Hello! I’m trying to figure out what kind of chipset/shared RAM would best suit a given scenario. There are two graphic-intensive things I use my current setup for (late 2019 i9 32GB MBP), and both seriously drive the Activity and CPU/GPU nuts slowing everything down to molasses.

  1. I regularly need to use three screens for work. The built-in retina display, an external monitor, and a 65" Promethean board (a Promethean board is similar to a SmartBoard). All three need different information on them. Currently, I need to downsize the resolution on the external monitor to avoid lag/freezing.

  2. I do a fair amount of video editing using Final Cut Pro. I’m not importing 4K video, but I do regularly need to combine several 3-5GB video files into several multi-cam clips. The background tasks often slow the process down. While scrolling the timeline view to insert titles the audio track preview (waveform) doesn’t render for several minutes.

My questions are how to avoid this on a future laptop. Would the extra GPU cores on the M2 chips do a better job with these tasks or is this a CPU issue? Would there be a noticeable difference between the Pro and Max chips and/or 32GB versus 64GB? Ideally, I would like to be running both Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro at the same time.

Thanks in advance for any replies. The new shared RAM has me scratching my head.

  • @smitty825
    8•1 year ago

    I’d prioritize as much RAM as you can afford. It’s shared between the CPU and GPU, and since you seem to have tasks that stress both, extra RAM would be beneficial.

    Both the pro and max SoCs can support 2 external displays (max can support 4). The Max has more GPU cores, so some of your workflows will benefit from that.

    Oh…check to make sure that your displays will work with a pro: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213503

    • @nuachtanOP
      1•1 year ago

      Thanks a bunch! I will definitely play to max the RAM on whichever chip I go with. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t have the same lag issues as I do now.