MacBook Pro 16" or 2026 Windows laptop?

[BSDnostalgia]

In the real world, it is slightly slower at big work flows and slightly faster at others.

Everyone's workload is the best benchmark for them. But, in my personal experience, I have always needed more memory on the Windows system to get the same level of performance as MacOS. At least, until MacOS 26, which seems to be a step down. But, I'm not sure how that compares with W11 either, since I've only heard complaints about it.

 

[pshufd]

But they don't. The real world differences are MUCH closer. As for an MBP m5 "abosolutey smoking" a windows system is poppycock. The panther lake X7 and X9 are actually faster than the M5 series in creative workflows. Take my laptop for example. it shows to be getting completely smoked by the M1 pro. In the real world, it is slightly slower at some big work flows and slightly faster at others. Synthetic benchmarks are used to sell systems to uneducated people.

People need a frame of reference. A two to three times Geekbench score is something measurable. It isn't always practical to bring your workflow on an external SSD into an Apple Store or Costco to run benchmarks. You can buy and return multiple machines but a lot of people don't like to do that. So Geekbench give you a ballpark. Individual program behaviour is always a variable because there may be some architectural feature that accelerates your workflow or software that doesn't take full advantage of the hardware on a particular platform.

 

[Steve Adams]

Here is real world power of the M1 pro and my system which is identically the same as the XPS under the hood. Mine is a little faster sort of because I upgraded to 64gb of ram and my graphics can take advantage of 32gb. For another reference my workstation is 2 generations newer than his puget system as well. So, faster than the mac pro he's talking about as well.

 

[Steve Adams]

People need a frame of reference. A two to three times Geekbench score is something measurable. It isn't always practical to bring your workflow on an external SSD into an Apple Store or Costco to run benchmarks. You can buy and return multiple machines but a lot of people don't like to do that. So Geekbench give you a ballpark. Individual program behaviour is always a variable because there may be some architectural feature that accelerates your workflow or software that doesn't take full advantage of the hardware on a particular platform.

The better thing is to figure out what you are doing and find real benchmarks to show the actual performance of a system.

 

[pshufd]

The better thing is to figure out what you are doing and find real benchmarks to show the actual performance of a system.

That's what I generally try to do but it's difficult to acquire the hardware to do so.

I'd love to test one of my trading programs on an M4 Studio and M5 MacBook Pro but I'm not going to enter my financial credentials on a computer in a store.

 

[maflynn]

But they don't.

For me, and for the countless others benchmarks are a useful tool to help discern performance metrics. You need to use them, but that doesn't mean they're not useful

 

[dmr727]

I'd love to test one of my trading programs on an M4 Studio and M5 MacBook Pro but I'm not going to enter my financial credentials on a computer in a store.

Curious - why would a trading program push a modern processor? I understand needing large displays for all the data, but what actual processing is needed?

 

[pshufd]

Curious - why would a trading program push a modern processor? I understand needing large displays for all the data, but what actual processing is needed?

On Apple Silicon, it's WINE and Rosetta 2.

Modern trading platforms run like operating systems with charting systems doing a lot of analysis on streaming data and these can use GPU, RAM, and CPU.

 

[Mr.McMac]

With all the disappointing last week's rumors/news about the Macbook Pro Ultra, for me it is no longer worth the wait.

Yeah

 

[dmr727]

On Apple Silicon, it's WINE and Rosetta 2.

Modern trading platforms run like operating systems with charting systems doing a lot of analysis on streaming data and these can use GPU, RAM, and CPU.

Oh wow - I didn't realize there weren't any Apple native tools. 🙁

 

[conmee]

Synthetic benchmarks are used to sell systems to uneducated people.

I think I’ve identified the “poppycock.” 😉

That’s a bold statement that puts you at odds with millions of informed professionals and savvy consumers. I agree no one should make purchase decisions on synthetic benchmarks alone (they can often times be gamed or optimized for a certain platform and they may not give a completely accurate picture of performance), but they do provide useful metrics as part of an overall decision-making process as long as one is aware of their limitations.

 

[pshufd]

Oh wow - I didn't realize there weren't any Apple native tools. 🙁

Think or Swim is mostly Apple Silicon but there are a number of pieces that are still Intel and they will fail with Goldengate or the release after it.

Trader+ is Apple Silicon native or at least I think it is.

Active Trader Pro is a Windows application that runs on macOS via WINE. It's not getting ported to macOS. This is my most important program.

 

[conmee]

On Apple Silicon, it's WINE and Rosetta 2.

Modern trading platforms run like operating systems with charting systems doing a lot of analysis on streaming data and these can use GPU, RAM, and CPU.

What platforms are you running? I use E*Trade PowerTrade and Thinkorswim and Interactive Brokers and I have MotiveWave all running without issue. I’m not a professional trader so perhaps if I track the entire S&P and Russell and conduct dozens of technical analyses on thousands of stocks then I might tax the system, but I have yet to run into any issue with my trading apps (none of these are likely the same league as professional trading desk software, but then I’d think much of the algos and analyses aren’t running local anyway).

P.S. Just saw your reply.

 

[Steve Adams]

That's what I generally try to do but it's difficult to acquire the hardware to do so.

I'd love to test one of my trading programs on an M4 Studio and M5 MacBook Pro but I'm not going to enter my financial credentials on a computer in a store.

I can almost guarantee that someone somewhere used that software and talked about it's performance on the pc you are looking at. youtube and "google" are your friend. I have yet not to find real world testing of any piece of software I use as a performance indicator somewhere on the interwebs.

 

[conmee]

I can almost guarantee that someone somewhere used that software and talked about it's performance on the pc you are looking at. youtube and "google" are your friend. I have yet not to find real world testing of any piece of software I use as a performance indicator somewhere on the interwebs.

This I agree with.

 

[Steve Adams]

I think I’ve identified the “poppycock.” 😉

That’s a bold statement that puts you at odds with millions of informed professionals and savvy consumers. I agree no one should make purchase decisions on synthetic benchmarks alone (they can often times be gamed or optimized for a certain platform and they may not give a completely accurate picture of performance), but they do provide useful metrics as part of an overall decision-making process as long as one is aware of their limitations.

How so. The M1 Pro shows to completely outperform my dell laptop on synthetic benchmarks. However, if you watched the video, that is not the case.

As mentioned. Synthetics can be manipulated to show whatever. Side by side real world testing shows a much "realer" picture. I am not claiming that M series are slow. but they are completely not the second coming that everyone states. Yep, they are great, they are NOT the fastest laptops out there however.

 

[conmee]

How so. The M1 Pro shows to completely outperform my dell laptop on synthetic benchmarks. However, if you watched the video, that is not the case.

I just disagree with your hardline against benchmarks. I don’t dismiss them completely out of hand like you do. But in general I think we likely agree more than not. P.S. Meaning we seem to agree on advice that helps OP choose the right system for their workflow.

 

[pshufd]

I can almost guarantee that someone somewhere used that software and talked about it's performance on the pc you are looking at. youtube and "google" are your friend. I have yet not to find real world testing of any piece of software I use as a performance indicator somewhere on the interwebs.

I've asked people to run the benchmarks but every setup is different. You can ask someone to look at testing video editing with certain settings but they may be using different plugins or other options that vastly change performance characteristics.

 

[Steve Adams]

I've asked people to run the benchmarks but every setup is different. You can ask someone to look at testing video editing with certain settings but they may be using different plugins or other options that vastly change performance characteristics.

Of course. and most fanboy youtube channels do exactly that. like use proxies on one computer and not the other to make it out their computer of choice is ripping through stuff. etc. Puget is a great site for acutal benchmarks of back to back systems etc.

Non fanboy sites like armando that I posted showed real world testing of 4 computers. 2 of similar laptop and 2 of similar workstations. that's real benching. not synthetics. If we all went by synthetics as the only metric of performance we would be missing out on alot of more powerful systems that don't "bench" well.

 

[conmee]

I've asked people to run the benchmarks but every setup is different. You can ask someone to look at testing video editing with certain settings but they may be using different plugins or other options that vastly change performance characteristics.

For the trading software I use, I haven’t seen an appreciable difference in speed since jumping from a 2019 16-inch Intel MBP to the M5 Max. Things definitely pop up quicker at launch. But once I’m running any of the software, the real-time data feeds and real-time technical analyses work as seamless as on the 2019. I mainly use moving averages, RSI, W%R, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci, and Elliott Waves. I analyze/follow about 100 or so stock and ETFs. Again, I’m far from a professional trader, but I think it would take a heck of a lot more sophistication to tax an Apple Silicon or Panther Lake system.

P.S. I’m more of a swing trader than day trader so I maybe don’t notice any latency or other issues with intra-minute trades and price action that others may be tuned into.

 

[pshufd]

Of course. and most fanboy youtube channels do exactly that. like use proxies on one computer and not the other to make it out their computer of choice is ripping through stuff. etc. Puget is a great site for acutal benchmarks of back to back systems etc.

Non fanboy sites like armando that I posted showed real world testing of 4 computers. 2 of similar laptop and 2 of similar workstations. that's real benching. not synthetics. If we all went by synthetics as the only metric of performance we would be missing out on alot of more powerful systems that don't "bench" well.

I'm not talking about YouTube channels. I'm talking about other traders. Most traders that use Apple Silicon and ATP tell me that it runs poorly. It crashes, hangs and performance is poor. Part of that is that WINE is not a 100% solution. But the other large factor is that Rosetta 2 + WINE incurs a large performance penalty. One example is that ATP on Windows uses about 800 MB of RAM. On Apple Silicon, it uses 8 GB or RAM. Why you don't want to run it on an 8 GB Mac.

One of the benchmarks I use is based on this program and how it runs on a variety of CPUs and operating systems. So I have it well characterized for systems up to M1 and the Ryzen 9900X.

 

[conmee]

I'm not talking about YouTube channels. I'm talking about other traders. Most traders that use Apple Silicon and ATP tell me that it runs poorly. It crashes, hangs and performance is poor. Part of that is that WINE is not a 100% solution. But the other large factor is that Rosetta 2 + WINE incurs a large performance penalty. One example is that ATP on Windows uses about 800 MB of RAM. On Apple Silicon, it uses 8 GB or RAM. Why you don't want to run it on an 8 GB Mac.

One of the benchmarks I use is based on this program and how it runs on a variety of CPUs and operating systems. So I have it well characterized for systems up to M1 and the Ryzen 9900X.

Happy to run any benchmarks you’re interested in on my M5 Max. Point me to some of the benchmarks and I’ll give them a go.

 

[pshufd]

For the trading software I use, I haven’t seen an appreciable difference in speed since jumping from a 2019 16-inch Intel MBP to the M5 Max. Things definitely pop up quicker at launch. But once I’m running any of the software, the real-time data feeds and real-time technical analyses work as seamless as on the 2019. I mainly use moving averages, RSI, W%R, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci, and Elliott Waves. I analyze/follow about 100 or so stock and ETFs. Again, I’m far from a professional trader, but I think it would take a heck of a lot more sophistication to tax an Apple Silicon or Panther Lake system.

The penalty is due to one layer of emulation and another layer of translation.

Here's an AI description:

 

[pshufd]

Happy to run any benchmarks you’re interested in on my M5 Max. Point me to some of the benchmarks and I’ll give them a go.

Run Fidelity Active Trader Pro and time from the login window to when your portfolio and charts show up. It will require some programming to get these up and running.

 

[conmee]

Run Fidelity Active Trader Pro and time from the login window to when your portfolio and charts show up. It will require some programming to get these up and running.

It looks like Active Trader Pro is their legacy platform and now they call their platform Fidelity Trader+ Desktop. It still lets me download ATP but looks like Fidelity wants people to use their new Trader+ platform. I’ll give ATP a try tonight/tomorrow.