MBP14" 32GB/1TB or 16GB/2TB for Design?

[Add-Delay]

Now that the dust is well and truly settled on the M1Pro Macbook Pros - what's the general consensus now on whether it's better to sink money into RAM or SSD capacity? I've aware of the Max Tech videos which point towards SSD and relying on virtual memory to pick up the space, but that doesn't seem to have been backed up by any other source.

I'm a graphic designer looking to upgrade from an 8yo iMac. My eye is on the base model 14" (8 core CPU) with either 16GB RAM and a 2TB SSD, or 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. It would certainly be nice to have the extra storage and never have to worry about external drives, and having plenty of scratch disk available is handy, but do wonder whether the extra RAM is more beneficial.

Primary use is Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop, but I also make a fair bit of use of Lightroom CC and increasingly dipping into After Effects for motion graphics. How are people with similar use cases finding it?

 

[brerlappin]

As a fellow designer, I’d go with the 32GB of RAM. The unified memory is split between the CPU, GPU and neural engine so if you run all the Adobe apps at once - many of which have GPU acceleration - it’ll be smoother than the 16GB.

You can always get external drives or a NAS for storage which can be used for scratch disks as well.

 

[jav6454]

Yo with higher memory. With respect to storage space, should you need more, you add it via external drives.

 

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It would be nice to avoid the external drives - it's just another thing to carry around, and it's not like I can spread our Dropbox across both the internal and external drives, it has to be one or the other (I do use smart sync ATM, but I'd rather not have to continue babysitting it by constantly syncing and unsyncing files).

Is it really such a performance hit using the SSD as virtual memory instead of the extra RAM, despite the much higher speeds they do these days? I'll certainly take the advice though if it's a significant difference.

 

[brerlappin]

You might be able to go with the new Air with 24GB and 2TB… but you‘ll loose some of the benefits of the 14” like the screen, speakers etc

 

[Jodeo]

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
— Spock. (or someone, who knows anymore?)

 

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I am leaning now towards the 32GB/1TB option now given the feedback. Is there much real world difference between the 8core M1 Pro and the 10core? With most of the CC suite GPU accelerated, I assume the extra CPU cores really only show up for things like video export times?

 

[brerlappin]

I would go 10 CPU and however much GPU cores your budget allows.

As of the April 2022 update, Photoshop is using more multicore processes than before

 

[jav6454]

I am leaning now towards the 32GB/1TB option now given the feedback. Is there much real world difference between the 8core M1 Pro and the 10core? With most of the CC suite GPU accelerated, I assume the extra CPU cores really only show up for things like video export times?

Upgrades should be prioritize depending on what your workload is. However, 8C or 10C GPU is not much for photography given that the M1 Pro has RAW accelerators.