Hi there,

I have a Mac with M1 Pro or M1 Max to buy soon.
The number of GPU cores is different for these models.

Are all available GPU cores used simultaneously with version 6?

Also worth buying for LRTimelapse The processor with 64 instead of 32. Because then twice as many processes can be processed simultaneously?

Thank you for the information

Hi, GPU cores are not utilized by LRTimelapse.
For LRTimelapse you don't need more Tham 32GB of ram.

thank you very much for the very quick reply. so it doesn't matter how many GPU or CPU cores you have?

The CPU Cores matter, but GPU is not being used by LRTimelapse. It's hard to tell because with the M1 Architecture it's a mixture of CPU and GPU. But to be honest the M1 Pro's are really fast, and the increase from additional cores is not as much as the price increase that Apple want's for the higher versions. Even the M1 Mac Mini is really fast.

Thanks very much. Do you have experience with Lightroom? are the GPU cores used there? and does the double number of GPUs make a big difference there?

Sorry, I cannot tell. Check out video reviews about the Mac M1 computers. As I said, the additional performance of the higher models doesn't seem to correlate with the price.

Danke

This post was last modified: 2022-02-24, 23:05 by timestretcher.

GPU cores are used by Lightroom Classic, but Lightroom Classic has limited GPU acceleration to the Develop module at this time. A GPU does help in Develop. But for now, Lightroom Classic does not use GPU acceleration in other parts of the application. Not when you import, not when you generate thumbnails and previews in the Library module, not when you bulk export, etc.

Adobe has been gradually enabling GPU acceleration for more Develop features, but it still does not make as thorough use of the GPU as applications that edit video or 3D.

So those are two reasons I bought an M1 Pro instead of an M1 Max. For Lightroom Classic, an M1 Max means a lot of extra GPU cores sitting around doing nothing, especially if you are not in Develop. And some reviews have pointed out that the extra GPU cores result in slightly faster battery drain even if not being used.

Lightroom Classic and LRTimelapse both benefit more from having more CPU cores. But the M1 Max has the same number of CPU cores (10) as the M1 Pro, so paying more for an M1 Max gets you zero additional CPU power. The extra features of the M1 Max…up to 64GB RAM, and double the GPU cores, double the media encoders, double the memory bandwidth…none of that helps Lightroom Classic and LRTimelapse. The M1 Pro already meets the performance needs of photography.

The M1 Max is like the Mac Pro: It is largely a waste of money for photography. The M1 Max and Mac Pro hardware specs are optimized for the far more demanding requirements of high-end video editing and 3D; if you do those things then the higher price of the M1 Max is worth it. Like if you are a video editor, having double the media encoders is a godsend that can shorten production time so much that the machine pays for itself very quickly. But photography does not benefit from those features.

Thanks, that's a good summary. I'll add it to the faq!

This post was last modified: 2022-02-26, 19:28 by Cymro.

I have an M1 Max Macbook Pro and its sooooooooooo much better than my 2020 intel Macbook Pro, LRT and LR are massively quicker. FCPX is a dream to use.