My next MacBook Pro (which I'll probably be pulling the trigger on sometime this year) will be a 14-inch MacBook Pro. I'll be coming from a MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) with 16GB of RAM. I do NOT want to buy the first release of a new design generation as, historically, that's asking for trouble (read: I'm NOT joining the M6 party when it comes to MacBook Pros); would much rather buy at the end of one instead.
What I remain torn on is whether or not I go with the base M series chip (an M5 today) or the binned M Pro series chip (an M4 Pro today; but I'd definitely wait for this variant of M5 Pro to become an option, given how close it seems we are to it launching). I would max out the RAM on whichever one I bought (32GB is likely fine for my needs; though I won't snub my nose at 48GB or 64GB [Though if Apple makes 64GB on the M5 Pro a Mac mini exclusive like they did with the M4 Pro, I'll be at least mildly salty]).
Beyond normal recreational computing (e.g. e-mail, Microsoft Office, web browsing with more tabs than any rational human being should have open at any one time), my resource-specific/intensive use cases would be a bit of Final Cut Pro and Motion, running the occasional VM or two, and a bit of gaming (though I do have a couple of recent notebook PCs with 8GB VRAM discrete GPUs for that, worst case scenario).
I'm pretty sure that my Mac needs really won't ever exceed a binned M Pro; though, the M5 itself exceeds the M2 Pro in some cases and my only real performance complaints with the M1 that I have currently is that I wish it had more RAM and I wish it had a better GPU.
With M4 and M5, I have 10 GPU cores, with the binned M4 Pro, I have 16 GPU cores. With the binned M4 Pro, I have 16 GPU Cores, and on my current M1 I have 8 GPU cores. Obviously, the GPU cores, themselves, have improved over time (and now we have ray tracing, as of M3), but all other things otherwise being equal, I'm unsure whether the (current) 6 GPU core difference is going to make all that much of a difference to me.
Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on the performance differences between the base M chip and the binned M Pro chip when it comes to shopping for a 14-inch MacBook Pro?
What I remain torn on is whether or not I go with the base M series chip (an M5 today) or the binned M Pro series chip (an M4 Pro today; but I'd definitely wait for this variant of M5 Pro to become an option, given how close it seems we are to it launching). I would max out the RAM on whichever one I bought (32GB is likely fine for my needs; though I won't snub my nose at 48GB or 64GB [Though if Apple makes 64GB on the M5 Pro a Mac mini exclusive like they did with the M4 Pro, I'll be at least mildly salty]).
Beyond normal recreational computing (e.g. e-mail, Microsoft Office, web browsing with more tabs than any rational human being should have open at any one time), my resource-specific/intensive use cases would be a bit of Final Cut Pro and Motion, running the occasional VM or two, and a bit of gaming (though I do have a couple of recent notebook PCs with 8GB VRAM discrete GPUs for that, worst case scenario).
I'm pretty sure that my Mac needs really won't ever exceed a binned M Pro; though, the M5 itself exceeds the M2 Pro in some cases and my only real performance complaints with the M1 that I have currently is that I wish it had more RAM and I wish it had a better GPU.
With M4 and M5, I have 10 GPU cores, with the binned M4 Pro, I have 16 GPU cores. With the binned M4 Pro, I have 16 GPU Cores, and on my current M1 I have 8 GPU cores. Obviously, the GPU cores, themselves, have improved over time (and now we have ray tracing, as of M3), but all other things otherwise being equal, I'm unsure whether the (current) 6 GPU core difference is going to make all that much of a difference to me.
Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on the performance differences between the base M chip and the binned M Pro chip when it comes to shopping for a 14-inch MacBook Pro?
