Plan to upgrade my MacBook Pro from 2018 to a Mac with a M4 chip, and I want to know how big a difference is comparing the Mac with the 10 core cpu/gpu to one with the Pro 12/16 core and 14/20 core, I could probably buy a portable monitor and Mac mini for several hundred less than the MacBook Pro and I have already decided on a terabyte of storage, how much of an improvement between the three chips is there to each other?

The recent Yamaha Montage M plugin last year is a great benchmark test because I can only have one active since it eats up all the resources, anybody have a better result comparing how many montage instances can be run on the M4s? If the new Mac can handle that easily it can handle some other resource hungry plugins I have like Voltage Modular, the Anukari demo, Serum 2, etc.

I also don’t need the extra ram since 24 gigabytes seems like enough even for Kontakt and Minecraft

If anyone can let me know of another plugin benchmark tests that can help determine my upgrade, thank you, I’m hoping I only need the base M4 Mac mini since everything else can be added cheaper and I can use one of my tvs from around the house and hopefully will only need a Magic Trackpad since I’m so used to MacBook control

 

I bought & I still prefer the base M4 Mac Mini with 512 GB Storage.

Reason:

1) Look at the history, the new base models beats the old pro versions...like M4 base model beats the M1 Pro & M2 Pro in DAW performance in HALF the price of those pro models.

2) If you go with the base model, it's easier to sell it after 1-2 years and buy the new base model because these new Apple Silicon Macs have a crazy resell value like retaining around 60-70% of it's value in the refurbished market. And no matter if you buy a pro or a max right now, in 2-3 years down the line, the new macs will beat these M4 chips.

3) Apple is planning to make 2nm chips from M6...So in 2 years it will be a tasty upgrade to M6 base model as the M3, M4 & M5 is 3nm designs + Many more design changes will be made in the 2nm Chip which will make it more efficient.

4) Also the Newer chips will be better for AI stuff as you see M4 is a beast for AI stuff compared to M1, M2 & even M3. Also it has 16 GB of Unified Memory compared to all the old Base models which only had only 8 GB of Unified Memory, it wasn't acceptable imho. But now it's quite good & efficient.

 

https://audiosex.pro/threads/base-mac-mini-m4-ableton-benchmark-request.80150/

Checkout this thread, It has some tests which I ran in my M4 Mac Mini in comparison with a Windows Laptop.

 

This is the best we got comparing different variants