Final Cut Performance on M1 vs M2 vs Intel | macbook pro apple silicon worth it | FCPX | chronox

hey what's up guys wel back to the channel on to episode we're going to be talking about technology and how quickly it advances okay and is it worth your money to actually buy the top spec line item right and then you know hold out longer until the next Generation next next next Generation comes up where you have to upgrade or do you just get the middle of the line or the bottom line item and just upgrade every generation right that's what seems to happen nowadays right so nowadays technology seems to advance so quickly there's so much competition driving Innovation all that kind of fun stuff it seems like every time any anybody releases something marketing is really good at doing their job and trying to tell you exactly why you need the top speec one right or how much better it is than the previous generation right so a lot of that stuff may be important but on today's episode we're going to be talking about Apple Computers right but more specifically around their MacBook lineup okay so for me uh I personally use these uh MacBooks uh to edit videos and post them online obviously for like a video like this right A lot of people may use to do a bunch of other stuff I'm going to go ahead and tell you if you're trying to find a video that has full spec detailed comparison of every single laptop like that this is not the video for you who this video is for is if you want to know does upgrading MacBook laptops for the use of Final Cut Pro really worth the money and pretty much maybe which spec model you would want to get for that then you want to stick with us mainly because we're going to be taking the latest version of Final Cut Pro on each computer that's possibly out right now and and then we're going to be using an app called Chrono X to export those projects and then time them and figure out how that really goes okay so we did purchase all these lot Toops their own monies we did purchase the app uh all this stuff we did edit all these videos and stuff like that so none of this video sponsored nobody gave it to us this is just for our own understanding and hopefully it helps you out in case you did want to know okay so with that being said I'm going to go ahead and say all the footage that's edited on these uh Final Cut projects are exactly the same CU it's the same project is copied into all the laptops and they were all recorded on an iPhone 12 Mini at 4K at 60 HZ okay so uh if that's what the rare footage is we'll eventually just throw up a graph and we can talk about the results at the end but the laptops we're going to be comparing is the M1 Max right I think it has like 64 gigs of rams and all that kind of fun stuff and then the M2 Pro and the M2 Max and then we're going to figure out how does that really work and then we're going to be taking a comparison to an Intel i7 2016 based laptop uh to figure out you know how much of a leap and performance was gained by moving to these newer laptops right or if it was gained at all right personally speaking I think it was because I can feel the performance uh in just every day using the computer whatnot and editing especially it's huge difference so but we don't know the numbers right so that's what we're here to find out so if that's what you want to know stick with us mus music all right so what you guys just saw was the same Final Cut project being copied to all the machines and then we used you know after everything's been background rendered and that kind of fun stuff we used Chrono X to do the export of the projects all right so the data that we're looking at here is purely just the export time of the projects and the footage we used was uh footage that we we were editing for another video but it was shot on iPhone 12 mini 4K 60 HZ okay so let's go ahead and take a look the first machine we ran it on was the M1 Max uh this machine is a performance cor two efficiency cores but 32 GPU cores okay 16 cores of the neural engine and we used the latest version of the OS available for each machine and also the latest version of Final Cut available for each machine okay so the first run took 5.15 second or 5.15 minutes the second run took 5.1 minutes averaging 5.12 right then moving on to the M2 machines let's look at the M2 Pro first uh this one is also running 144 and 1071 for Final Cut eight eight performance core four efficiency cores so that's two additional efficiency cores but this machine only has 19 GPU cores all right uh it also 16 just gigs of memory so not complete apples apples but you know let's go take a look uh the first run 2.31 minutes second one 2.3 minutes averaging 2305 minutes all right uh so that's almost 100% Improvement or 50% Improvement depending on which way you're looking at the numbers but it's you know over two times faster than than the M1 Max all right so looking at the M2 Max let's go take a look at that uh the main difference here is that this has 38 GPU cores at 96 gigs of memory on this machine so the first run uh 2.13 minutes the second run 2.21 minutes all right so averaging the two took 2.1 minutes this machine and or all of these machines so far ran it on uh 1071 and 144 of OSX so if you want to take take a look at the numbers let's go take a look at what the biggest difference here was right the biggest difference between the M1 Max and the M2 is probably pretty much the generation of machines right they all have eight performance cores the M2 pro has two additional efficiency cores right but this uh even with 19 GPU cores down or 19 GPU cores versus the 32 GPU cores and less memory it is still two times faster on the export of this media okay so if you look at the m 2ax which has the same number of uh CPU cores right but it has all uh more than two times or two time uh double as many GPU corers and more memory it did gain an efficiency Improvement in terms of Time Performance but it was not significant right yes I guarantee you if you're using like red footage or or uh 8K or any of that of stuff that's heavier than let's say 4K 60 HZ a shot on an iPhone then yes you'll probably see a huge Gap here but in terms of the footage that we're using it's not a huge difference here right the biggest difference here was really gain from jumping from an M1 to an M2 platform right so if you're really trying to answer well you know how does all this perform if you're on an Intel machine well let's go take a look at that right so we ran it on the Intel uh i7 based machine and this machine is from 2016 and we ran the latest version of the OS available which is 1274 uh this machine obviously doesn't have all those efficiency course and that kind of stuff but it is running in Radeon a Radeon Pro 455 at 2 gigs and it does have 16 gigs of memory on the computer all right this machine also runs 1068 of Final Cut and it is the latest version available for this machine I'm throwing this in with a disclaimer mainly because when you're downloading final cutter updating it says there's a later version available but you can't download it for this machine uh because it doesn't support or you need a later version of the OS and the OS and this is the lat version available so you know there's some argument that 107 has a huge software improvements but it won't matter to this machine because you won't be able to get that on this machine okay so looking at the numbers first run 12.19 uh Second Run 1347 averaging 12.83% video editing or exporting the answer to that question is definit yes even if you go with an M1 based machine right but if you are going to uh upgrade from an i Intel based machine to a apple silicon based machine I would highly encourage you to go with the M2 based machine mainly because M2 based machines um on the recertified Market from Apple recertified you can get them from roughly around you know uh I would say I sell them for about 15 to 2,000 maybe starting depending on the effect that you pick would be a huge Improvement and if that's how you know you're doing work all the time that huge Improvement is going to be realized very quickly right uh while we're talking about that uh the numbers here are only export times right but the other things you need to take away from this is there is background rendering import performance you know summarized performance all the efficient uh uh uh you know summarization icons and all that stuff right that all stuff is a huge Improvement can tell you immediately off the back uh just workflow improvements are huge going from the I uh Intel based machines to the Apple silicon based machines um if you're trying to answer should you go from an M1 to an M2 based Machin you know that's really going to be depending on you right sure the uh performance is I would say probably double right in terms of export performance right but is the cost really worth it uh only you can answer that right because it depends on how much of this work that you're really doing right if you're doing occasionally probably not but if you're doing it a lot or if you're using much heavier footage uh media then the answer is probably yes right um so we're going to have to figure out what this performance looks like when we get an M3 based machine we just don't have one of those right now uh this M2 these M2 machines right here I know they've been out for a little bit but we've actually purchased it this year right in 2024 so you're not getting a huge uh decrease in performance right we'll have a better answer for that when we test an M3 machine right but if you're trying trying to figure out did we hold out a long time from a 2007 based machine to to a M1 Max machine we did right and was the performance worth it when we upgraded to the M1 most definitely Final Cut was using so much better um it didn't sound like we had a rocket ship in the room and all that kind of stuff so you know hopefully this video helped you guys out answering some of these questions but uh like I said keep in mind the footage we're using as iPhone 12 uh shot footage and it's 4K 60 HZ I know a lot of people are using a heavy your denser uh more clear or HD type footage or even 8K right so um and the codec you're going to be using are actually really important here so like I said these numbers are normalized to as much as I could get them to so uh hopefully like I said this video helped you guys out if you have questions let us know otherwise have a great day and we'll see you guys next time oh