Equipped with M1 Max, the most powerful laptop in Apple’s historyMacBook ProHow much difference is there in performance compared to the powerful gaming laptops in Windows?
The overseas YouTube channel “Created Tech” thoroughly compares “MacBook Pro” with the strongest gaming notebook PC “Lenovo Legion 7”.
*Category：technology Technology｜*Source：Created Tech,Apple
What is the difference in performance between “working with Adobe software” and “video editing”?
Today, Apple’s most powerful laptop in history is the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max.
But is this Mac better than the “Lenovo Legion 7” laptop with the “RTX 3080”?
This time, “Created Tech” compares the performance of “MacBook Pro” and “Lenovo Legion 7” in terms of 3D modeling such as games and Blender, video editing, and working with Adobe apps.
The Legion 7 actually has a lot in common with the MacBook. For example, both are 16-inch laptops. And both models are at the top of the industry.
This means that the M1 Max is the most powerful Apple laptop and the Legion 7 is one of the most powerful Windows laptops.
However, both models have different designs, and the OS and battery performance are also different. The Lenovo 7 also has a huge power limit of 165 watts, which is the best laptop.
As with the Lenovo 7, RTX-powered laptops will experience significant performance degradation when run on battery power without being connected to a charger. However, what users are concerned about is the difference in pure performance.
How does the M1 Max differ from the Ryzen 5900 HX and the Lenovo 7 with the RTX 3080?
Let’s compare from the CPU benchmark. Tested with Cinebench, the multi-core scores on both models are about the same, with the RTX 3080 slightly leading.
The single-core score is slightly higher than the M1 Max. This means that the M1 Max may outperform if the workflow is highly dependent on the speed of the individual cores. For example, when working in Photoshop.
When I tested the entire After Effects workflow using the PugetBench benchmark, the RTX 3080 won slightly. However, at the time of the video, Adobe applications such as After Effects have not yet been optimized for Apple Silicon.
And when you look at the actual project, surprisingly, the M1 Max outperforms the 2D animation process by about 30 seconds.
The reason for this difference is believed to be that the M1 Max is accessing DDR5 Unified Memory at a speed of 400GB per second.
After Effects also consumes a lot of RAM. Therefore, many users will be pleased if they can actually supply ultra-fast and optimized RAM.
The Legion 7’s memory isn’t very fast and is scored lower than the DDR4 spectrum. The same result is obtained with Lightroom Classic. And with Premiere Pro, the results are even more pronounced.
When running Adobe applications on the M1 Max, video and RAM related processing seems likely to give better results.
Now let’s compare video editing as well.
This test uses DaVinci Resolve Studio. DaVinci Resolve Studio is the latest version optimized for Macs with Apple Silicon.
Also, because it uses the studio version of Resolve, Legion 7 is available for hardware acceleration. In the MultiCam project, three 4K videos are playing without problems.
Color correction is applied to the clip, and a layer of 4K, 10bit 4: 2: 2 h264 B roll is added on top of MultiCam.
Render this 30-minute project in 4K and h264 and get great results with the video hardware encoders and decoders built into the M1 Max chip.
Resolve is a third-party application, but you can use these decoders. As a result, the M1 Max outperformed the RTX 3080.
Next, we’ll examine the Sony a7S III’s 4K, 120 FPS hardcore footage. To shoot this footage, you’ll need to buy a dedicated CFexpress Type A card for hundreds of dollars.
When I imported this video into the timeline and scrubbed it, the M1 Max had fewer drop frames than the Legion 7 and was able to process it smoothly. If you stabilize the entire 5-minute video, M1 Max will still have an advantage.
You can also render the same 5-minute clip at 4K 120 FPS h264 to win the M1 Max.
However, when I switched to 8K RED RAW video, the result was a little different this time. Scrubbing and real-time playback are pretty much the same on both devices, which is a bit awkward. But when it comes to rendering, there’s a pretty big difference.
When I rendered a 2 minute 8K RED RAW project with DNxHR 444 10bit, the RTX 3080 outperformed the M1 Max. This is because the M1 Max couldn’t take advantage of the hardware video encoders and decoders. This is because RED RAW video and DNxHR codec are incompatible.
Validate with 3.1 Alpha version of Blender. From here you can see the shortcomings of Apple Silicon.
This version introduces Metal GPU support for rendering on M1 Max. But for the M1 Max, the results were tough.
For all EVs and cycle renderings that use the GPU, the RTX 3080 far outperformed the M1 Max.
It is believed that this is due to the fact that M1 Max is simply optimized and uses NVIDIA GPUs to reduce rendering time.
And in scenes like PartyTug, the RTX 3080 is twice as fast as the M1 Max.
Also, in complex scenes, the difference is 6 times.
Limiting the cycle renderer to the CPU only and disabling the GPU gives more reasonable results, but this is not a very good example as it can render much faster with the GPU.
You can also see similar performance differences with software like Cinema 4D Redshift.
However, these 3D modeling programs do not yet fully support Apple Silicon.
And since GPU support was just added in the 3.1 Alpha version of Blender, we haven’t yet figured out the true performance of the Apple Silicon.
But for now, and in the short and medium-term future, Apple Silicon will not approach the RTX3080 GPU.