Mac Performance Question

[Kevin M. Cox]

Hey Kirk, I know this is similar to discussions from the past, but with the new M1 Pro/Max chips from Apple I'm curious what would result in better Photo Mechanic Performance: More RAM or more GPU cores.

For instance looking at the base 14" MacBook Pro with M1 Pro 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU and 16 GB of RAM. Would Photo Mechanic prefer the $300 upgrade to 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU or the $400 upgrade to 32GB of RAM?

Would the M1 Max with 10-Core CPU and 24-core GPU be significantly faster than an M1 Pro with 10-Core CPU and 16-core GPU?

I'm assuming y'all haven't bought all the variations of these new computers to compare side-by-side, so I'm after more of a general feeling based on how PM works if more RAM or more GPU cores would result in better performance if you're willing to share some generalities.

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

Hey Kirk, I know this is similar to discussions from the past, but with the new M1 Pro/Max chips from Apple I'm curious what would result in better Photo Mechanic Performance: More RAM or more GPU cores.

For instance looking at the base 14" MacBook Pro with M1 Pro 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU and 16 GB of RAM. Would Photo Mechanic prefer the $300 upgrade to 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU or the $400 upgrade to 32GB of RAM?

Would the M1 Max with 10-Core CPU and 24-core GPU be significantly faster than an M1 Pro with 10-Core CPU and 16-core GPU?

I'm assuming y'all haven't bought all the variations of these new computers to compare side-by-side, so I'm after more of a general feeling based on how PM works if more RAM or more GPU cores would result in better performance if you're willing to share some generalities.

Photo Mechanic does not directly use the GPU.  Photo Mechanic is almost always starving for disk I/O bandwidth.  More CPU cores are better than fewer, but if there's a place to spend your money, it's on the fastest SSDs you can find.  That said, you should be sure to size your PM memory cache appropriately since any virtual memory paging will be so detrimental as to eliminate any gains by anything else you've added.

-Kirk

[Kevin M. Cox]

Ah, so in my examples above it would be best to spend money for a larger SSD, since all reports so far are that SSD performance increases along with storage size in the Apple computers.

Apple's reported "jaw-dropping 7.4GB/s read speeds" are from the 8TB SSD.

Thanks Kirk!

[Kevin M. Cox]

Also, as a reminder to me and anyone else who stumbles across this thread:

What is the formula to "size your PM memory cache appropriately" when it comes to macOS?

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

Also, as a reminder to me and anyone else who stumbles across this thread:

What is the formula to "size your PM memory cache appropriately" when it comes to macOS?

More isn't always better.  10% of system memory should be more than adequate.

-Kirk