Trying to make a final call between two configs of the 16" MacBook Pro and would appreciate input from people actually running similar workloads.
My use case:
The two configs (same 2TB storage):
Price gap between them runs roughly 15-20% depending on where I find them.
Questions:
Not trying to future-proof for 5 years — I'll likely sell this in 3-4 years for whatever has an OLED display by then, so I'm mainly trying to figure out if the 48GB/40-core is solving a real problem for me or just buying headroom I'll never touch.
My use case:
- Weekly YouTube video: 6K Open Gate footage (Panasonic GH7) edited down to a 4K master — color grading, film emulation LUTs, WB/exposure work
- Audio cleanup in iZotope RX
- From the same 4K master, cutting vertical 1080p H.264 Reels/Shorts in batches of ~10
- Batch photo editing in Capture One/Lightroom/Photoshop
- AutoCAD — native macOS version, irregular use
- Revit occasionally — no native Mac version, so it runs through Parallels/Windows VM, but always as its own separate session, never open at the same time as an editing project
- Otherwise: browser, office work, occasional gaming — not a priority
- No multicam, no heavy Fusion/VFX compositing — single camera, straightforward color-graded cuts
The two configs (same 2TB storage):
- M5 Max, 36GB RAM, 32-core GPU
- M5 Max, 48GB RAM, 40-core GPU
Price gap between them runs roughly 15-20% depending on where I find them.
Questions:
- For a single-camera 6K→4K pipeline like mine (no multicam, no heavy compositing) — does 36GB genuinely hold up, or does it start swapping once Resolve/Premiere, iZotope RX, and a handful of background apps are all open?
- Anyone running Parallels for something like Revit/AutoCAD as a separate session (never simultaneous with an open edit) — does that change the memory math at all, or is 36GB still fine since it's never concurrent?
- Is the 15-23% real-world GPU gain actually noticeable day-to-day on a weekly export/render cycle, or does it disappear into "you'd need a stopwatch to tell"?
- Anyone who deliberately went with the base 32-core/36GB config for a similar workflow and regretted it (or didn't)?
Not trying to future-proof for 5 years — I'll likely sell this in 3-4 years for whatever has an OLED display by then, so I'm mainly trying to figure out if the 48GB/40-core is solving a real problem for me or just buying headroom I'll never touch.