Video Render Tests on Macbook Pro – M2 Max Chip

With our team due for an upgrade to our video editing workstations, we decided to try out the new MacBook Pro and compare it to our current ~2019 iMacs. Individual specs on each tested computer are listed below:

MacBook Pro Premiere/Final Cut exports tested with
MacBook Pro with M2 Max Chip
Base CPU clock speed – 3.5 GHz
12-Core CPU
38-Core GPU
96GB Unified Memory
16-core Neural Engine

iMac Premiere exports tested with:
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch 2019)
Processor – 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
Memory – 64GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Graphics – Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

iMac Final Cut exports tested with:
iMac (Retina 5k< 27-inch, 2020)
Processor – 3.6 GHz 10-core Intel Core i9
Memory – 64GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Graphics – AMD Radeon Pro 5700 8 GB

Though the difference in RAM makes the comparison a bit apples and oranges, we found the overall performance to be a significant improvement above that caveat. Our primary evaluation criteria was through render times from both Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro..

In each scenario, we exported the same 10-minute long 4K clip to a 1080p file with H.264 codec.

Project file is on an external hard drive
Exporting from FCPX to Desktop
MacBook – 3:23
iMac – 7:12

Exporting from Premiere to Hard Drive
MacBook – 1:31
iMac – 5:25

Project is on the network attached storage
Exporting from FCPX to Desktop
MacBook – 5:57
iMac – 7:12

Exporting from Premiere to NAS
MacBook – 2:10
iMac – 4:04

Taking a look at the Activity Monitor. We found the following difference in CPU/GPU performance while exporting from Premiere on network attached storage:

MacBook
CPU% average was around 145%
GPU% average was around 85%

iMac
CPU% average was around 190%
GPU% average was around 98%