Surprising M1 MAX vs 1/2 Price Gaming PC Results (DaVinci Resolve Stress Test)

[@LearnColorGrading]

Join our FREE crash course...the FASTEST & EASIEST way to learn Resolve: filmsimplified.com/p/davinci-resolve-crash-course

[@OMjosh123]

This is the only person I’m seeing giving real world comparisons that are not flashy and very indicative of what the actual consumer will experience. Thank you so much

[@bodie_ci5115]

Yep, agreed. Most others focussing only on render times and not so much on the whole experience. I’ve loved this series of videos. I hope they change their mind and continue to do some more tests, maybe if M2 is released!

[@simonwyndham]

@LearnColorGrading Something very, very, very odd is going on here. I decided to try this for myself on my M1 Max, and just a moment a go I put some 25p 5.9K Canon C500 Mk2 raw CRM footage into Resolve 17.4.1. I turned off all render caches and made sure playback was at full resolution, and in the Color tab I had the raw decoding set to Canon RAW, full resolution. The result? The footage on my machine is playing back without any issues whatsoever at a full 25fps in full screen to an external ASUS PA32UCG. I pushed it further and layered four instances in the same way that you have here, and again it played back the footage as a 4K timeline at the full 25fps with no stuttering. I then pushed it further by performing a basic grade on all clips, and it still played back at full resolution at the full 25fps with no stuttering. This leads me to believe that there's some sort of I/O issue going on with your Mac setup somewhere. I was playing my footage from an external LaCie BigDock Pro SSD via Thunderbolt. My own experience is doubly reinforced by the fact that there are others on KZbin playing C500 Mk2 CRM raw video on their M1 Pro/Max machines without issues. So there's definitely something not quite right with your setup here. The only stuttering I have had is when the project is set to PQ HDR and output to the PA32UCG. But although there is a stutter at the beginning of playback, after a second it still plays back the graded layered four clips at the full 25fps. Here's a screen grab of the timeline being played back (it was playing full screen to an external monitor at the same time). simonwyndham.smugmug.com/Resolve-Playback-on-M1-Max/n-3WqTHb/i-vzpbSXp/A

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Thank you for appropriately testing these machines and the significant amount of time it takes to do it. You are one of the few to do it right and your results are much appreciated!!!

[@LearnColorGrading]

Thanks John. I really like your work BTW.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

@@LearnColorGrading Wow thanks! I’m continuing to learn, your lighting and audio have taught me a ton! I’m always humbled to find when one of the “big time” resolve folks watches my stuff! Thank you - made my night!

[@LearnColorGrading]

Really appreciate your kind words. And glad I was able to help. Thanks.

[@philcretired5143]

Thanks much! I dropped $$$ on a fairly high end Lenovo laptop (Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3070) several months back and was concerned that I had leaped too soon before the new Macs were out. Seems now like a needless concern as my all my laptop hardware is a generation newer than the Razor in your test. And still half the price of the M1 Max. Whew!

[@OmAn1994]

can you say what model it is?

[@philcretired5143]

@@OmAn1994 Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6H 16"QHD-HDR, Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX3070, 32GB, 2x 2TB NVMe SSD. Lenovo does not officially support 2TB drives but they work fine .(WD Blue SN550) . The laptop was purchased with16GB, and 1x 1TB drive, then upgraded and original parts sold. It will run 3 external screens. Usually I run I or 2 external screens. Very pleased with it.

[@eversparx]

@@philcretired5143 hi, my 2017 MacBook Pro needs a replacement, but I’m looking at a ryzen 7/3070 Alienware desktop for virtual production in unreal engine (I love macs but UE is more compatible with PCs) as well as cutting/color/vfx in resolve. Sounds like playback is smooth on your own machine? Run into anything it has notable trouble playing on the timeline? Thanks!

[@philcretired5143]

Have had no significant problems or hiccups. "John's Film" had a test showing that it would be good to update to the latest RTX Studio drivers if on Windows 11. @@eversparx

[@aaronteh6491]

Would u still recommend your laptop over an M1 Max?

[@pelanth]

Great video. It's so hard to find playback tests. I don't care if my 8 minute render finishes 1 minute quicker, but I do care if I can't apply effects and such and get reasonable playback to edit. Thank you for doing this.

[@thefilmfactory4880]

The real question is, how would the windows machine perform while unplugged? How was the fan noise? How much battery did it use? What about performing the same test while doing other tasks such as opening multiple tabs on google chrome? Thats what all these new macs are about not just playback and rendering!

[@jennifergala]

Accurate non bias tests and results. Best channel on KZbin.

[@dmitryvoznesensky9088]

The moment it showed zero drop frames "... interesting, I need to check settings" impressive!

[@alexanderzweifel9762]

Thanks for this! I'm a PC user and I work with Resolve for 80% of the time. These new Macs really do look incredible, but the eye-watering prices are problematic. It's good to know that a PC can still hold its own at 1/2 the price. How was the fan noise? Did the razer spin up to the max?

[@RunForPeace-hk1cu]

A better question is … was it plugged 🔌 in ? 😬

[@nickxc]

The Razer gets loud but its way better than the older models. I have edited without head phones with the fans on full and it didn't really bother me. Also the Razer absolutely was plugged in to get this level of performance.

[@TheThaiLife]

How dare you show a PC operating faster than a Mac and recommend the Macbook Air! Seriously though, it's great to see an actual free-thinking and honest channel. Thank you.

[@CJ-ff4rb]

You are FIRST on MY list of Resolved Teachers... I love Your approach to Your Teachings.

[@niborsilliw]

Alex, this series and your work in general is valuable. I was "this" close to selling my fully kitted out Asus gaming computer and getting an m1 based Mac but now I'm not. You just saved me a pile of money and a huge amount of time. Thank you!

[@jrsfield]

Apple has one main big advantage over PC if you have 422 HQ Prores footage, they have HW acceleration. Simplifying a bit her though other than Prores apple is more than 2 years behind.

[@thefilmfactory4880]

@@jrsfield wrong! Apple has other advantages. Main one being getting the same performance regardless whether you are on battery power or plugged in.

[@jrsfield]

@@thefilmfactory4880 as previously mentioned, cherry picking specifics does not make it the silver bullet. Its still demonstrably as good as a 2yo pc, runs out of battery after some 1-1.5h of heavy load. The light load is better only on the 16 inch, 14 inch gets 4-5h real life bat. So there you have it, ordinary but running on arm. Its impressive tha apple managed to make a gpu this fast on their 2nd attempt, but they still have a lomg way to go. As much as the PC manufacturers have in marketing apparently as apple sells you ordinary for top of the range price and some on top.

[@toxotis70]

But you forget one thing… I had %he same laptop and gave it for the new Mac , not for the speed… but because blade had terrible battery, it was hot like the sun under load , it was noisy as a jet pane, had a much worse sound and screen. We are talking laptops here and we want mobility with power and good batter’y, without noise etc. these are not desktops.

[@truthseeker6804]

i'm fine with slight noise for less price.

[@toxotis70]

@@truthseeker6804 it’s not slight noise, it’s like a plane in your room! Battery is a joke too. I gave it and never looked back!

[@truthseeker6804]

@@toxotis70 thats probably subjective. considering ive used several desktops which are probably worse. anyway if the new laptop works for you, good.

[@toxotis70]

@@truthseeker6804 if you want mobility, it’s not subjective. Noise , heat and battery are very important.

[@truthseeker6804]

@@toxotis70 dude, my current laptop fans are probably worse, and its still mobile. mobility has nothing to do with noise. i dont think this is loud as a plane as youre claiming. secondly, i consider any battery past 5 hours as good. im not using the laptop 24 hours on battery. a few hours max and i'm done. so again its subjective. if you care extremely about noise then you probably should just use a tablet.

[@ifell3]

We all love this series, thank you

[@bentonpix]

Please, please, please, tell us which version of DaVinci you were using for these tests?

[@sjursjur]

Great test! I'll probably go for a new pc soon, as I think it will be better for my needs. If you have the time and patience for more testing, a few streams whit the the deflicker plugin enabled (especially with dissolves between clips) is really taxing and easily makes Resolve run out on of VRAM on high resolutions. Also, would be interesting to see render speeds for straight h264/h265 (with renderer set to Nvidia encoding on the pc).

[@murtza.rehman]

I cant help like ur video right when it starts since I know its going to be amazing as always

[@archibald_haddock]

Just curious if DR17 uses Metal or Opencl acceleration on the Mac?

[@nomadik7]

I loved how surprised Alex was with Razor just cruising through the Playback tests while the Mac just struggled. A desktop PC with full sized graphics cards (not the cut down Max Q version razor here uses) is about twice as powerful and thus makes an ideal system for DaVinci Resolve. Also the Razor is using a Rtx 2070 Max Q which is 2-3 years old. A new generation Rtx 3080 or even 3070 is far, far more powerful.

[@thefilmfactory4880]

Yeah, try doing the same test while its unplugged 🤣🤣

[@Rogeras32]

@@thefilmfactory4880 the funniest part)

[@romainclark6705]

Okay. It seems from this benchmark that the pc laptop vs high end mac are somewhat close together as of performance. Would be interesting now to have a price comparison of both systems.

[@eloquentblack]

It's a wonderful real world test. Thank you very much! Do you happen to have the Surface Laptop Studio with 3050ti? I'm dying to see how it performs.

[@js_filming7701]

Very interesting! Could this be software or is the PC really faster than the Mac? Resolve may not be fully optimized for M1 Max....

[@MarcelloMOV]

Latest update for DaVinci claims better support for M1 chip

[@js_filming7701]

@@MarcelloMOV Yeah but i think the test were done with that newest version. Right?

[@js_filming7701]

But anyway! Its the combination of performance, screen, trackpad, design and MacOS wich makes the decision obvious!

[@TheJoseUrena]

@@js_filming7701 yeah! Go for PC!

[@hbp_]

IIRC Canon's codec cannot be optimized super well for M1 as there is no HW decoder that could be utilized. Assuming Resolve can utilize the GPU for decoding then the most expensive dedicated GPUs can easily beat all M1 models, even if Intel can't on laptop CPUs.

[@lindstrem]

PLease make a video on switching to studio drivers on Nvidia cars. I have a 3090RTX and i constantly still use my old M1 macbook air with 16GB. Never even heared of Studio drivers on gaming cards. Thank you

[@dmitryvoznesensky9088]

Which PC is that? What specs it has?

[@mojkom57]

Thanks for this video! What is the best optimized setting for Davinci?

[@soucouyant]

Thank you for your honesty. It is sooo reassuring. Blessings.

[@TheRealBarkinMadd]

Does the C500 require a special decoder in Resolve and if so, is the decoder written for native M1 silicon?

[@Sethmotley]

Good point

[@jrsfield]

There is a good video about the DR being optimized for M1 to the same extent as FCP. Having said that the optimisation for PCs is still being worked on as well. The video shows that different functions would have different levels of oprimisation, I think thats the point. Having said that the HW is less than like for like and that is the point the video is making.

[@TheRealBarkinMadd]

@@jrsfield understood. I was just wondering if the reason the C500 footage was so slow on the M1 was because the decoder was 3rd party and not written for M1 silicon. If the decoder is written by BMD then perhaps it just needs some tweaking.

[@baldwinvp]

Every codec ever requires a “special” decoder in a sense that it requires custom code to decode. lol, Canon’s raw codec is poorly optimized on every system. It’s a bit notorious, as he mentions, for being a system playback killer.

[@SnowMakerTV]

Great comparison. Love your channel and video, so informative and knowledge that I able to learn from you. thank you.

[@BenMilford]

Has anything substantial changed in terms of performance? Has Apple or DaVinci Resolve made changes that optimize performance?

[@ijob98]

Great Video really interesting insights to the performance differences between these systems. Still I want to add something to this Video: If you want to buy a Windows Notebook for DaVinci Resolve make sure that you have enough ram in you system ( you need at least 16 GB and if you want to work with 4k Timelines you need at least 32 GB of ram) also make sure that you have a dedicated NVidia Graphics card in your Windows System (best are the RTX models)

[@jrsfield]

apparently you are incorrect. Much more depends on cooling than other things. Having said that, you are always more comfortable with extra RAM and VRAM, but for 4k you would be perfectly fine with a base model of razer last gen at 1500 with a 4k OLED (and optional 32GB upgrade for 150). They even have a silver "mac look" version.

[@ijob98]

@@jrsfield minimum system requirements for DaVinci Resolve on a windows system is 16GB of ram that's a fact also if you ever worked with systems with less than 32 gb of ram you know that working with 4k timelines will cause seemingly random crashes of Resolve because 32 gb are the recommended configuration for a reason!

[@jrsfield]

@@ijob98 yes, 32GB is what you want, or even 64GB if you can. 16GB is workable if you make sure you do not run out, so either tweak the RAM allocation settings in DR or Windows to run minimum stuff in the background to not to crash. The laptop in the video comes with 16GB of RAM. The presenter does not tell us if he upgraded it or not.

[@thefilmfactory4880]

Also, make sure to test it while unplugged!

[@jrsfield]

@@thefilmfactory4880 and while you are at it, try optix rendering in blender and save the results to a usb stick.

[@BreakMan630]

thank you for reviewing. could you try playing actual different streams ? (instead of twice of 4 times the same clip every time). SSD is not doing 4x times the work when pulling 4x one file, and decoding the same file does not out twice of 4x the load on CPU or GPU (it does out more load but it does scale linearly which should be the pint of these tests).

[@badboy350]

Great review Alex. I'm hunting for a new good laptop for davinci resolve. There are some good windows nvidia rtx ones and there is now new mac. We can use optimizations for playback but rendering still matters. RTX cards can do a beastly job doing noise reduction, Speed warp..gpu intensive affects. Rendering is also very fast. Can new macs compete with a rtx rendering time if some I would like to know m1 pro or m1 max.

[@VideoGameKillCounts]

I’d like to see rendering tests too, all my exports are usually 20-40 minutes long and my M1 Mac renders slightly slower than real time, so before I upgrade to M1 Max, I would like to see if RTX is a faster?

[@badboy350]

@@VideoGameKillCounts Yes, everyone is talking about the time line performance. I usually do 1080p time line and then export them to higher 4k. Since Alex was messing around with noise reduction and speed warp I wanted to see how they render. Time is money, or why would you want to spend all that money to upgrade.

[@IslandFilmMaker]

I wasn't that surprised! However I agree!! Using the right settings, no matter what your footage or workflow, can be edited and rendered in DaVinci Resolve 17 (within common sense reasoning).

[@lorenzobald]

Thank you for your tests very close to the real world of editing and color correcting with Davinci Resolve. I’m very interested in a not much discussed topic: HDR workflow using the mini led display of the new macbooks pro, which I understand to be supported in version 17.4 of DVR and in FCPX too. I’d be very pleased if I could watch a video about it. Thanks again.

[@bentonpix]

Blackmagic Design advertises a 5X speed increase with DR 17.4 over previous versions when using the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. Until Alex Jordan shows which version of DaVinci Resolve he's using, these tests are completely meaningless. And if he's using a version of DaVinci lower than 17.4, these tests are not only misleading, but harmful toward making an informed buying decision. Alex, please tell us which DR version you used for these tests. Are Blackmagic's claim of 5X faster with v17.4 on the M1 Pro and Max chips not true? I love your videos and you do a fantastic job explaining things, but this omission is a critical one.

[@LearnColorGrading]

Hi Benton. Its 17.4

[@bentonpix]

​@@LearnColorGrading Thanks Alex! It's been 17.4 for all your M1 Pro and Max tests? I don't want to assume anything.

[@LearnColorGrading]

Yes

[@AB-ub9nd]

Totally agree with you but also notice that they’re both plugged in. Can you run the tests again on battery power alone.

[@TheAverageLife]

Plz share the exact/detailed model of the PC. Thanks for sharing a great video !!

[@TheNationalTrails]

Studio drivers! Excellent. Sometimes CUDA driver updates help as well. Though, likely not on this like-new 2070 Super. ( Thanks for this video. Just thought to share. )

[@PhilippeOrlando]

Wonderful tests, but for a non pro who just wants to edit 4 K out of his GH5 wouldn't you say that a Mini Mac M1 from last year found at $500 on ebay is the best deal?

[@Rogeras32]

You'll be fine, man

[@nicholasboule5134]

Yep, my regular m1 air that was $1600 is blazing fast with h.265 footage.

[@WilliamTurnerViolins]

Interesting regarding the C500 footage, but I also continue to see BMD continuing to improve their software. I'm think a future update may very well improve that result. Part of the equation is that DaVinci Resolve 17.4.1 does provide support for the new encoders, but I think of it closer to a 1.0 release for that feature as the hardware is newly released. Wouldn't be too surprised to see this improve with future patching.

[@MrSoopah]

Very interesting results! Thanks for the test!

[@simonwyndham]

Strikes me that this could well be a software programming issue rather than a difference in computing power. What is the C500 footage like in FCP? Might go some way to eliminating any potential issues within Resolve if it plays back there ok.

[@JoeMaranophotography]

I bought a gaming laptop about a year and a half ago and never looked back! I could not stomach buying an "editing laptop" just for better build quality and screen and paying way more money for a far worse gpu. Plus I game tonnes now lol

[@jrsfield]

I think your laptop screen would have more likely a higher refresh rate and no HDR. Also likely your RAM and OS settings would have a different bias in task priority. If you tweaked it for pro workloads, you would lose some 15-20% gaming performance to add a similar amount to the pro performance.

[@JoeMaranophotography]

@@jrsfield Yeah 144hz and 1080p

[@kjvisual7]

I wonder if the M1 speed gains are based in the use of ProRes. Please try your tests again with transcoded ProRes video. Ya, I know that nobody wants a transcoding workflow. But we should know if there is a major difference if we incorporate ProRes.

[@TimmyAdejumo]

So here's the deal, I see too many people going ohhh the Windows is so much better, it so much cheaper but what most people don't realise is that Macs are so much more durable and have a longer life span; (I haven't seen someone use their PC for over 3-4years and not encounter some form of issues) the battery lasts longer, the fact that you can actually edit when you can't be plugged in plus the screen is one of the best ever all these are wins for the MAC.

[@MichaelSandiford]

Just to say my PC laptop I got in 2017 and use every day is still going great. I'm editing my 6k footage on it as well.

[@ellarpc]

I’m curious how these two would do unplugged. I use my M1 MacBook Air unplugged for the most part

[@jrsfield]

unplugged, the Mac wins every test.

[@RunForPeace-hk1cu]

@@jrsfield but they will never show that … Because laptops … aren’t supposed to be unplugged🤣 These are cherry picked tests to justify his Apple Derangement Syndrome. Plenty of other tests will show a different story. Plus why doesn’t he show test cases where having additional vram benefits? All cpu architectures have their strengths and weaknesses. A unbiased reviewer should showcase BOTH. Not just find test cases where it’s weak. That’s counterproductive It’s ok, ultimately it’s just a ytube channel, apple is gonna sell their mbp14/16 like hotcakes and in real life, people will find them incredible useful and when M2/M3 comes around … Intel/AMD got their hands full.

[@jrsfield]

@@RunForPeace-hk1cu cant agree more. Having said that the M1 hype is pissing me off as for practical use they are pating themselves on the back for achieving performamce we had available 2 years ago. Drawbacks are ignored and the features are cherry picked.

[@bodie_ci5115]

@@RunForPeace-hk1cu “These are cherry picked tests to justify his Apple Derangement Syndrome.” In the video he says he regrets not having used the Razer. Sounded to me like he uses Mac (he also uses iPad Mini in video?).

[@EricTheHiking]

What Razor then would you recommend please ?

[@thatsreallyamoon]

Good tests, keep them coming. I'm glad Apple is making these. Very efficient but strong. Editing on battery seems like a completely viable option now. Maybe when my 3060 desktop and 2060 laptop dies I'll consider an M3 macbook xD

[@ononearts]

Thank you for doing this test. And, there are better pc laptops than that budget Razor, still at much less than the Mac, and with better user-upgradable options for less. Macs are not the be-all and end-all for creative users, and have not been for some years. Apple has done an excellent job in propagandizing that idea through glitzy marketing and case design. People love to believe they have an edge if they pay more but, with Macintosh, it simply isn’t true. It took me years to learn that, but I’m so glad I did. I no longer need over-priced ‘geniuses’ to service my machines.

[@kaneschirmer2782]

Thanks again for showing reality! This is a real world test that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the formats - and admits the price/ performance spec that many are unwilling to accept. It's really a matter of building the system that works best for your needs.

[@truthseeker6804]

the real advantage of the new m1 are the prores videos, theyre optimized for that massively. and thats what most other youtubers keep showing, so unless a regular person has the iphones with prores or records prores videos, theyre not going to get mind blowing result, they would get good results tho.

[@MelnardEdaCinematography123]

Actually some users are using H265 10bit and getting better real time performance with M1 chips than Intel. So your statement is not true.

[@truthseeker6804]

@@MelnardEdaCinematography123 which intel tho? because theres several configurations at different prices. but i would like to watch that video, post the name of the channel i would search and watch it.

[@TheJoseUrena]

@@MelnardEdaCinematography123 you are basing your opinion on "Apple fanboys tech reviewers"? All of them show the same tests vs the same Intels based laptops, they almost seem to be all scripted, but in this video you can see the truth

[@jrsfield]

@@MelnardEdaCinematography123 most people would tell you that the h265 footage is GPU accelerated in Resolve and that Ryzen is to be considered. I you use quicksync on intel, you are right, you would be slow. If you get a top of the line 3080 laptop, the H265 10bit high bitrate video playback performance is about 8% slower than mac, however every other function in resolve is faster. So by the time you get to do something with the clips, you got slower on the mac. Also you should definitely avoid 422 h265 on anything but the latest 30 series GPUs as its not accelerated. It is worth to say though that at 4K these differences do not matter. At 8K though any processing, color, effects, tracking etc is getting really heavy. For consumer/prosumer camera footage and 4K timelines you can get the M1 MAX results with a laptop worth 1.5-2k, in other words you can get the laptop and the camera for the same price as the mac. If you really want to be efficient, you can get a prebuilt desktop for 1300 and be several times faster.

[@jrsfield]

@@TheJoseUrena Its marketing, apple sends test units and asks to include specific topics, like the fact that the new macs are thicker and heavier than the old ones. Every video with the new macs said that, I wonder why. Its a unbelievable hype about features which are not that stellar in 2021, tens of percent slower then current gen top of the line same size laptops like the ProArt. Also lets not forget apple designed the previous gen macbooks thinner for Intel and refused to up the size or cooling and then, surprise surprise, they were slower with i9 than most i7 PCs. Now they shout about quieteness when they got thicker than Razer. Also interested to see the battery performance in a year after professionals using these are going to discharge the batteries at 100W for each cycle.

[@bobceffo]

What did I just watch? I watched it like it was a football match!

[@TheJoseUrena]

Love to see real tests. I was wondering if you did them with a free DaVinci, or with "cuda acceleration" (needs license) on PC, because if that was just with open-cl you will drop your jaw if you enable cuda on that PC

[@Monster_mit_Monsterguss]

Thought the cuda acceleration is enabled in the free version since 17.4 ?!

[@TheJoseUrena]

@@Monster_mit_Monsterguss really? I'm not sure, i cannot confirm nor deny it 🤣!

[@jumpa1972]

Hi, it's the Resolve Studio. Some of the tests, like Speed Warp or the temporal NR, work only in the studio version.

[@TheJoseUrena]

@@jumpa1972 still i'm curious of open-cl vs cuda... cuda is a monster on DaVinci!

[@jrsfield]

@@TheJoseUrena it is enabled now, but not on all timeline actions like in studio. The test though is done with studio otherwise the noise reduction and optical flow tests would not be possible.

[@MikeMarrah]

I've been a PC user for years. Haven't used Apple products since the Steve Jobs days, but with the chip shortage I'm really going to consider a M1 Max Mac Mini whenever that happens.

[@MikeMarrah]

@@AndrewKennethColborn why I would get Mac Mini m1 max? For how much power I'd get for such a small form factor. I think the Mac Mini m1 max will likely actually offer a really attractive price to power ratio, especially with the chip shortage and price increases of high end graphics cards. Because at the end of the day I care alot more about price and performance than I care about brand affiliation. I'm not a 'PC guy'. I'm a 'get what's best, it doesn't matter who made it' guy. I only switched to PC in the first place because Apple has been a disappointment in the areas I care about in recent years, but the M1 Macs are starting to change my mind again.

[@JoshGmit]

Oh good to see that apple hasn´t created a processor/gpu with performance which kills everything of the competition. They are still very good and have their advantages no doubt. Hopefully a vital competition will lead to great improvements on both sides :)

[@jrsfield]

the comparison is between M1 Max and a 2 yo midrange PC with 8GB of VRAM and 16GB RAM, not a top of the line. With all the hype apple is still more than 2 years behind. That is out of the box. When you switch to linux for instance, you get extra 15% with nothing else just swithing OS. You get another extra 10% to get top of the line last gen and yet another extra 20 with current gen gpus. 45% extra on PCs at a price 600 cheaper is saying a lot.

[@JoshGmit]

@@jrsfield I wouldn´t be that pessimistic about the apple silicon. Tests from other channels like "The Verge" definitely see the apple silicon being able to compete with the current gen on pc.

[@jrsfield]

@@JoshGmit Thats the problem with the kind of marketing we see. All early reviewers have had access to HW from apple and were all parroting the same type of remarks, including the battery life of 21H and than in a few seconds saying that you have the same performance unplugged. This makes you feel like you can video edit the whole day, but really if you do you will last a couple of hours. I checked a lot of performance checks online and when you do a like for like comparison, the two year old hardware can really do what the Mac can do. Are there acceleration ASICs on the MAC making it sometimes edge the PC, sure. ProRes is a winner here. slight edge over PC for tensor core (neural engine) type of workload compared to current gen PC, but not much. These however are specific use cases, real life is much more complex than the scripted "reviews" hoping to get the early HW the next time around too.

[@JoshGmit]

@@jrsfield yes the 21H battery is best case when you are not doing much more than writing something in word or so^^ And the whole performance really depends on the workflow. If for example the most annoying part of your workflow is waiting for the export from Final Cut, these new machines are quite capable. Like we see in this video, you are mostly annoyed by bad playback performance of Resolve, Apple Silicon is not your saviour.

[@RunForPeace-hk1cu]

@@jrsfield these are cherry picked tests. No computer can all tests well. Apple is strong in memory BW, h.264/265/ProRes acceleration, lots of vram, multitasking (try switching between apps and doing other work while under load), plus full performance without plugging in. Best in class speakers, trackpad, display, and chassis construction. If you don’t value any of that, go get yourself a pc laptop, it’ll serve you better. It all depends on what you value.

[@Mabeylater293]

Am I right in saying that the issue is with DaVinci resolve not being optimized for the Mac and not the Mac itself?

[@MartinzW]

DaVinci released Mac optimization update recently so it's pretty accurate as far as DaVinci is concerned.

[@jacksonfilm]

Thanks for that. Interesting results.

[@ereceeme]

More than 90% of capability for 50% of the price that is a game changer. Hope you do a comparison with the new i12 cpus from intel ad hopefully the new intel gpus comiug out first quarter 2022

[@peturstefansson]

When you are in the real world. Do you always play your clips for 5-7 seconds

[@joraphpictures]

What's the specification of the PC laptop

[@yahyahudan5894]

Can you count the time of footage render in timeline?

[@TheRealBarkinMadd]

At 3:50 it would seem that the M1 MAX was not playing the hardest color in real-time (it was dropping frames as evidenced by the red fps counter).

[@AgenturMorgenrot]

Unplug bouth machines. These are mobile devices. How long is the battery life? How good is the performance?

[@jrsfield]

if you go for unplugged, no surprise here, the Q4 2021 top of the line MAC is going to obliterate the Q1 2020 midrange Razer Blade. Having said that, you you go for full heavy workload like AI upscaling, you would discharge the battery at 100W on the Mac within about an hour. You cant cheat physics, but can buy a tablet if you want to watch youtube all day unplugged. I used to have a Razer Blade 15 2018 which did not have a good protection against fast discharge of the battery and it killed the battery really quickly when I used it also while video editing. I wonder how quickly will we have youtube discussing M1 macs failing batteries....

[@simonwyndham]

@@jrsfield regarding battery life, I would check out the stress tests the Max Tech guys did on it. The battery still lasted ages despite being pushed to the absolute limits. kzbin.infovideos The power draw never goes anywhere near 100w or even close.

[@jrsfield]

@@simonwyndham I ve seen some Max Tech videos and the methodology they use is sloppy in my opinion. But all in all the bat life for not maxed out use onM1 is great. Just not such a persuasive feature IMO if you compare with all day battery for standard tasks already in existence. Its a matter of diminishing returns. Plus COVID times do kinda erase this need too.

[@simonwyndham]

@@jrsfield If you are going to accuse someone of sloppy methodology you'd have to quantify that. Besides, the findings of Max Tech are not outliers. To dismiss power use is a big mistake. Remember, these chips will be making their way into Mac Pro towers. Right at this time the heat generated from computers and the power they take is a huge contributor to global warming. Reducing power loading is a very, very good thing indeed, particularly when generally you are getting faster processing in return. Related to that is the fact that the fans don't kick in very often. If you do anything to do with voice over for videos this is also a big deal.

[@jrsfield]

@@simonwyndhamre max tech, they ignore basic facts on pc, such as if you do not set your gaming gpu up with the studio driver, you will be 15+ % slower in creator workflows, or that if you compare a laptop with its main feature being a convertible with pen support to a creator tuned machine on a videoediting workflow you would get obvious results. Re pwr use, am not dismissimg it, its important especially in laptops as you can only get as much performamce as you can cool. But if you wanted low power, go for a tablet. When you speak global warming regarding laptops topping 230w, maybe you should organize a protest on front of film studios as they are using desktops at 1600w a piece or better, on front of google as their cloud is burming as much electricity in each dayacenter as aid size city. Hows that for global warming when you speal of youtube's backend. Oh and macPro's are not going to be running of a 100W power brick, just sayin' Re soumd, you should try nvidia broadcast. I love the fact that I can be in a busy place and have a conf call regardless of the noise or backround music. But if quiet space is what you are after, use nvidia whisper and it gets really quiet and your bramd new pc will be as quiet and only as powerfull as a mac. You know some laptops are using sofisticated airflows and vapour chambers while apple was using a single heatpipe even with a i9. They have mamaged to do quite a lot for a second attempt at this, but still a long way to go.

[@slkadv]

Are the laptops plugged in for power? I would very much like to see how they are doing on battery power as I edit a lot on the go

[@TechnoViel]

You can see they are both connected. And you can hear the fans of the Wintel system :-)

[@ghsnyc]

on the Mac it does not make a difference if it's on power or not. On PC, from what I've seen, they loose a lot of speed. But I don't know about this specific laptop.

[@slkadv]

@@ghsnyc this is why I am asking. Currently I use a Windows laptop and they loose a lot of speed when not plugged in. I was just wandering how much compared to the mac

[@jrsfield]

@@slkadv if you do not want to loose that much speed and don t care about the longevity of your battery, its possible to have a much faster setting on a PC running on a battery, almost the same as plugged in. I tried it once on a PC I had, but destroyed my battery within a few months of consistent use.

[@arijit276]

I have the same razor laptop. Feels good that it can hold up to the m1 max despite being From 2019.

[@markschultze]

With any kind of equipment that needs electricity, draws power variably depending on its load... laptops, welding machines etc.etc. it's as much abot the 'duty cycle' as the actual power under the hood. Macs may be powerful on paper, but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans if after 30 seconds they start to throttle back because they can't stay cool. Gaming machines, gaming laptops especially are designed to have a 100% duty cycle..... they are basically rendering 100% of the time games are played on them, and gamers play for hours on end, days even..... the machines are designed to keep up and to do it reliably so it comes as no surprise to me whatsoever that a gaming laptop does well in your tests. In my experience, most Mac users are Mac users because they're not particularly technically minded, I've owned Macs in the past but a correctly optimised Windows machine will always make a Mac look overpriced, and often overhyped.

[@ericveschi4904]

In summary, NVIDIA GPU and drivers helps a lot for video decompression in real time. They are built for that. It's why you have a difference when you applied FX, because often it's on the processor. If you don't have check GPU acceleration. It's why I'm using only gamer PC, it's expensive, but cheaper than a MAC for better performance in reading video files. And you can imagine with the high end GPU like RTX3080TI, play back video in real time won't be a problem at all. But I agree, you need time to find a non aggressive design on PC. Mine is a Gigabyte aero 15X v8 with a calibrated monitor. And you can't guess it's a gamer PC ^^ To finish. My 2 SSD goes to more than 8000MBPS. and for video playback it's very important. Maybe the SSD in the Mac aren't high end SSD

[@motionfxes]

You don't need 1/10 of those SSDs speeds to playback that footage. There are no bottlenecks here, it's just raw power: the M1 Max is just not as powerful as a 2070 or better.

[@SheldonNG]

m1 max ssd is 7000MB/s

[@motionfxes]

@@SheldonNG only the bigger ones are as fast. But as I said, this can't be the reason why those PCs are faster.

[@paulbeckmann]

THANKS FOR THE GREAT TEST!

[@langdonlycroft704]

The m1 Mac almost made me switch, then I saw the gagabyte aero 15 and realised that as good as that laptop is, it's simply not the most powerful thing you can get for the money. I still like that from what I hear you can edit on it and get many hours of battery life off the Mac. And I work with 6k footage so I'm really trying to figure out if it's better to have the speed of a pc or the increased graphics memory from the mac

[@RavenXplod]

Sir please do a few render tests between M1 Max and Razer

[@dimitrimoonlight]

Can you compare with Gigabyte 15.6" AERO 15 Mobile Workstation RTX3080?

[@tresderan10]

but whu then pthers can play it without issues on mac? and also you don't talk about heat vents and wattage.. and also you have to try final cut on mac.. tha plays 6k no issues.. i think you should be more accurate in a way..

[@this_time_imperfect]

I think the real story here is how terrible the Intel Macs have been for the last 10 years. The M1 finally makes them a viable competitor to a well equipped PC, and thats good for everyone. I'll stick with PC for now, I value reliability and reparability more than anything. The fact that if you have a failure with any new Mac, Apple is the only one who can fix it, it's gone for 7 to 14 days before getting fixed, and all your data is wiped by Apple. If I have a failure on a PC I can pull the SSD and slap it in another PC and keep working.

[@thefilmfactory4880]

It would be interesting if you did the test with both systems unplugged. We all know by now that the macs would perform exactly the same regardless. Not the case for windows machines

[@360Link]

Thrue, but it will last only 1-2 hours when you are working this heavy for Mac and then it needs to be plugged so no real advantage🤔

[@kjvisual7]

@ShortCircuit Maybe the Linus Tech Tips team can test the Mac's M1 and verify if it is truly faster in everything, especially Resolve. I really want to believe it is and switch back to the Mac.

[@ginotarabotto]

While I love speed, I absolutely love the ease of the Apple ecosystem. I don't think I will ever buy a Windows computer. Each to their own of course.

[@Noammats]

Did Black Magic make an M1 optimized Davinci version yet?

[@Kluttzv]

Yes

[@melaniodanilosindayen9011]

You need to also check power consumption and heat. Also put other programs running in the background to stress RAM then you can check if the PC is really optimized. Maybe use Chrome with 20 tabs. Then Photoshop with 10 pictures...

[@jrsfield]

it takes a long time to really optimize a PC. You would be likely repasting with liquid metal, using a better RAM kit to up to 64GB and XMP, reinstalling windows without bloatware or switch to linux, change boost settings to all core 3.7Ghz to avoid throttling, Use a faster SSD etc. The difference could be vast. Having said all of that, Mac would win that sort of a test as it has 64GB of RAM while the blade only has 16.

[@laurentiudll]

i dont get it why is he surprised when the pc can play the canon file..pc uses real components that actually draw power, produce heat, and perform accordingly. all that for a fraction of a price, and its not even the high end pc

[@cyanogen7582]

That's what happens when you get good drivers for the gpu haha.

[@Abhshkraj]

Laptops are the new PCs? I'm pretty sure a 1/2 price PC desktop should blow it out of the stratosphere 🤣 I've two PCs one laptop another desktop. The Ryzen5 3500U laptop with Vega 8 and 24GB RAM can do editing and colour grading and for anything heavy the desktop with RYZEN 5 & RX580 can get me through anything I through at it.

[@seashellwanderers456]

The m2 max will have roughly 30% gpu and 15% CPU improvement if they base it off the A15 so yeah closer and closer to the current PC. Laptop are obsoleting PC unless you do a lot of commercial or intensive editing

[@MakeKasprzak]

Thank you!

[@akcivan]

so m1 products are still not close to pc components

[@actnreact1321]

Any professional davinci users out here that could help me i just bought a brand new pc with a 3950x and 3090 gpu all my drivers are up to date and everything my footage runs like shit!!! im also using basic gameplay footage and the timeline scrubbing is still super choppy with QUARTER resulution on and its the studio version 😭

[@melenchonlecon]

What’s the codec ? The quality ? The edits you made (color, noise reduction…) ? I don’t know a lot about davinci resolve but more informations will allow me to help you 🙂

[@melenchonlecon]

If it’s h.264/265 go to settings and use nvidia decode hardware acceleration, some people say it can give you 60% performances more !

[@imiy]

If it stutters at the beginning, it's not realtime

[@vigneshsrao]

The real test is when you hv multi apps/windows opened … test it the way how Max Tech does it.. then u’ll see the real PCs capabilities (or I should say lack lustre performance)

[@jrsfield]

M1 handles background tasks differently, automatically lowers their priority. If you want to export a video on a M1 and switch to a browser in the meantime, the performance in DR lowers very significantly. The PC has more raw power, so would be reacting at similar speeds, but will not slow down the background tasks.

[@vigneshsrao]

@@jrsfield pls chk max tech videos… ur theory is proven wrong

[@vigneshsrao]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d52UgHSdbqycpJo

[@jrsfield]

@@vigneshsrao just to underline that there are obvious differences look at mac tech's braw test, he is getting 55FPS from BRAW at 6K which is not really reaching anywhere near to what we see in this video. I d say that guy has no clu how to use DR on a PC. But it also underlines a different important fact, you have to know what you are doing if you use DR with a PC whereas Macs work pretty much out of the box and that is the extra you are paying for. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gH6VaJSKbtabkMU

[@vigneshsrao]

@@jrsfield moral of the story PC vs MAC debate continues…But not for long! Apple chips are just getting started.. 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@dodman0907153500]

...and keep in mind these are absolute bottom of the barrel pc specs not even remotely suited for serious workstation...

[@LaplantFilm]

💎💎💎💎💎

[@FTMuisikTV]

Unplug the PC and you'll see the PC drop in performance. Mac will perform the same regardless

[@jrsfield]

for how long? M1 is a 100W computer, is 1h enough? Also PCs at 100W are still not slouches, but it kills the batteries really quick, Lion bats are not made for that kind of discharge rate.

[@DaCarnival]

These results are just too weird, especially the Canon RAW, to not think there is something suspicious going on under the hood. Since there is no visible difference between the render being set to "full res resolve" and "full res Canon" (at least on this laptop screen) are we certain the PC version of Resolve isn't just bypassing this setting? Maybe the Canon driver isn't installed by default on the PC version of Resolve? It's just hard to believe since it's essentially a background-affecting setting that's being used to stress-test - it can't be evaluated on screen.

[@carlostamaoki4567]

I was going to mention the same, pc graphics drivers are well known to incorporate optimizations at the driver level that often can't be turned off.