M3 iMac vs Intel iMac - you won’t BELIEVE this!

I knew this would kick off some debate 😉 Who’s still rocking (and loving) a 27-inch iMac?

It’s possible that the difference in export time is due to the 32gb vs the 8gb on the M1 & M3. I would be interested to compare the M3 with 16GB to your 27” or simply remove some memory from your 27” and drop that down to 16GB vs the 8gb. I have a suspicion that the results will tell a different story.

I've certainly no desire to abandon my perfectly functional iMac 27 (2017). But I have no doubt Apple and Adobe are working hard to render it unusable as soon as they can.

The bandwidth is the problem. The 8GB is causing at least 5GB to be shifted to the SSD, which on a 256GB model runs much slower dues to bandwidth constriction than a 512GB or 1TB drive. Increasing the RAM to 16GB would solve the export problem as that process is memory intensive. The base models are intended for folks who aren't doing what you're doing, per se. And Apple wants people to upgrade the SSD and RAM because of the extreme markup they charge.

I loved this comparison, as I had an 27-5K iMac and recently upgraded to an M1 Max Studio for editing purposes. And my experience matches this. Renders are faster, but exports are about the same. However, I am fine with this. I export only 4-5 times per project and usually do that overnight. But I render continuously throughout the edit process. So overall I save huge amounts of time with better render speeds.

Your tests show that the render is processor dependent, while the export is memory dependent. I'd love to see you do the tests on 16gb m1s and m3s.

Great test thanks. I went for a refurb 2020 27" to replace my 2017 a few months ago.. I've upgraded the RAM to 32gb. I would have considered the M3 however the smaller screen put me off.

I have the last 2020 iMac 27" with 3.6GHz 10-core i9, AMD Pro 5700XT 16GB graphics and 128GB RAM. This replaced a 2011 i7 and I figured it would have to last a LONG TIME, so I got the biggest they had at the time. The fact I could upgrade from the base 8GB RAM to 128GB on my own was a major plus!! I do some video with Avid & DaVinci, but mostly audio post-production for Radio, TV & Film running ProTools, etc. This iMac will stay with me for a long time. BTW, our studios have MacStudio and MacPro Towers throughout the facility, along with some really BIG rendering farms, and I still like my iMac better!! THANKS for the "real world" review!!

My background is in software development and I worked for a few Mac software companies, so when Apple announced they we're going to switch to their own chip I immediately bought a new 27" iMac with Intel i9 chip. I'm still daily driving that computer and it is as fast as M1 and M2 Mac for my audio work. I would buy a new iMac if they still made the 27" or bigger model. The iMac is a great Mac and Apple needs to bring back large screen iMacs.

It’s the total production time that really counts and also agree if it was the 16GB Unified Memory version with 512GB SSD it probably be a lot different result Great Video Mark

As some of the other comments have mentioned, system RAM and overall process times should be factored into the equation when comparing products. Otherwise it's an Apples to Oranges issue. Additionally, there were i7 and i9 iMacs available before the switch to M-series CPU/GPUs. Each has their own cost to performance equations. All-in-all, I like what I see in the Apple silicon machines. In the world of computers, there is yet to be anything called perfect. Still, we continue toward that goal. Good video.

I love my 2020 intel iMac. It runs sonoma and works well. I also don’t want to reduce real estate to 24 inches. I’ll wait for an upgrade. Great video as always!

Would be interesting to see if you run the export test on all machines 3 times over just to see if the numbers vary, would also like to see the test ran on Davinci Resolve, willing to bet a dramatic improvement..., but great video as always..

I think the issue is the SSD, we all know that the read and write speeds on the 512 gig are much faster.

A useful and practical test, thank you. I’d also be interested in the results of the same test on a Mac Mini M2, as I’m considering this upgrade from my iMac 27”…

Great testing video. Export times were close, but Render times were amazingly better for the newer models. Total time spent to complete the task still benefits the M3 iMac.

The M1 was the only chip in the M family to not get the full hardware encode/decode engine with the full FPGA on the chip, the M1 Pro & Max and M2/M3 families all got that extra little boost. Also Modern encoders since 2015 have made HEVC or H265 the standard so no one (developers) works on rendering performance for H264 anymore. The Radeon 575X can render HEVC footage just have a quick test of that and you will really see the differences. But sadly the poor little original M1 didn't get the hardware encode/decode option but every chip after it did.

Great video as always Mark - would it be possible to do an M1 vs M3 comparison in day to day work? For example, does Safari load quicker, how many tabs are okay in Chrome, MS Office performance etc. Most other tech reviews focus on Cinebench scores, rendering, photo editing etc., things which very few people actually use the iMac for (or are hard to translate for real world use). If you took that approach and tested along those lines, you'd definitely be setting yourself apart from others.

That was intriguing and I do worry about support. Hoping a video on the “Pro” versions of the M series may make some budget decisions as the “middle ground” to getting performance but not spending Max level budget.

Besides RAM, it could primarily be due to the different control of the SSDs. If I understood correctly, with Apple Silicon, the control of the SSD is such that you only get the full performance starting from 512 GB (internal this are two 256 GB Flash and double)