6 ms·

Apple M1 MacBook vs. PC Desktop Workstation for Adobe Creative Cloud

12 points by juusto 6y ago

butterisgood 6y ago
Conclusion - in an unfair fight, the ones at a disadvantage lose.
uberman 6y ago
This appears to be just an ad for their systems.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Flagging it. There is nothing of value here. Adobe products haven't been properly ported to Arm architecture and this is comparing a significantly more expensive and less portable machine with Apple's M1 laptops. It's clear that M1 is a winner from independent authorities like Anandtech. This article should not be upvoted.
  - ibraheemdev 6y ago
    Is there any specific HN guideline that this post is violating?
    - butterisgood 6y ago
      Seems like misleading information. Does HN try to filter that out?
mikece 6y ago
I'm curious how much the inclusion of the video cards mattered in this test. What seems like a more reliable and meaningful test would be testing Adobe product workloads with the M1 and Intel versions of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to see how much having to emulate amd64 shows in the performance numbers (and it provides a reference for later when the Adobe Suite is released with native ARM64 support). And yes... it looks far more like a native ad than an actual "test".
klodolph 6y ago
This is just an ad. Compare a $1,700 Mac with an integrated GPU against a $2,400 or $3,500 PC with a discrete GPU on graphics processing tasks. The discrete GPU is gonna win every time.
- ianferrel 6y ago
  Honestly, it's not much of an ad, either. The more expensive desktop has less performance per $ than the laptop, and that's before it's running natively!
  - dagw 6y ago
    I guess it boils down to what you need. Sometimes performance per $ matters most and and sometimes you need to hit a minimal performance target for a system to even be worth considering.
favorited 6y ago
> MacBooks do fairly well considering that they are using a complete processor based around the ARM instruction set and software that is likely not fully optimized yet If by "likely not fully optimized yet" they mean "running under x86 emulation"
KaiserPro 6y ago
For after effects I'd expect that loads of ram would be the biggest winner. Personally if I was going to be procuring machines for adobe/nuke/other creative apps, I'd go with a second hand workstation from HP, and give it loads of ram and a new GPU. it'd be the same price as a new macbook, with less single threaded performance, but much great GPU ram and number of threads. When it comes to portability though, thats a different issue...
- WanderPanda 6y ago
  I have no expertise whatsoever in this area, but I‘m curious: Is there not any timesharing / cloud solution for this? The Hardware you mention would be taken advantage of 1/3 of a day at max, right?
  - davidivadavid 6y ago
    I'd assume the time cost of uploading/downloading assets would kill all productivity in the most interactive workflows. Otherwise there are solutions for batch processing.
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    Now that is a good question! There are solutions, but they are not overly compelling from a cost perspective (yet) For a g4dn.8xlarge (32 cpus, 128 gigs of ram) plus one GPU its $1000 a month (or $355 if you're only doing 12 hours a day 5 days a week, no over night renders source: https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator) Thats still $4k a year. seeing as you need a remove viewing solution too, so you need a machine to host the Keyboard Video and Mouse, its still not great. Compared to a hp z640 with 48 threads(E5-2673 V3), 128 gigs of ram plus nvidia 3070 is about $2200 - $2900 (https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z840-tower-a-configure-to-order https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z840-tower-a-configure-...) Where the cloud is useful is if you are hiring someone for a 3 month contract, or you need to render something fast, as 100 hours on one machine costs the same as 1 hour on a 100 machines.
    - WanderPanda 6y ago
fredoralive 6y ago
So, if I spend $2500+ on a desktop computer, it might just outperform a $1500 laptop? Colour me shocked. It also doesn't mention if it's running the beta ARM version of Photoshop, so you have to assume it's running in the x86 version in emulation.
vondur 6y ago
Let's revisit this test once Apple has a desktop class CPU that's comparable to these Ryzen PC's and the Adobe apps are native to Apple Silicon.
- rephlex2097 6y ago
  Apple will never have a comparable CPU. Not even Intel has one.
jphalimi 6y ago
Did they just compare a desktop running native x86 code to results of translated code using Rosetta 2 in MacOS/M1?
ogre_codes 6y ago
Why would someone bother to post this? They didn't even bother to compare it to the only desktop in the M1 lineup. Or using software which is built for the M1. If we hold two hands behind their back, we can beat them in a fair fight!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

12 points by juusto 6y ago

butterisgood 6y ago

Conclusion - in an unfair fight, the ones at a disadvantage lose.

uberman 6y ago

This appears to be just an ad for their systems.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 6y ago
Flagging it. There is nothing of value here. Adobe products haven't been properly ported to Arm architecture and this is comparing a significantly more expensive and less portable machine with Apple's M1 laptops. It's clear that M1 is a winner from independent authorities like Anandtech. This article should not be upvoted.
- ibraheemdev 6y ago
  Is there any specific HN guideline that this post is violating?
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    Seems like misleading information. Does HN try to filter that out?

mikece 6y ago

I'm curious how much the inclusion of the video cards mattered in this test. What seems like a more reliable and meaningful test would be testing Adobe product workloads with the M1 and Intel versions of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to see how much having to emulate amd64 shows in the performance numbers (and it provides a reference for later when the Adobe Suite is released with native ARM64 support). And yes... it looks far more like a native ad than an actual "test".

klodolph 6y ago

This is just an ad. Compare a $1,700 Mac with an integrated GPU against a $2,400 or $3,500 PC with a discrete GPU on graphics processing tasks. The discrete GPU is gonna win every time.

ianferrel 6y ago
Honestly, it's not much of an ad, either. The more expensive desktop has less performance per $ than the laptop, and that's before it's running natively!
- dagw 6y ago
  I guess it boils down to what you need. Sometimes performance per $ matters most and and sometimes you need to hit a minimal performance target for a system to even be worth considering.

favorited 6y ago

> MacBooks do fairly well considering that they are using a complete processor based around the ARM instruction set and software that is likely not fully optimized yet If by "likely not fully optimized yet" they mean "running under x86 emulation"

KaiserPro 6y ago

For after effects I'd expect that loads of ram would be the biggest winner. Personally if I was going to be procuring machines for adobe/nuke/other creative apps, I'd go with a second hand workstation from HP, and give it loads of ram and a new GPU. it'd be the same price as a new macbook, with less single threaded performance, but much great GPU ram and number of threads. When it comes to portability though, thats a different issue...

WanderPanda 6y ago
I have no expertise whatsoever in this area, but I‘m curious: Is there not any timesharing / cloud solution for this? The Hardware you mention would be taken advantage of 1/3 of a day at max, right?
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  I'd assume the time cost of uploading/downloading assets would kill all productivity in the most interactive workflows. Otherwise there are solutions for batch processing.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  Now that is a good question! There are solutions, but they are not overly compelling from a cost perspective (yet) For a g4dn.8xlarge (32 cpus, 128 gigs of ram) plus one GPU its $1000 a month (or $355 if you're only doing 12 hours a day 5 days a week, no over night renders source: https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator) Thats still $4k a year. seeing as you need a remove viewing solution too, so you need a machine to host the Keyboard Video and Mouse, its still not great. Compared to a hp z640 with 48 threads(E5-2673 V3), 128 gigs of ram plus nvidia 3070 is about $2200 - $2900 (https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z840-tower-a-configure-to-order https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z840-tower-a-configure-...) Where the cloud is useful is if you are hiring someone for a 3 month contract, or you need to render something fast, as 100 hours on one machine costs the same as 1 hour on a 100 machines.
  - WanderPanda 6y ago

fredoralive 6y ago

So, if I spend $2500+ on a desktop computer, it might just outperform a $1500 laptop? Colour me shocked. It also doesn't mention if it's running the beta ARM version of Photoshop, so you have to assume it's running in the x86 version in emulation.

vondur 6y ago

Let's revisit this test once Apple has a desktop class CPU that's comparable to these Ryzen PC's and the Adobe apps are native to Apple Silicon.

rephlex2097 6y ago
Apple will never have a comparable CPU. Not even Intel has one.

jphalimi 6y ago

Did they just compare a desktop running native x86 code to results of translated code using Rosetta 2 in MacOS/M1?

ogre_codes 6y ago

Why would someone bother to post this? They didn't even bother to compare it to the only desktop in the M1 lineup. Or using software which is built for the M1. If we hold two hands behind their back, we can beat them in a fair fight!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]