36gb M4 Max vs 48gb M4 Pro for lightroom

[colonelbutt]

Hi,
I guess this might have been discussed before but can’t find the exact comparison

Basically I can get a 14” 36gb M4 Max for about the same price as a 16” 48gb M4 Pro (well the 14” is more, but not enough for the decision)

I am using lightroom a lot. And I use denoise and AI alot

Otherwise it’s all standard stuff. Although I might do some video editing in the future and would play games if any decent first person shooters ever appear on Mac (I have a gaming PC laptop for those anyway)

I prefer the smaller form factor for travel, although the bigger screen is better for photo editing and I hear the cooling, and thus the cpu speed achieved, might be better on the 16

I also hear (could be wrong) that ligtroom never really uses more then 32gb. In any event I won’t be multitasking much

I am torn between 36 vs 48 go and 20 vs 32 gpus.

What do you guys think ?

 

[okkibs]

Lightroom uses a lot of memory and even if it didn’t use the full 48 it couldn’t anyways since the OS and other apps need memory as well. Long story short more memory is recommended. The M4 Pro is plenty fast and the extra GPU power will rarely be a deciding factor. On the other hand you never want to run out of memory or you’ll experience significant slowdowns. But both devices will work fine for your lighter workload so you might decide based on how portable you want your Mac to be.

Lightroom runs fine on the M4 and won’t overload a Pro or Max. Denoise uses the GPU so it would be faster but as performance scales linearly with the amount of cores the Max would be up to 60% faster. So a 10 second job would then take 7.5 seconds or so. Unless this is how you make money I doubt the difference is too relevant and if it is you can probably justify getting both the Max and the extra memory.

People have been using the older chip generations with Lightroom just fine and the M4 Pro beats most of them. There’s a reason the M4 Max configs are so expensive, it’s the fastest mobile workstation chip you can currently buy. I doubt many people need that especially if it’s for a hobby.

 

[colonelbutt]

Lightroom uses a lot of memory and even if it didn’t use the full 48 it couldn’t anyways since the OS and other apps need memory as well. Long story short more memory is recommended. The M4 Pro is plenty fast and the extra GPU power will rarely be a deciding factor. On the other hand you never want to run out of memory or you’ll experience significant slowdowns. But both devices will work fine for your lighter workload so you might decide based on how portable you want your Mac to be.

Lightroom runs fine on the M4 and won’t overload a Pro or Max. Denoise uses the GPU so it would be faster but as performance scales linearly with the amount of cores the Max would be up to 60% faster. So a 10 second job would then take 7.5 seconds or so. Unless this is how you make money I doubt the difference is too relevant and if it is you can probably justify getting both the Max and the extra memory.

People have been using the older chip generations with Lightroom just fine and the M4 Pro beats most of them. There’s a reason the M4 Max configs are so expensive, it’s the fastest mobile workstation chip you can currently buy. I doubt many people need that especially if it’s for a hobby.

interesting.
as I was thinking of the 24gb as it has 20 cpus, which on benchmarks don't make much difference. But basically memory is key

 

[dmccloud]

I would go with the 48GB M4 Pro. The extra RAM will be of more benefit than the extra cores of the M4 Max. While memory bandwidth is higher with the Max, the scenarios in which the bandwidth would be maxed out are few and far between.

 

[Chucks4me]

Check ArtIsRight on YouTube. He got answers to some if not all your questions.

ArtIsRight

Art, the brain behind ArtIsRight. A professional photographer & video creative, who transcends international borders. He is an educator, technologist, consultant, color management expert, and network engineer based in Los Angeles, California. He is BenQ first Global Ambassador for their...

www.youtube.com

 

[TheRealAlex]

48GB M4 Pro is the way to go but I’m switching to the new M5 Max when that releases with 64GB RAM.

 

[jz0309]

Hi,
I guess this might have been discussed before but can’t find the exact comparison

Basically I can get a 14” 36gb M4 Max for about the same price as a 16” 48gb M4 Pro (well the 14” is more, but not enough for the decision)

I am using lightroom a lot. And I use denoise and AI alot

Otherwise it’s all standard stuff. Although I might do some video editing in the future and would play games if any decent first person shooters ever appear on Mac (I have a gaming PC laptop for those anyway)

I prefer the smaller form factor for travel, although the bigger screen is better for photo editing and I hear the cooling, and thus the cpu speed achieved, might be better on the 16

I also hear (could be wrong) that ligtroom never really uses more then 32gb. In any event I won’t be multitasking much

I am torn between 36 vs 48 go and 20 vs 32 gpus.

What do you guys think ?

did you read this:

Lightroom Classic GPU FAQ

Learn how to use Adobe Lightroom Classic GPU (graphics processor acceleration, graphics card, or video card) to speed up or optimize Lightroom Classic performance.

helpx.adobe.com

then there is a website "the Lightroom queen" - you might fid some more of your tech questions answered there.

I use LrC on a M1Max 64GB Studio, I see CPU cores being used heavily during import but have never observed high RAM usage, PS is another story at it uses a lot of RAM but you didn't mention that.