Apple Hardware Questions for Davinci Resolve Studio

Come on, don't get all obsessed with that 1.5/2x RAM to GPU count idea...

Good point. Where does this 1.5/2x number come from?

Well, I have to admit that we tried our benchmark only up to the M3 Pro MBP, Mac Studio obviously M2 only. No M4 yet. If somebody wants to try, drop me a PM.
The MBP had 36 GB of RAM and 18 GPU cores. It didn't swap when running DR only, but it got close at times. The benchmark was tested at maximum with an 8K timeline. Sources were all kinds from 6K (Arri) to 12K (BM), 8K (Red), and hybrids from Nikon and Canon (some RAW too).
We used all kinds of demanding effects in DR, but nothing unrealistic, like stacked effects for the purpose of torture only.

If all you ever want to do is work in a UHD or 4K timeline, you can get away with less RAM for sure. Apple's memory management in these machines is excellent.

AFAIK the GPU to system memory ratio is more relevant to 3D rendering than to color grading. The main reason for it is that GPU rendering systems mostly work only within the GPU buffer, because GPU access to system memory is suboptimal (read: slow). To get the best rendering performance you have to upload the entire scene into the GPU's memory, which isn't a big deal if it's small but throw in a volumetric cloud or a procedural ocean and your GPU memory overflows, and the renderer crashes.

But if your GPU is able to access 12-16GB it should handle 4K footage even with noise reduction without much trouble. I can run noise reduction on my system with its 16GB GPU with very little slowdown, at least as long as the footage is on an SSD.

As far as 3D, I still have to see a crash on my humble laptop with a massive Gaussian Splash model in Blender.

For sure 90% or more of users around here can work with DR with a lower RAM ratio. My rule is aiming at those who want a degree of future proofing and can't exclude 8K or 4K stereo in their path. I'm convinced that most of you will be quite happy with the base model.

I'm still looking forward to a 128GB Strix Halo. Or, thanks to AMD's marketing punkeys, a Ryzen AI Max Pro.

Sorry, I just had to make fun of that ridiculous marketing driven name

Hello, thank you for all these information. What is a better option for Davinci? M4 Pro, 14x CPU, 48 GB RAM, 20x GPU or M4 MAX, 16x CPU, 48 GB RAM, 40x GPU? I understand the "1,5-2x RAM vs GPU" rule, but I found this MAX configuration on sale, a little bit cheaper then this Pro configuration. Is this rule more important then the other specs? (MAX with 64 GB RAM would be the best of course, but its almost 1.5x total price.) Thank you for your help!

I have several Macs, including the M4 Pro (48 GB), M1 Max (64 GB), and M1 Ultra (128 GB). I would definitely go for the M4 Max. It has twice the encoders and 2x the GPU cores of the M4 Pro.

The M4 Pro is not a bad machine, and the single-thread performance and Neural Engine performance is excellent (vs prior Apple Silicon CPUs). But even my "old" M1 Max exports H264/H265 faster than the M4 Pro.