Time to upgrade from the M1 to the M4 Studio

[Eric]

My impression is that anything using the SOC's specialty hardware for accelerating de/encoding won't see a ton of difference between the M1 and M4. But CPU (and GPU) heavy tasks definitely should, including rendering (and software encoding/decoding rather than hardware). So that's unfortunate that @Eric isn't seeing better results there.

Right and it appears that Adobe Premier Pro it forces Metal GPU acceleration, which is what I would want to leave it at anyway but there are no options to experiment and change it with silicon based chips apparently.

 

[dada_dave]

Right and it appears that Adobe Premier Pro it force Metal GPU acceleration, which is what I would want to leave it at anyway but there are no options to experiment and change it with silicon based chips apparently.

I’m afraid this is way out of my wheelhouse. I just saw some other people with a similar upgrade likewise complaining while others saw good improvements depending on workflow with the lack of advancement in de/encoding engine performance (capabilities have increased in terms of how many types of codecs can be used) implicated as the main culprit. But again this is beyond my experience entirely.

 

[Eric]

I’m afraid this is way out of my wheelhouse. I just saw some other people with a similar upgrade likewise complaining while others saw good improvements depending on workflow with the lack of advancement in de/encoding engine performance (capabilities have increased in terms of how many types of codecs can be used) implicated as the main culprit. But again this is beyond my experience entirely.

To be fair it definitely improves workflow, if nothing else by not constantly crashing due to high memory/CPU usage. So I can keep PS and Lightroom open at the same time and perform other tasks while large renders are going on if I like (this doesn't impact rendering speed either way in my testing). I think that's probably as good as I can ask for all considering, it was still worth the upgrade for me.

 

[cbum]

I can keep PS and Lightroom open at the same time and perform other tasks while large renders are going on

Consider: doesn't this sound like the difference between benchmark wins vs real workflow wins?
Which is more important?

So I have to agree with your conclusion it was worth it...

 

[KingOfPain]

To be fair it definitely improves workflow, if nothing else by not constantly crashing due to high memory/CPU usage.

Slightly off-topic, but this reminds me, when my father complained that Fotos repeatedly crashed on his aging iMac (with Sandybridge CPU), but he didn't want to buy a new computer, because he might die soon.
After he complained again that Fotos crashed six times in a row, I almost immediately ordered an iMac M1 for him, and he has been happy since then.
What is worse than a computer that takes a long time to do its job? A computer that constantly crashes and therefore doesn't finish its job.

While it's unfortunate that you didn't get the speed upgrade you were hoping for (with good reason, that machine must have cost you quite a bit of money), the good news is that it at least finishes the job and you can do something else on it while it's rendering.
It didn't rise to your expectations, but at least it solved your main problem, namely the crashing.