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Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

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Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#21

Post by david_allison »

n9 wrote: post #19

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 go…

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

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#22

Post by mh8h »

wtallis wrote: post #9

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 fo…

The fully-enabled 8p2e CPU config is the same as the one in M1 Max.

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#23

Post by wtallis »

david_allison wrote: post #21
n9 wrote: post #19

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 go…

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

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.

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#24

Post by vilunov »

nailer wrote: post #14
dvt wrote: post #4

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.

Have the apps been recompiled yet?

It's the same ISA, they don't need to be recompiled.

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#25

Post by wtallis »

mh8h wrote: post #22
wtallis wrote: post #9

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 fo…

The fully-enabled 8p2e CPU config is the same as the one in M1 Max.

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.

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#27

Post by gloryjulio »

dvt wrote: post #4

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.

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

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#28

Post by david_allison »

wtallis wrote: post #23
david_allison wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 DA…

> 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

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#29

Post by wtallis »

tyingq wrote: post #7

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...

> 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...

Re: Apple M1 Pro Beats M3 Pro with Ableton, Logic and Pro Tools

#30

Post by jshier »

mholm wrote: post #8
iwontberude wrote: post #2

Is this also true of M1 Ultra in Mac Studio?

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

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).
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