and 32c GPUs of the Mac Studios, exporting in Lightroom, and the Mac Mini beat both of them:

Here is a link to the video:

 

[TechnoMonk]

I don't think there is any direct comparison, but you should check out some of Maxtech videos on YouTube.

They do a lot of real world tests beyond benchmarks, for example, here is a screenshot of the 12c CPU, 19c GPU M2 Pro upgrade in the Mac mini versus the M1 Max 24c and 32c GPUs of the Mac Studios, exporting in Lightroom, and the Mac Mini beat both of them:
View attachment 2154615

Here is a link to the video:

I would take anything Max Tech puts out with truck load of salt, after they were caught fudging numbers.

 

[Juicy Box]

I would take anything Max Tech puts out with truck load of salt, after they were caught fudging numbers.

I haven't heard of this, although I could have easily missed it.

What numbers were they "fudging"?

Do you have a link or source?

Other than their clickbait thumbnails, I like Max Tech reviews and comparisons. Their tests are a lot more comprehensive than many other reviewers, and many others tend to just test one or two types of tests.

But more to the point of the thread, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that the 12c M2 Pro out performs the M1 Max in certain tests. Benchmarks has the M2 Pro CPU out performing the M1 Max. It is the GPU that is more of a question mark.

Given that Lightroom uses both CPU and GPU, and the M2 correcting the GPU scaling that the M1 had, I wouldn't doubt Max Tech's results posted above.

 

[Yebubbleman]

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.
For reference, I have a 2014 macbook pro which is 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 right now and the machine sometimes hangs and it takes long time to load some stuff.

Honestly, you might even be fine with a non-Pro M1 or M2. I'd get at least 16GB of RAM, but I don't know that you need an M2 Pro just for Lightroom. Lightroom is plenty fast with a standard M1.

 

[smirking]

Eh, the 10 core machine and you're good to go. From what you've said it sounds like you're not exactly going gonzo in Photoshop and there's not going to be a huge difference in Lightroom where it matters. A few seconds saved doing large batch exports isn't usually meaningful as that's not how you spend most of your time in Lightroom.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I haven't heard of this, although I could have easily missed it.

What numbers were they "fudging"?

Do you have a link or source?

Other than their clickbait thumbnails, I like Max Tech reviews and comparisons. Their tests are a lot more comprehensive than many other reviewers, and many others tend to just test one or two types of tests.

But more to the point of the thread, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that the 12c M2 Pro out performs the M1 Max in certain tests. Benchmarks has the M2 Pro CPU out performing the M1 Max. It is the GPU that is more of a question mark.

Given that Lightroom uses both CPU and GPU, and the M2 correcting the GPU scaling that the M1 had, I wouldn't doubt Max Tech's results posted above.

Total garbage is probably the right word; quality trumps quantity and clickbait stuff. I am not gonan dig, but here is one posted in one of the threads.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rene-ritchie-the-voice-of-reason.2351574/page-9?post=31272218#post-31272218

I remember those heat tests on MacBook Air with the heat sink removed and put back poorly to make the machine run hotter.

Last but not least, this tweet sums it up. You can't make this up; it shows a lack of basic understanding of RAM/Disk, CPU, or GPU.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-might-be-changing-my-mind-about-max-tech-yt-channel.2378896/page-4?post=31926107#post-31926107

 

[TinyMito]

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.
For reference, I have a 2014 macbook pro which is 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 right now and the machine sometimes hangs and it takes long time to load some stuff.

Save that $450 for accessories or thunderbolt dockstation or nice keyboards or mouse, sleeve, etc.

 

[Mattcraft]

How about to a programmer using Docker, IntelliJ IDEA, and some coding apps, is it worth upgrade to 12c?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I am looking at the new MacBook Pros and there is a $450 price difference (CAD) if you pick 12 Core CPU and 19 Core GPU.

Is this a significant improvement to justify the $450?

View attachment 2154585

WoW that’s a lot of money

 

[dmccloud]

I would take anything Max Tech puts out with truck load of salt, after they were caught fudging numbers.

I was done with Max Tech after the recent video where they claimed the M2 Max 14" was thermal throttling when other tests showed that the systems just run hotter because the fan curves are skewed towards silence over max cooling. Luke Miani did a really good job of explaining why the 14" was not thermal throttling as Max Tech has claimed...

 

[maflynn]

Luke Miani did a really good job of explaining why the 14" was not thermal throttling as Max Tech has claimed...

I think Luke did a great job in the video, I don't watch him often, but I do find me more watchable then Max

Personally for me, I'll choose cooler running and longer battery life, but I get why people would want the extra horsepower

 

[AppleUser29912]

Unless your Photoshop work involves significant layering and effects, you will likely see no immediate benefit.

I say immediate as another question is how long you plan to keep the machine for. If more than five years, spend the money. Although you may not see any gains now, it’s very possible that with AI machine learning improving at a remarkable pace, you may take advantage of future features that do take advantage of the extra processing power.

My recommendation is buy the machine you need to last the use profile. My pro machines have a three to five year expectation. My show machines (used to run a single program for live AV production), or personal machines I expect to use for four to seven years.

yeah, I usually tend to use my machines for long time. I am using my 2014 for 9 years now, but I upgraded the SSD from 128 to 500 3 years ago. Maybe I go with the base model and just upgrade the memory.

 

[AppleUser29912]

How about to a programmer using Docker, IntelliJ IDEA, and some coding apps, is it worth upgrade to 12c?

I use pretty much the the same apps, so +1 to see if it is worth upgrading if one is using these apps. Multiple docker containers in general slows down my machine.

 

[Chrysalis99]

No video editing or 3d rendering, just using lightroom and photoshop for photo editing. No gaming too.
For reference, I have a 2014 macbook pro which is 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 right now and the machine sometimes hangs and it takes long time to load some stuff.

I have last years MacBook Pro M1 Max with 10c-cpu and 32c-gpu and it blows through Lightroom and Photoshop tasks. Can’t imagine any improvement would be worth it since it’s so fast now and I’m throwing some major layering and huge raw files at it. Save the money for a nice OWC or CalDigit dock. I find docks are mandatory if you have a lot of hardware to connect. Makes for a nice clean connection setup too. I only have one Thunderbolt cable connected to my MacBook 100% of the time.

 

[dmccloud]

How about to a programmer using Docker, IntelliJ IDEA, and some coding apps, is it worth upgrade to 12c?

I use my Macs primarily for photo and video editing, along with running VMs, coding, Docker, etc. I just made the jump from an M1 13" MBP with 8GB RAM to the M2 Max 14" MBP with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD largely because I started running into issues with the M1 system in terms of RAM utilization and limitations on what I could run simultaneously. The two extra efficiency cores will make a difference in some cases, primarily those applications which do not require use of the performance cores. At the same time, the OS can offload some processes from the performance cores to those efficiency cores, thereby freeing up those resources for apps and processes that truly need performance over efficiency.

 

[jshear]

I use my Macs primarily for photo and video editing, along with running VMs, coding, Docker, etc. I just made the jump from an M1 13" MBP with 8GB RAM to the M2 Max 14" MBP with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD largely because I started running into issues with the M1 system in terms of RAM utilization and limitations on what I could run simultaneously. The two extra efficiency cores will make a difference in some cases, primarily those applications which do not require use of the performance cores. At the same time, the OS can offload some processes from the performance cores to those efficiency cores, thereby freeing up those resources for apps and processes that truly need performance over efficiency.

We have the exact same MBP. I was considering sending mine back today as it's my last day of the return window for more ram. From 32GB for 64GB. I run one VM Parallels with Windows 11 solely for Currency trading online using MT4 which requires Windows. I use my Mac for light work like web browsing. Twitter, Email, Telegram and News App. Here is a scene shot of my resources. Sometimes it uses Swap and sometimes none.

Cheers

Jeff

 

[TechnoMonk]

We have the exact same MBP. I was considering sending mine back today as it's my last day of the return window for more ram. From 32GB for 64GB. I run one VM Parallels with Windows 11 solely for Currency trading online using MT4 which requires Windows. I use my Mac for light work like web browsing. Twitter, Email, Telegram and News App. Here is a scene shot of my resources. Sometimes it uses Swap and sometimes none.

Cheers

Jeff

How’s your experience with ARM windows 11 VM on parallels?

 

[jshear]

How’s your experience with ARM windows 11 VM on parallels?

Great no issues. I am coming from an IMac Pro and I like the M2 chip better

 

[FriendlyMackle]

I have last years MacBook Pro M1 Max with 10c-cpu and 32c-gpu and it blows through Lightroom and Photoshop tasks. Can’t imagine any improvement would be worth it since it’s so fast now and I’m throwing some major layering and huge raw files at it. Save the money for a nice OWC or CalDigit dock. I find docks are mandatory if you have a lot of hardware to connect. Makes for a nice clean connection setup too. I only have one Thunderbolt cable connected to my MacBook 100% of the time.

I’m curious, can you connect the Apple Studio Display to a Thunderbolt dock (a powered dock) like the CalDigit or OWC, and then connect the MacBook Pro to the dock? I’m thinking I would like to be able to have both external thunderbolt SSDs and the monitor connect to my MBP via one Thunderbolt cable. And the Studio Display only has one Thunderolt input.