Will I see meaningful benefits in processing speed?

Hi everyone,


I am looking to purchase a new iMac to improve the speed at which I can edit photographs in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. I work as a professional photographer and edit thousands of images a month.


I currently use the following specification MacBook Pro


Processor: 2.6 GHz-6-Core Intel Core i7

Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4GB ,Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Memory: 16 GB 266 MHz DDR4


I am looking at purchasing an iMac with the following specs:


  • Apple M3 chip with 8‑core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, 10‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine
  • 512GB SSD storage
  • 16GB unified memory


It may seem like a stupid question but could I expect to see a signatificant improvement in the speed at which specifically Adobe lightroom might be able to run and or process images with this kind of upgrade?


Thanks for your time.

Ben



MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.4

Posted on Jul 31, 2024 7:22 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 31, 2024 8:08 PM

It's not a stupid question at all. Comparing the M series to the Intel CPU is not straightforward since their architectures have absolutely nothing in common.


Having said that, the M3 iMac you are considering will run rings around your present iMac. It will be approximately twice as fast. Given your profession I would strongly consider more than 512 GB storage though. Even 1 TB isn't that much any more, and it's only an additional $200 US.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 31, 2024 8:08 PM in response to Blphoto87

It's not a stupid question at all. Comparing the M series to the Intel CPU is not straightforward since their architectures have absolutely nothing in common.


Having said that, the M3 iMac you are considering will run rings around your present iMac. It will be approximately twice as fast. Given your profession I would strongly consider more than 512 GB storage though. Even 1 TB isn't that much any more, and it's only an additional $200 US.

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Will I see meaningful benefits in processing speed?

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