M3 Ultra or M4 Max for best PTGui stitching performance?

[Stuart Thorp | stuart@360imagery.co.uk]

M3 Ultra or M4 Max for best PTGui stitching performance?

Morning peeps. Not so much a direct PTGuu question - but still relevant to PTGui users.

Went from a Mac Studio M1 Ultra (maxed out on RAM, cores, etc) to Mini M4 Pro and must say wasn't blown away with any real-world differences (mostly TB5 speeds with external NVMe SSD drives). Also Mini M4 does get hot when I chuck big P2VR projects at it to load up which I think throttles speed & performance.

So, looking to go back to a Studio - but can't decide whether to go M3 Ultra or M4 Max? Only to ever be used for (heavy) Lr / Ps pano work (max. 2GB .PSB panos) and big, big (500 pano+) P2VR work.

Anyone with a more tech-minded brain than me with an understanding of how cores, threads, RAM works like to comment on which model / spec "sweet spot" would be best for Lr / Ps / PTGui / P2VR workflow.....

Stu

[Wolfgang]

I got the M3 Ultra which is great for Lightroom and other apps and GPU power.

However I am unsure which would be better for PTGui, since PTGui does not use all my cores! Lightroom does for most tasks.

If it is mostly dependent then the M4 Max would win. However if it really does use a LOT of the GPU then the M3 Ultra will win.

I have both and I would love to try but PTGui can only be installed on 2 computers, so I can't as I have it installed on my Mac and PC.

Good question!

[PTGui Support]

Hi Stu,

The most important thing is RAM, if you have enough of it then PTGui
will not have to swap data to disk.

How much RAM depends on the project, but if you have 500 images then
128GB wouldn't hurt. This is more important than the number of cores. It
was improved in v13, but the Find Optimum Seams step is still limited to
a few cores so a large fraction of the stitching time will be used for that.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

[Stuart Thorp]

Hi Joost.

Thanks for the info. So, I'll probably go for the M3 Ultra with 256GB RAM....!!

Stu