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The new Apple MBP M1 MAX, fully configured, is impressive with Resolve. I think with optimization turned on, it will perform pretty well for even demanding projects. However, to get it to such configuration, I heard him say it's about $5000USD.

I don't mind the laptop form factor but I would have preferred it on a Mac Mini version. I also think that for $3000USD, I can build me a super duper Windows workstation with an RTX 3090 discrete GPU, a decent CPU, and 64Gb of RAM with a DecLink 4K mini monitor. If I spend $5000USD, I could have either added a 27" HDR monitor to it, or instead of an HDR monitor, I could have a Threadripper ad possibly a decent monitor. And regardless which of these build I would do, it surely will run circles against the MBP M1 MAX, or not?

Is this a matter of hardware solution or could Resolve be developed so it will be more performant even on a base computer too?

What do you guys think?

I think you are paying for portability and an exceptional display (for a portable device).

Also - because of the shared memory, you won't run out of GPU memory as often as you will with a card with only 11 GB of VRAM (I know it sounds crazy but if you do a lot of Fusion effects it will gobble-up the memory like there's no tomorrow).

Ellory Yu wrote: What do you guys think?

Hi.

On the day after tomorrow, on November 4th will Intel launch the next gen Alder Lake CPU.
It will support the leading-edge DDR5 Ram and PCIe 5.0 standards, that offer a big increase in throughput. And it is also 15% faster in Windows 11 benchmark leaks. Here is a link:

'Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Benchmarks Leaked: Faster Than The Apple M1 Max:'

https://wccftech.com/intel-alder-lake-m ... x-11980hk/


AMD has one CPU architecture group and two implementation groups, and have planed two new CPU generations next year.
One in Q1, where AMD will implement 3D-Vcache in the top Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs, increasing performance around 15%.
And introduce Zen 4 with DDR5 Ram and PCIe 5.0 in Q3.


And it is expected that nVidea will launch Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080 Refresh in this winter. Here is a link:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/high- ... for-winter

And finally Intel will launch its gaming GPU in Q1.

A lot of things will happen in the coming months.

Regards Carsten.

Steve Alexander wrote:I think you are paying for portability and an exceptional display (for a portable device).

Also - because of the shared memory, you won't run out of GPU memory as often as you will with a card with only 11 GB of VRAM (I know it sounds crazy but if you do a lot of Fusion effects it will gobble-up the memory like there's no tomorrow).

Correct. Not sure why OP is comparing a desktop solution to a laptop.

mpetech wrote:

Steve Alexander wrote:I think you are paying for portability and an exceptional display (for a portable device).

Also - because of the shared memory, you won't run out of GPU memory as often as you will with a card with only 11 GB of VRAM (I know it sounds crazy but if you do a lot of Fusion effects it will gobble-up the memory like there's no tomorrow).

Correct. Not sure why OP is comparing a desktop solution to a laptop.

I’m not comparing a desktop solution to a laptop. I’m saying what would be a better value if I have to spend as much as $5K on a solution today. Everyone I know will have their opinion on this.

Hi.

On November 4th will Intel launch its next generation Alder Lake. As seen on top of this link will the CPU arrive in 3 different dies. One for Desktop, one for Mobile and one for Ultra Mobile.

https://pokde.net/system/pc/cpu/12th-ge ... windows-11

I don't know when the first laptops with the Mobile version of Alder Lake will arrive.
May be Intel will tell us more on the 4th. But even if it have higher performance, than the Apple M1 MAX, do I expect it to be substantiel cheaper and with the possibility to select one from your favorit brand.

Regards Carsten.

Ellory Yu wrote:

mpetech wrote:

Steve Alexander wrote:I think you are paying for portability and an exceptional display (for a portable device).

. I’m saying what would be a better value if I have to spend as much as $5K on a solution today. Everyone I know will have their opinion on this.

Like people are telling you, Portability the way marketers have pretended Laptops can work unplugged sitting on a beach editing and rendering. With windows laptops with a powerful GPU they will often have 2 power states, 1 for battery and full power mode plugged in.

An rtx3080 in battery mode doesn't behave the same, you may not be able to playback in real time a timeline containing noise reduction, magic mask, optical flow, and smart render will also take much longer, even though that would not be a problem plugged in.

With new M1's you don't have that problem and have plenty of battery life (I have neither btw, but it seems this is the advantage from what I've seen)

Ellory Yu wrote:Is this a matter of hardware solution or could Resolve be developed so it will be more performant even on a base computer too?

Davinci Resolve recently had a major speed gain on M1 chips, as of current version 17 it is still not fully optimized to take max advantage of M1 chips like many other programs have done it, one such program is Final Cut Pro.

In next version 18 we can hope code optimization will happen & Resolve can be much faster on M1 chips making full use of Its performance cores. As of now most functions are seeking GPU power & not much utilizing the available CPU & RAM hence not so efficient.

Ideally a newer M1 Mini Pro/Max models will make a much better investment sometime next year when they are released.

Ellory Yu wrote:I don't mind the laptop form factor but I would have preferred it on a Mac Mini version. I also think that for $3000USD, I can build me a super duper Windows workstation with an RTX 3090 discrete GPU, a decent CPU, and 64Gb of RAM with a DecLink 4K mini monitor.

Errr.. well... the last time I've checked the prices the RTX3090 alone was around $3000

Carsten Sellberg wrote:I don't know when the first laptops with the Mobile version of Alder Lake will arrive.
.

Expected announcement for laptops is at CES in the new Year.

The problem with the OP's plan is finding a 3090.

Ranjan wrote:
Davinci Resolve recently had a major speed gain on M1 chips, as of current version 17 it is still not fully optimized to take max advantage of M1 chips like many other programs have done it, one such program is Final Cut Pro.

In next version 18 we can hope code optimization will happen & Resolve can be much faster on M1 chips making full use of Its performance cores. As of now most functions are seeking GPU power & not much utilizing the available CPU & RAM hence not so efficient.

........... .

This seems like a significant misrepresentation of what's actually been achieved for the M1 Max and M1 Pro.

mpetech wrote:Not sure why OP is comparing a desktop solution to a laptop.

For Apple products, it is feasible to compare desktop solutions with laptops.

For PC, this is not feasible because PC desktops and PC notebooks often use different mobile CPU's and cut-down mobile GPU's.

Whereas, at least for the M1 generation, it was the identical SoC chips for the M1 Mini and the M1 MacBook Pro and M1 MacBook Air. It was identical performance for desktop and laptop M1.

It is likely that the iMac 27" and Mac Mini refresh will have identical SoC M1 Max and M1 Pro chips.

Hence, for SoC paradigm, it is proper to compare Mac notebook performance relative to PC desktops.

Don’t expect miracles. The new Macs are great for what they are, but I doubt that there’s much more left for BM to optimize. A few filters, maybe.
If you need something for the road, there’s nothing better at this point in time. But for professional work, you may still want a strong desktop at your home base. Well, if you can find a GPU for it.

If you’re going for a MacBook M1, even if only the ‘Pro’ CPU, get the 16”. It has better cooling. I’ve never seen (or rather not heard) a potent laptop that silent under full load.

rsf123 wrote:

mpetech wrote:Not sure why OP is comparing a desktop solution to a laptop.

For Apple products, it is feasible to compare desktop solutions with laptops.

For PC, this is not feasible because PC desktops and PC notebooks often use different mobile CPU's and cut-down mobile GPU's.

Whereas, at least for the M1 generation, it was the identical SoC chips for the M1 Mini and the M1 MacBook Pro and M1 MacBook Air. It was identical performance for desktop and laptop M1.

It is likely that the iMac 27" and Mac Mini refresh will have identical SoC M1 Max and M1 Pro chips.

Hence, for SoC paradigm, it is proper to compare Mac notebook performance relative to PC desktops.

While there is an overlap you are ignoring significant differences - such as replaceable GPU, RAM and internal storage on desktop, the portability of a laptop, the throttling of laptops, the built in screen, the significant cost difference, ports, etc.

If your argument is solely based on the SoC, then why not just compare the SoC? While you certainly compare "performance" you cannot ignore the difference in everything else. What happens if M1 Max only performs better rendering ProRes and gets crushed on everything else? Then can we say that the M1 Max is a failure and not worth it for $5K? Of course not!

the M1 apple silicon does not throttle - never seen this on a M1 laptop
also it has the same performance on plugged AC or battery use

Mark Foster wrote:the M1 apple silicon does not throttle - never seen this on a M1 laptop
also it has the same performance on plugged AC or battery use

Hi.

You will have to wait until tomorrow to find out, if Intels new Alder Lake have improved in this areas.

But AMD is the king of power efficiency in the x86 world. Back in October did I see a YouTube conversation between Robert Hallock, AMD Director of Technical Marketing and Join John Taylor, AMD Chief Marketing Officer called 'AMD Ryzen Processors: 5 Years Later. Here is a link to it:



The long version begin from: 4:03 Different CPU cores
And the short version is from 11:40 to 14:12: You can have several different power managements algoritmens

Regards Carsten.

Theoretical speed of CPU/GPU is meaningless.
You need to show this inside a real machine.
Once we have laptop with those very recent options which can match size/weight of those new Macs and run on battery ( at manageable temps for fairly long time and without crazy loud fans) about as long then we can start comparing them.

If you have given budget and want optimal machine then you carefully define what you need/expect.

Mark Foster wrote:the M1 apple silicon does not throttle - never seen this on a M1 laptop
also it has the same performance on plugged AC or battery use

There seems to be throttling on the M1 Max, though it would need to push the CPU and GPU at a very high load in order for the thermal factor to kick in.

Correct. But far less than a PC laptop at the same price and performance level.

mpetech wrote:
Correct. Not sure why OP is comparing a desktop solution to a laptop.

I'm not the OP, but we've reached the point where there's no reason to separate the two.

Now, I personally have ergonomic issues with a laptop and don't want to waste a great screen etc. by putting it in clamshell mode while I use big monitors and speakers. But it's been clear for a long time that this is where we were headed.

And it won't stop here. Phones are going to be desktop replacements before too long.

I just look on top workstations:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Top-10-Wo ... 537.0.html

Not sure how up to date this list is, but for me not a single machine there is really matching MBP, when we take into account whole package and how it performs under low/med and high load. They may have CPU/GPU which in theory perform better, but what matters is actual machine performance, not theoretical speeds.

Andrew Kolakowski wrote: Not sure how up to date this list is, but for me not a single machine there is really matching MBP,

Hi.

You are right, as all the Best Mobile Workstation Laptops on your list have CPU's produced on the 14nm process node and the MBP is produced on the much smaller 5nm process node.

Quote roknonce: 'It's not true that 12900k must use 300w, in fact, they can get over 90% performance with 150w. If you set voltage manually, you can get a P-core @ 3.2Ghz + E-core @2.4Ghz within 35w (Source: GeekerWan). Its Cinebench R23 score is ST1350, MT14k. What about M1 Max? ST 1500, Mt 12k. In addition, TSMC N5p is 30% better than 10nm ESF. Consider again if a 60W part is competitive at all with a 300W part?'

Quote roknonce: 'Edit: It's 6*P-core @ 3.2Ghz + 8*E-core @2.4Ghz within 35w to roughly simulate a H35/H45 mobile chip.'

Both Quotes are from this link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/th ... plexity/15

What roknonce do in the above Quotes is that he take the new Intel Alder Lake Desktop CPU launched yesterday, and adjust both the 6*P-core @ 3.2Ghz + 8*E-core @2.4Ghz for a 35w consumption, to compare it to the M1 Max.

Early next year do I expect to see Alder lake for Mobile and for Ultra Mobile. Hopefully tuned for better performance in the low power range. But until then can we get an idea, by doing the same as roknonce.

Regards Carsten.

Those MaxTech guys are planning to test an Alder Lake agains the M1 Mac as soon as they get their hands on one. Please note that the laptop with an 3080 they tested against the M1 Max (and it got beaten in quite a few tests) is using a mobile version of the 3080. The desktop version is definitely stronger (if you can find one).

I would like to improve the performance of my system. I have no interest in getting a laptop. Choice is staying with Windows and upgrading my GPU or getting a Mini. Purely price performance. I think I would get a 3080Ti with more VRAM if available. There are currently no GPU of that sort available in my area !! Will we see a new Mini Pro or Max?

SkierEvans wrote: Will we see a new Mini Pro or Max?

Of course we will, just not right now - IMO April or May 2022

I reckon we might see M2 Pro and M2 Max Mac Pros announced at WWDC JUNE 2022… That just might be well be a next level pro machine

SkierEvans wrote: Will we see a new Mini Pro or Max?

Hi.

There is one thing I don't understand with Apples two year long transitions to Apple silicon.
It is its two year long schedule.

Quote: 'N3 in 2023
TSMC's N3 technology will provide full node scaling compared to N5, so its adopters will get all performance (10% - 15%), power (-25% ~ -30%), and area (1.7x higher for logic) enhancements that they come to expect from a new node in this day and age. But these advantages will come at a cost.'

From: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17013/ts ... nm-in-2025

There is one full process node from the current 5nm to the 3nm, which Apple could aim for if the plan with a 2,5 year schedule?
The N3 will according to TSMC have performance (10% - 15%), power (-25% ~ -30%), and area (1.7x higher for logic) enhancements.
But if Apple want to keep the 2 promised years to all its users, will I expect next years Apple silicon to be produced on the N4 process node, which just is an improved N5.

Until now, was I just thinking, that Apple know something, that I don't.
But what do you think, will Apple be in a position to extend the two year to 2,5 year?

For the last year have Apple Marting Department, convinced many users, that Intel was not able to produce competing CPU's. I wonder how Apple Marting Department will explain the performance of the Intel Alder Lake Desktop CPU?

But I am still sure there will come more versions of Apple silicon.

In 2022 will I personally expect the strongest competition to come from AMD, which have planed two new CPU generations next year.
One in Q1, where AMD will implement 3D-Vcache in the top Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs, increasing performance around 15%.
And introduce Zen 4 with DDR5 Ram and PCIe 5.0 in Q3.
Will Apple silicon be able to cach up, if they are using the 4nm process node?

Regards Carsten.

I'd suppose Apple will stay on the safe side and see if the promised smaller structure process will be ready.
Remember Intel's disaster when promising smaller structures on their dies for how long? About 2 years?
These technologies operate at the limits of physics as known to humans.
And then, as long as all car manufacturers are desperately waiting for silicon that might be an easier way to make money.

Carsten Sellberg wrote:For the last year have Apple Marting Department, convinced many users, that Intel was not able to produce competing CPU's. I wonder how Apple Marting Department will explain the performance of the Intel Alder Lake Desktop CPU.

What is so good about it?
It’s power consumption is crazy high.

Can you show me laptop which is based on this CPU and uses it’s potential in 100%?
Answers is it doesn’t exist as it’s desktop CPU.
Mobile version needs to use half (or less) of the energy. Do you expect same performance then?
Let’s wait and see how good mobile version will be. Intel problem is with power consumption not performance.

New Video with a lot of Nodes in Colorpage:

Peter Chamberlain wrote:

Ranjan wrote:
Davinci Resolve recently had a major speed gain on M1 chips, as of current version 17 it is still not fully optimized to take max advantage of M1 chips like many other programs have done it, one such program is Final Cut Pro.

In next version 18 we can hope code optimization will happen & Resolve can be much faster on M1 chips making full use of Its performance cores. As of now most functions are seeking GPU power & not much utilizing the available CPU & RAM hence not so efficient.

........... .

This seems like a significant misrepresentation of what's actually been achieved for the M1 Max and M1 Pro.

Agreed. Resolve's overall M1 performance (and MacOS in general) is very, very good. Miles better than Premiere or Avid, and in most cases very comparable to FCPX. Core features are very clearly optimized for the new architecture.

There ARE certain tasks where FCPX destroys Resolve, though, and those should be addressed. One that immediately comes to mind is retiming via Optical Flow/Speed Warp. In FCPX this is a usable feature even on 8K footage. (Certainly not real time, but very reasonable wait.) In Resolve, if it doesn't crash my computer, it is so slow as to effectively not be usable. (Hours to export minutes.) So, that's a case where we know what the speed potential is, and how far off Resolve is.

Andrew Kolakowski wrote: Let’s wait and see how good mobile version will be.

Hi.

Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P CPU & NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU Powered HP Omen Laptop Spotted. Here is a link:

https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-1270 ... p-spotted/

It is just the first of several coming laptops with Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P. I expect more information on this, and other Brands Alder Lake mobile at early next year.

Regards Carsten.

So some benchmarks (not in production machines?) are already there and it's basically same performance as M1 (5% better).
I've stopped looking into theoretical speed for mobile CPUs/GPUs. It's just some indication of performance, but nothing more. Once I have real product which I can buy with all its characteristics (size, weight, battery, screen, price etc.) then it's a real deal.

Maybe this rather belongs into this thread:

I went for the 16" version with the M1 'Pro' and 32 GB RAM. And, yes, now I'm impressed.

Just got some footage in Canon RAW 8K @ 25 fps and threw it into an UHD timeline. Canon RAW is known to be hard on resources. I put CineMatch on one node, then two primaries and one secondary node. RAW-decoding is at full resolution, no cache or anything to make it easier. It's playing smoothly in the Color page.

Of course, there's no swapping going on with DR only. CPU-cores are at less than 50% load, the GPUs at about 75%. It's not really getting hot, highest core temperature is 81 degrees, the fans are still very quiet at about 2/3 of the speed. Those two last points are very different from all laptops with enough power for DR I have ever used. It does not get throttled when I plug it off, only the screen dims a bit automatically (but, of course, can be increased again).

I don't need more (in a laptop).

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:So some benchmarks (not in production machines?) are already there and it's basically same performance as M1 (5% better).
I've stopped looking into theoretical speed for mobile CPUs/GPUs. It's just some indication of performance, but nothing more. Once I have real product which I can buy with all its characteristics (size, weight, battery, screen, price etc.) then it's a real deal.

I have an M1 MacBook Air w/16GB RAM, an M1 Max MacBook Pro w/65GB RAM, and an i9 Hackintosh with 128GB RAM and dual Vega FE GPUs.

I can tell you definitively that I can do real-world work on the M1 Max that was completely unworkable on the M1, and the only aspect in which the dual-GPU workstation is faster is realtime playback of the heaviest of GPU effects.

It's not a "5%" difference, it's the difference between codecs that plays at a few frames per second on an M1 playing back at realtime on the M1 Max. It's the difference of Speed Warp processing in minutes on the M1 Max instead of hours on the M1 and hard crashing the workstation.

SkierEvans wrote:Will we see a new Mini Pro or Max?

Don't count on it. I may be wrong but I think the Intel Minis never came with another option than the onboard Intel GPU? When you translate that to the M1 world it would always be an M1 without pro/max. Only to be replaced by M2, M3, M4 etc.

I'm not so sure, they came out with more cores on the top model after while.

But only you can decide if you want to wait or waste some money on an excellent screen that you don't need because it's small.

Uli Plank wrote:I'm not so sure, they came out with more cores on the top model after while.

But only you can decide if you want to wait or waste some money on an excellent screen that you don't need because it's small.

Well as far as I'm concerned I'll probably waste it since I only work with laptops anyways.

But regarding the Mini: has this ever been a viable option for video editing? It's quite popular in music production. I know people who replaced their Mac Pro's with a Mini and are happy. But audio doesn't need a good gpu. Although I think some audio plugins utilise the gpu power nowadays.

Berlin wrote:

Uli Plank wrote:I'm not so sure, they came out with more cores on the top model after while.

But only you can decide if you want to wait or waste some money on an excellent screen that you don't need because it's small.

Well as far as I'm concerned I'll probably waste it since I only work with laptops anyways.

But regarding the Mini: has this ever been a viable option for video editing? It's quite popular in music production. I know people who replaced their Mac Pro's with a Mini and are happy. But audio doesn't need a good gpu. Although I think some audio plugins utilise the gpu power nowadays.

I don't think it was ever a popular choice, but with an eGPU is was a viable choice.

Carsten Sellberg wrote:Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P CPU & NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU Powered HP Omen Laptop Spotted. Here is a link:

https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-1270 ... p-spotted/

It is just the first of several coming laptops with Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P. I expect more information on this, and other Brands Alder Lake mobile at early next year.

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:So some benchmarks (not in production machines?) are already there and it's basically same performance as M1 (5% better).

joe12south wrote:It's not a "5%" difference, it's the difference between codecs that plays at a few frames per second on an M1 playing back at realtime on the M1 Max. It's the difference of Speed Warp processing in minutes on the M1 Max instead of hours on the M1 and hard crashing the workstation.

I'm pretty sure Andrew was comparing the new Alder Lake laptops mentioned by Carsten to the M1 Pro/Max laptops. Not M1 to M1 Pro/Max.

The Intel Mac mini was usable with an eGPU.

Resolve works surprisingly well on the six core Intel Mac mini with a good eGPU, up to UHD at least. I sometimes use mine instead of an HP workstation because it's quiet (and can render ProRes). Like the M1 version it also has a 10Gbps ethernet option which is very useful.

TheBloke wrote:

Carsten Sellberg wrote:Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P CPU & NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU Powered HP Omen Laptop Spotted. Here is a link:

https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-1270 ... p-spotted/

It is just the first of several coming laptops with Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake-P. I expect more information on this, and other Brands Alder Lake mobile at early next year.

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:So some benchmarks (not in production machines?) are already there and it's basically same performance as M1 (5% better).

joe12south wrote:It's not a "5%" difference, it's the difference between codecs that plays at a few frames per second on an M1 playing back at realtime on the M1 Max. It's the difference of Speed Warp processing in minutes on the M1 Max instead of hours on the M1 and hard crashing the workstation.

I'm pretty sure Andrew was comparing the new Alder Lake laptops mentioned by Carsten to the M1 Pro/Max laptops. Not M1 to M1 Pro/Max.

Yep, nothing to to with M1 vs. M1 Pro/Max.

Uli Plank wrote:The Intel Mac mini was usable with an eGPU.

I am hoping for a Mac Mini M1 Max in the upcoming future. When that is, I don't know. But with NVidia and AMD discreet GPU doubling in price and not in stock, it could only come at a better time - now!

Uli Plank wrote:The Intel Mac mini was usable with an eGPU.

I am hoping for a Mac Mini M1 Max in the upcoming future. When that is, I don't know. But with NVidia and AMD discreet GPU doubling in price and not in stock, it can only come at a better time - now!

Berlin wrote:But regarding the Mini: has this ever been a viable option for video editing? It's quite popular in music production. I know people who replaced their Mac Pro's with a Mini and are happy. But audio doesn't need a good gpu. Although I think some audio plugins utilise the gpu power nowadays.

I think a Mac Mini M1 Max could be a viable option for video editing, at least most types of projects and up to 8k clip on a UHD timeline.

Ellory Yu wrote:

Uli Plank wrote:The Intel Mac mini was usable with an eGPU.

I am hoping for a Mac Mini M1 Max in the upcoming future. When that is, I don't know. But with NVidia and AMD discreet GPU doubling in price and not in stock, it can only come at a better time - now!

Berlin wrote:But regarding the Mini: has this ever been a viable option for video editing? It's quite popular in music production. I know people who replaced their Mac Pro's with a Mini and are happy. But audio doesn't need a good gpu. Although I think some audio plugins utilise the gpu power nowadays.

I think a Mac Mini M1 Max could be a viable option for video editing, at least most types of projects and up to 8k clip on a UHD timeline.

Well after watching this, it seems disappointing and both MBP and Mini M1 Max (if there's ever going to be one) may not be worth the money after all.

Sigh. I would have liked to know what the Playback Settings > Performance Mode settings are in those tests. Default is "Automatic" which means Resolve can dial down image processing, sizing and decode quality on the fly if it needs to in order to maintain real-time playback. That means this is an apples to oranges comparison.

If "good playback" is the only criteria regardless of image fidelity you can run Resolve on almost anything by lowering the settings!

"One of the hardest formats to play ever"... but decoded at quoter resolution. Cool for preview, editing etc. but once it comes to export (where you most likely want to use full quality decoding) you are facing looooong export times with basic M1. Add noise reduction, etc. and old M1 is toasted.
You really need to fully understand limitations.
Another point. Resolve by default already decodes all RAW at reduces resolution/debayering etc.

In order to see performance which you may get on export go to setting and do this:



Playback abilities will be massively different.

Of course performance mode is good and quite often so useful (eg. you don't need to decode 12K at full resolution when you preview in Resolve GUI small preview window), but you really have to fully understand why machines like M1 can play 8K/12K in realtime. They simply play only eg. 2K representation of the full source.
Then people start exporting (which uses full quality) and get 5fps
If you work on project for a month and then do 1 export you may be fine with those 5fps, but quite often you want export to be done much quicker than at 5fps.

Exactly!

Agree with all your assessments. Still think that a fully configured MBP M1 Max will be $5K. And unless you need the flexibility of editing/grading on the road (for which I don't do), you can build a decent and performant workstation with a faster and more core CPU, much better discrete GPU (i.e. 3080ti or 3090), more RAM and VRAM, fast SSD for about the same cost and not have to worry about the matters that you good folks are talking about here. With that said and no need to travel with it, IMO, I don't think it's worth the price. There will be those who will find it useful for their workflow and find it worth spending the money for it. To each his/her own.