Macbook Pro Configurations

SketchUp Computer Advice
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1

Hey everyone,

I’m facing some serious trouble after switching to a MacBook Pro M4 (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) from a Windows laptop. I made the move expecting better performance, especially since I work with SketchUp 2022 on Windows without major issues. I’ve now installed SketchUp 2024 with V-Ray on the Mac. While the system itself is fast, I’m experiencing significant lag when opening heavier files (around 150MB) or exploding components. Rendering performance is also disappointing—it’s taking 2–3 hours to render a 1920x1080 scene. In contrast, a friend with a MacBook Pro M1 Pro is able to render the same scene in just 20 minutes. I’m unsure what’s going wrong—any advice?

2

The M1 pro has more GPU cores than the basic M4, also 16mb of ram are not enough to render big scenes, I don’t know the specs of your friend´s macbook but if he has more unified ram he will be able to render faster cause he won´t have memory bottleneck.

3

She has a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD running on the M1 Pro chip. I’m unsure what to do at this point—should I sell my new MacBook and upgrade to the M4 Pro, or is there a better alternative? I’m feeling pretty stuck.