Got my new M2 Max Mac Studio up and running. Wow! I’m coming from a 2018 Mac mini and it’s quite the upgrade. I didn’t do a scientific test, but I can definitely run more plugins with a smaller buffer with pops/clicks at all.
Here are a few observations:
NDSP Plini-X (new version so Plini…check it out!)
Mac mini CPU usage ~25% with buffer at 128, any lower and it pops/clicks
M2 Studio CPU suage ~7% with buffer at 64…no issues. If I change the buffer to 32 it’s still 7% if I change it to 128 samples it’s 7%.
I have another gig that uses NDSP, Sound Toys, Eventide plugins (very CPU intensive) that runs at about 47% CPU on the Mac mini at 128 samples, and around 20% at 64 samples on the Mac Studio.
The bottom line is that it’s a game changer for me. Of course since GP is running single core basically all M2 Macs should perform in a similar manner. The main difference between all the M2 chips is the # of CPU and GPU cores, I’m fairly certain the cores themselves are the same between the chips. In other words an M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max and M2 Ultra should all perform in a similar manner with GP. For that matter the M2 cores aren’t THAT much fast than M1 cores, so you should get almost the same performance out of even an M1 MacBook Air.
Hello. I am on the market for a New MacBook laptop and I was reading this topic and i wanted to ask something to the more geeks of the forum.
Lets start with the apple m"x" pro procesors found on MacBook pro laptops.
If you take a look to the new releases from m1 pro to m3 pro chips, you will find something interesting. The base models started with:
M1: 6 performance and 2 efficiency cores (8 in total)
M2: 6 performance and 4 efficiency cores (10 in total)
M3: 5 performance and 6 efficiency cores (11in total)
There are other variants of the same m"x" chips adding only 2 , and 2 and 1 respectively but lets focus on the basic variant.
I want to know, 2 thinks.
The first one might be hard, but what is the difference in performance between the efficiency and performance core? I haven’t found any benchmark that shows this difference, and if you use any tool to do this kind of test, i am very sure that will chose the performance over efficiency core
Seoncs question. As GP is develop be a single thread task) assuming that open 5 instance with and m3 pro, will the sixth (and 7th, 8th, 9th…) will work with efficiency core? Or is GP only using performance core.
I am sure that even the efficiency cores are more tan capable to handle almost real time audio with some basic guitar plugins, and well 11 cores are a lot.
I just wonder because i would like to know what’s happening under the hood and if there is any limitations for this kind of multi instance operation.
I don’t have all the answers for you, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way to purposely tell the OS to use a particular type of core. In other words, the OS will use an efficiency or performance core based on how much computing power is needed. There’s nothing the GP developers can do to force the use of the performance cores. Like you, I think the efficiency cores are probably capable of most audio tasks, but if they’re not the OS will just use a performance core.
What I can tell you is you probably don’t need to worry about it. My MacStudio never even gets warm…it’s actually cold and the fans never come on. I’m running a Gig with a bunch of high-cpu plugins and it just doesn’t make a difference. The power in the Apple silicon chips is crazy.