[HN Gopher] Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pr...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools
Author : mortenjorck
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-11-29 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gearnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gearnews.com)
| iwontberude wrote:
| Is this also true of M1 Ultra in Mac Studio?
| mholm wrote:
| Unlikely, the Pro SOC moved downmarket with the M3 Pro,
| reducing the P-cores. Presumably a future M3 Ultra will retain
| the full amount of P-cores
| jshier wrote:
| M3 Ultra will be a monster. M1 Ultra is 16/4 chip with 40 or
| 64 GPU cores. Based on the M3 Max, the M3 Ultra will be a
| 24/8 CPU with (up to, depending on binning) 80 GPU cores.
| Each pCore is up to 30% faster, each GPU core up to 60%
| faster (even more for ray tracing). Overall we're probably
| looking at nearly double multicore CPU performance (M1 Ultra
| is at ~18k on GB6, M3 Max is ~21k, so M3 Ultra could be as
| high as ~40k, depending on well it scales).
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Wonder how it does with https://wavtool.com
| dvt wrote:
| I was going to trade in my M1 Pro for an M3 Pro (I _love_ the
| black), but I 'm seriously getting second thoughts. I guess you
| _can_ make a product that 's just too good, after all.
|
| Might keep my M1 until the M4 or M5 Pro.
| Casteil wrote:
| Despite its 'anti-fingerprint' anodization, the black still
| shows smudges more than silver/space gray, fwiw.. do you really
| need to upgrade a ~2yr old laptop??
| nailer wrote:
| Have the apps been recompiled yet?
| vilunov wrote:
| It's the same ISA, they don't need to be recompiled.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Have they added MMX Technology yet?
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I jumped into M1 the moment it came out to ditch the god awful
| intel books. Now I don't see the need to upgrade for a while.
| The gain is minimal for most of the cases
| falcor84 wrote:
| For other ignoramuses like me, the acronym DAW in the post stands
| for Digital Audio Workstation, being the general term for all
| these tools.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation
| basisword wrote:
| Basically the music equivalent of an IDE.
| louwrentius wrote:
| The article suggests it's because the new M3 chips have less
| P-cores and more efficiency cores, and many tested apps don't use
| the latter.
| tyingq wrote:
| Oversimplified, but the efficiency cores are slower in the M3 vs
| the M1, and Ableton seems like the sort of app where lots of
| tasks would land there.
|
| _" (Ableton) Live supports up to 64 cores for audio processing
| on Mac and Windows. Likewise, Live supports up to 64 processing
| threads for audio calculation."_ https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/209067649-Multi-c...
| wtallis wrote:
| > but the efficiency cores are slower in the M3 vs the M1,
|
| I think that's only true when comparing M3 Pro vs M1 Pro
| (rather than the base M chips that each have 4 efficiency
| cores), and only when running threads with a background-
| priority QoS setting. Testing like [1] has shown that macOS
| runs background threads on M1 Pro/Max efficiency cores at
| higher clock speeds to compensate for only having two of those
| efficiency cores compared to 4-6 for all the other chips. But
| when normal-priority threads spill onto efficiency cores
| because the performance cores are full, the efficiency cores
| run at full speed on all chips.
|
| [1] https://eclecticlight.co/2023/11/27/evaluating-m3-pro-cpu-
| co...
| wtallis wrote:
| The core counts listed don't make sense: for M1 Pro they're
| quoting the fully-enabled 8p2e config but for M2 Pro and M3 Pro
| they're quoting the cut-down configs (6p4e and 5p6e) that are
| only available in the 14" MacBook Pro (and Mac Mini, for M2 Pro).
| For context, the M1 Pro's cut-down config was 6p2e.
|
| At best, none of these conclusions would apply to the 16" MacBook
| Pro, and would be the wrong comparisons to make for the 14".
| mh8h wrote:
| The fully-enabled 8p2e CPU config is the same as the one in M1
| Max.
| wtallis wrote:
| Yeah, so? The M2 Pro and Max also had the same CPU config for
| their respective fully-enabled configurations. But I don't
| see how the degree of similarity between Pro and Max chips is
| relevant to this failed attempt to compare three generations
| of just the Pro chips.
| Casteil wrote:
| >How does a three-year-old CPU beat the latest Apple Silicon chip
| in terms of performance in many popular DAWs?
|
| Why do people keep saying the M1 Pro is 3 years old? It came out
| in October 2021 - it's barely over 2...
| wmf wrote:
| The M1 is three years old but some people don't
| remember/realize the M1 Pro came much later.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I've no need to upgrade from M1. Apple really needs to push out
| their own discrete GPUs to upsell which will eventually happen if
| they're serious about AR/VR.
| jxcl wrote:
| If you look at the specs of the regular, Pro and Max chips on the
| M1 and M3 generations, it's easier to see M1 Pro as a sort of
| "Max Lite" chip. You got identical CPU core counts on both the
| Pro and Max variants in the M1 and M2 generations, but that's no
| longer true with the M3.
|
| Apple seems to have realized that people with only CPU heavy
| workloads won't buy the Max variant, so it seems to me they've
| weakened the Pro line on the M3 to push more people toward the
| Max.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Yeah, the changes they made to the M3 Pro were all about making
| it a less attractive option for people with CPU-heavy workloads
| who didn't need/want the GPU horsepower. Unfortunately, it
| seems that in order to chase this product stratification goal,
| they actually made the newest generation chip perform worse
| than the previous generations.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > We can only speculate why the cores are used differently
| depending on the DAW. Since even Apple's own DAW Logic performs
| worse with M3 Pro, the question arises as to whether it is due to
| the software itself or the operating system. However, this test
| is a clear indication for anyone who is still considering Apple's
| new systems to take a closer look when making a purchase.
|
| I didn't get an answer to the main question I had (sounds like
| they don't have one yet): is this because the DAW software has
| been optimized for M1 but not M3, and once they update it these
| scores will change?
| n9 wrote:
| He is testing by running many many tracks at once -- different
| DAWs have very different performance profiles when running more
| than 50 tracks... and some DAWs (I'm looking at you, Ableton)
| have utterly bizarre performance, CPU-wise, most of the time
| that doesn't directly correlate to the CPU's performance but to
| do with their really old and idiosyncratic code base.
| n9 wrote:
| The methology used in these tests is utter nonsense.
|
| Yes, there is something to be learned by his results but it has a
| the very least 50% to do with DAW internals and CPU vs the CPUs
| themselves.
|
| He used large numbers of tracks to test which isn't a valid
| measure of CPU optimization across different DAW platforms. There
| is widely varying CPU overhead issues among the different DAWs.
| Running 300 tracks in Ableton is going to cause a bunch of
| different bottlenecks and inefficiencies to be pushed... not just
| CPU.
|
| Clickbait. I'm not saying that the M3Pro is better or worse or
| trying to defend Apple, I'm just pointing out as someone with a
| lot of experience in DAW-land that this testing methology is bunk
| as a CPU test and as a DAW performance test.
| david_allison wrote:
| It's a music site.
|
| Showing that the efficiency cores aren't fully utilized by the
| DAWs is appropriate for the audience. It shows to less
| specialized users that they'll need to examine their tools and
| their use of efficiency cores to determine if an upgrade is
| worthwhile
| wtallis wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's quite accurate to say that the
| efficiency cores aren't fully utilized; it looks more like
| some of these apps are second guessing the OS and going out
| of their way to _avoid using_ the efficiency cores (probably
| by only spawning one thread per P core, since macOS doesn 't
| let apps directly control thread affinity).
|
| Most of the time, that is probably the wrong approach for an
| app to take, but maybe DAWs have latency requirements that
| can't be met when E cores are in the mix. But that's
| something the DAW vendors should have to document and
| justify, because it's just as likely that they're making
| assumptions about E cores that don't hold up over time across
| the full range of chips.
| david_allison wrote:
| > I'm not sure if it's quite accurate to say that the
| efficiency cores aren't fully utilized
|
| The graphs in the source video[0] display 0% utilization on
| E-cores for some apps.
|
| Given that it only occurs for some DAWs, it's very likely
| the wrong approach (given that 2/3 of the apps using
| E-cores have better performance characteristics than the
| others)
|
| https://youtu.be/FSqX4bt9to4?t=125
| ramijames wrote:
| I had to buy a new computer when I fled my country. I compared
| the Macbook Pros M1 and M3. It just made zero sense to get the M3
| right now. The extra money just isn't worth the slight
| performance gain. The M1 Pro is just a beast.
| TillE wrote:
| I love my M1 Pro, it's great, but if money is no object the M3
| Max is a massive upgrade.
| sayrer wrote:
| Surprising, but you really don't even need an M1 for those
| programs. You want fast external SSDs, though. I use the last
| Intel Mac mini for audio things, and it's fine.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I just have a nagging feeling that the M3 Pro exists to salvage
| poor 3nm yield, whereas the M1 and M2 Pro could shine because of
| good 5nm yield.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-29 23:02 UTC)