Hardware Update

[Colin Red]

I have a MacBook Pro connected to an external monitor. I would like to change that setup by replacing the MacBook Pro with an M4 Mac Mini. My question, will I see a significant performance increase when using the Affinity Apps or not. 

 

[George-Frazee]

You will see a performance increase in everything upgrading from an Intel Mac to an M4 Mac.

[MikeTO]

You will see a HUGE improvement and you're going to love your new computer, upgrading from Intel is a night and day difference. I can't say exactly how much faster because nobody has shared an Affinity 2.5 benchmark for your model.

Open Photo on your Intel Mac and run the benchmark (the instructions are in the first post of the thread below). Then compare the numbers you see to the iPad M4 in the table at this link. The iPad is the only non-Pro M4 benchmark that has been reported to date and should have similar performance to an M4 Mini.

The numbers can be hard to interpret but the first number (Vector Single CPU) is important for basic app usage.

 

[Colin Red]

thank you Mike

I have added the benchmark, so not really understanding this can you explain this in simple terms

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, Colin Red said:

... so not really understanding this can you explain this in simple terms

All you need to know is bigger numbers are better when comparing benchmarks for different computers. So comparing yours to the M4 one will give you a rough idea of how much faster it is than yours.

[MikeTO]

I recommend looking at the first, second, third, and sixth numbers. Which one comes into play depends on whether it's a vector or raster (bitmapped) operation and whether it's being done by one CPU core or is a multi-threaded operation that can taken advantage of multiple cores. Nobody outside of Serif knows which functions work which way but comparing those numbers to the iPad M4 in the benchmark table, my guess is that an M4 Mini might be about twice as fast for most operations. I'm qualifying that with "might" because I don't know for certain. You would see more gains if you bought a Mini Pro which has a chip more comparable for its generation to your i9.

The four numbers with Metal in their labels are for the GPU which helps speed up graphic operations, but many of us have turned off Metal in Affinity to improve stability so I don't generally pay much attention to them.

Good luck with your new computer!

[Colin Red]

Excellent, thank you