PL5 DeepPRIME on M1 ANE vs. M1 Pro/Max GPU?

PL5’s DeepPRIME leveraging Apple Neural Engine on a base M1 brings a fantastic 3x speed improvement over PL4. Given that ANE has the same number of cores (16) on base M1 and Pro/Max, I’m left to wonder whether DeepPRIME set to use GPU rather than ANE will run even faster on a Pro/Max with more GPU cores than the base M1. Any benchmarks?

Hi,
There is a part of answer in this thread (see messages from Lucas).

I was just wondering how long it takes on M1 to process raw images using the Full setting. I tried this on an old MacBook Air and processing took about 6-7 minutes for each image.

Would try it on my newer and faster MacBook Pro but can’t get Dxo to extend my trial. I installed it but never got to use it, so I am wondering.

My M1 Mac mini with 16GB/512GB and master image files on an external SSD takes 10 seconds to spit out a full-rez JPEG from a 42MP a7RIII RAW with lots of adjustments, including optical and DeepPRIME, applied. This is with PL5. With PL4 it took 30 seconds.

I think it won’t.
The GPU in the Pro is barely approaching GTX1660 level.
The Max will most probably only be as fast as the NPU…in the best case.

Here are some numbers for a M1 Pro with NPU and GPU.
The GPU isn’t nearly as fast as the NPU, so even the Max will have a hard time.

But on the other hand, since the NPU is the same for all M1 SoCs there is not a single point in upgrading to a Max, at least for DXO PL.
IMHO even the Pro is rather debatable in this regard…since the minor Performance Gain is from the CPU Part alone.

Thank you. I did not even know that Apple made an M1 Mini. I should compare that with my old MacBook Pro and see if it would be an upgrade.

@MikeFromMesa I have the M1 Mac Mini with 8Gb and 512Gb SSD memory and I’d totally recommend paying extra for the upgrade to 16Gb memory.

PL4/5 does work fine on my machine, but I do find I need to close other applications to get the best performance during editing and exporting.

I store my raw files on a Samsung T5 external usb-c SSD (which allowed me to save from paying for a much larger SSD from Apple) and my basic tests with the 30Mb files from my Z6 ii have shown no noticeable difference in loading/editing/exporting a file from the SSD compared to the Macs own storage. I’m sure if you did other tests (with other camera’s files) you would be able to find a difference, so rooting around on the internet for actual proper reviews may be of better help to you here.

However, for my next drive I’ll probably get the Samsung T7 drive which is more expensive but has twice the transfer speed of the T5.

All in all though, the M1 Mini is a great machine. Runs cool and totally silent in use!

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