Anyone using the Affinity Suite with the new M4 Mac mini?

[kanihoncho]

I am considering the M4 Mac mini and am curious about performance with the Affinity Suite with the base model of 16GB ram and 256 or 512 GB of storage. I'm willing to go with more of each if needed, so reports of upgrades are welcome also. I use Designer the most . . . Thanks in advance . . .

[MikeTO]

5 hours ago, kanihoncho said:

I am considering the M4 Mac mini and am curious about performance with the Affinity Suite with the base model of 16GB ram and 256 or 512 GB of storage. I'm willing to go with more of each if needed, so reports of upgrades are welcome also. I use Designer the most . . . Thanks in advance . . .

You'll find an M4 Mini in the benchmark table in the linked post. If you can't find a computer similar to your current one in this table, you can run the benchmark yourself. Instructions are in the post. Comparing the first two numbers for your current computer to the M4 Mini will give you a rough ballpark idea how much faster it will be overall. Even the base model M4 Mini is a great computer for running Affinity.

The amount of memory required depends on the complexity of your work. If you're happy with 16GB of memory on your current computer, you'll probably be fine with 16GB of memory for the new one, but more memory is always a good thing and it can't be changed later.

The amount of storage depends on your needs and has no effect on Affinity's performance. You can always add more external storage later.

 

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, MikeTO said:

The amount of storage depends on your needs and has no effect on Affinity's performance. You can always add more external storage later.

But keep in mind that Affinity does not work well with files stored on externals or cloud services so make sure you have enough internal storage to hold all of your current Affinity projects at once, or you will have to copy them onto the internal to work on them & then copy them back to the external afterward.

[kanihoncho]

I was hoping to get some info on physical setups but I went with the basic M4 Mac mini with 24GB ram and 512 GB storage. I bought an OWC Express 1M2 external drive and paired it with a 4 TB WD Black SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD. I'm going to try and save the majority of files to the external and see how working with them off that drive works. I'll get back with speed results in a couple of weeks . .. 

[Ldina]

@kanihoncho I'm not on a Mini, but I am using a MBP M4, 48GB, Sequoia 15.2, and also have a 2TB OWC external SSD drive directly connected via USB.

I open, edit and save all my files directly to/from my external SSD drive and haven't had any problems with lost or corrupted files. Prior to my new M4, I was using a 2017 Intel MBP with the same external drive, no problems at all over a period of years. I know that doesn't always work for everyone, but it works great for me. If problems crop up, I'll try saving to my MBP internal drive, but I don't expect that to be necessary based on my experience so far. 

[Komatös]

I also have an external NVMe SSD on my Mac Mini M4 and store my Affinity documents there.
I think a lot of the data loss happens when the Affinity programs are closed before the document writing process has been completed.

One should wait a moment or two before closing the programs.

[R C-R]

25 minutes ago, Komatös said:

I think a lot of the data loss happens when the Affinity programs are closed before the document writing process has been completed.

So presumably, very fast SSD's should make this much less likely to happen?

[Komatös]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

very fast SSD's should make this much less likely to happen?

I'm afraid yes, mon capitaine.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Komatös said:

I'm afraid yes, mon capitaine.

Why afraid? It sounds like a good thing.

[Meliora spero]

10 hours ago, Komatös said:

I think a lot of the data loss happens when the Affinity programs are closed before the document writing process has been completed.
One should wait a moment or two before closing the programs.

I hope that’s not the explanation. I have never in my life experienced issues with closing a program before file writing was complete, because I haven’t used programs that allowed it. This is in no way a user error or something they should have to be aware of – it simply must not be possible. So I hope Serif isn’t guilty. There are plenty of ways to prevent this. The operating system can be checked to ensure saving is complete, blocking program closure and warning users if saving is still in progress, for example.

[Meliora spero]

@kanihoncho

It depends on how much you push Designer and what you currently have to compare it with. You might gain some insights from this article:

https://www.wired.com/review/apple-mac-mini-m4-2024/

[Meg68]

On 12/29/2024 at 9:46 PM, Komatös said:

I also have an external NVMe SSD on my Mac Mini M4 and store my Affinity documents there.
I think a lot of the data loss happens when the Affinity programs are closed before the document writing process has been completed.

One should wait a moment or two before closing the programs.

Hello Komatös,

On 11/26/2024 at 10:01 AM, Komatös said:

Yes! 

I have now run the benchmark again directly after the restart. The single CPU value was 791, but with each subsequent run I get values between 720 and 780, and the other values also fluctuate.
This benchmark is therefore not meaningful for me. Except that the best values are achieved shortly after switching on.

 

[Meg68]

So far I have been using  AFFINITY Designer and Publisher on my IPad, (and Photo on my 2015 Mac book), but  it I ran out of memory. Because of the small screen, I am considering buying the basic M4, with a 27” Pro Art 278PCV monitor and external SSD. I am just playing a bit with everything. Do you think you made the right choice Komatos? And what speed is your SSD? 
The 40gbps is a bit expensive. Would a 10gbps work?

[Ldina]

@Meg68 I'm not Komatos, obviously.

I recently bought a MacBook Pro, M4. I use an OWC 2TB SSD external drive connected via USB-C for all my image storage. It's don't know the speed of the drive, but it's probably 5-6 years old, so it's not the latest. Anyway, it works great and everything screams with my system and there is no lag. I've never had problems opening or saving directly to my SSD using Affinity.

SSDs are fast already, and I would guess you don't need the highest speed drive to get good performance...plenty of RAM is probably more important. The drive is mainly for opening, saving, and occasional auto-saves. (My SSD is an OWC Aura P12 Pro 2.0TB, which I bought from Other World Computing, if you want to check it out for speed and specs.) I'm not sure if it is 10 or 40 GB/s. 

[Komatös]

2 hours ago, Meg68 said:

The 40gbps is a bit expensive. Would a 10gbps work?

I also only have an NVME enclosure that could deliver 10 GB/s; the installed SSD itself could read around 3500 MB/s.

 

[nickbatz]

On 12/28/2024 at 7:08 AM, R C-R said:

But keep in mind that Affinity does not work well with files stored on externals or cloud services

Cloud services, of course - the files have to go over the Internet. You want to keep your pictures on local storage while you're working on them.

But in my experience Affinity Photo doesn't care whether your files are on an internal or external drive, and in fact I've never heard of a Mac program that does (because the OS has been handling that since 1984).

Now, you may need storage for temporary files on your startup drive, and putting the programs themselves on external drives can be an issue (in general they want to be in the Applications folder). But I've had all my Affinity files on an external SSD all along, including on the Intel Mac I had before upgrading to my current one 2-1/2 years ago.

[thomaso]

11 hours ago, Ldina said:

2024 MacBook Pro M4 Max, 48GB, 1TB SSD, Sequoia OS, (…) Adobe CS6 Extended, LightRoom v6, (…)

Ldina, do you indeed use these apps on the M4 mac? If yes, what is your workaround/setup for them? – If not, never mind.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

do you indeed use these apps on the M4 mac? If yes, what is your workaround/setup for them?

Don't know about PS and LR, but just recently I became aware of UTM: https://mac.getutm.app
So I installed an El Capitan emulation on my MacBook Air M2, with Acrobat X as well es Expression (iView) Media. The emulation is rather slow, much slower than e.g. running El Capitan "headless" on my old MacBook via Screen Sharing, but it works; good enough just in case I'd have to inspect or convert PDFs while "on the road". 

Edited February 24 by loukash
link to the Mac version, not iOS