My computer is a M2 max with 32Gb of memory and 512gb of ssd, I use Archicad 27 for the Apple Silicon on a 5k Apple studio display with retina resolution.
I am currently working on the project of a 15-story residential building that handles a large number of blocks and external modules.
The 3D model has approximately 4 million polygons and I don't find any important limitation, except that if I activate the shadows in the 3d the speed when orbiting suffers and sometimes the shadows disappear.
Apart from that the plants and sections are generated at high speed and the redrawing on screen is almost immediate. I have no speed problems in that aspect and archicad works great.
In this particular project archicad consumes approximately 9gb of memory although I have not yet finished adding structural or installation drawings. So I have enough memory left to use measurement programs, office or even a Parallels virtual machine with some windows programs.
I am very satisfied with the performance of the Apple M2 Max and from what I have seen the M3 Max is much faster, especially in the graphics section so I even consider selling my computer and buy a MacStudio with M3 Max when it comes out next year.
I would say that a base M3 max is more than enough, and you will benefit as soon as programs like cinema4d, Blender, Twinmotion, escape, etc... are updated to use the new raytracing cores of the M3 processor.
It is also important to add that Apple allows the return of any equipment within the legal period of 14 days, at least here in Spain. So you could always buy the laptop, install archicad and check how it behaves with your projects. If it does not suit your needs you can return it without any problem.
I hope I have helped you something.
Still looking?
