M1/2 vs PC, real life benchmark.

[Jac459]

I know the m1 is far from being new and the m2 is already replacing it.
But in the mean time I have been looking at buying a MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, was not sure about the number of GB necessary and end-up reading a lot of BS...

So finally I decided to take back my macbook air m1 8gb/256gb that I use only for travel and decided to throw at it my most complex song handled (painfully) by my daily driver, a Razer, 32GB, 1TB SSD MVMe, i7 9750H, 2080 RTX.

After few hours of reinstalling everything:

Short story ==> The M1 is much more powerful.
And yes, the memory management is crazy because I have a shit tone of plugins loaded and I am at 50% memory pressure...
I remember reading people saying that I should buy 32GB, 64GB to be confortable. 16GB barely enough... That's plain bullshit.
Also there were some assertion saying that every time you load an RRP, it is the whole RRP loading of 1 GB, that's plain BS also, I have 9 instances...

Here is the description of my song:
19 tracks only BUT with mixing and mastering on the same instance.
All my Neutron 4 instance are for mixing purpose with EQ, some dynamic EQ and Compression (sometimes side chained).
Send Effects: just Izotope Neoverb
Master Channel has Neutron 4 Visual Mixer.
Ozone 9 - Low End focus, Equalizer, Dynamics, Dynamic EQ, Maximizer, Imager
Izotope Tonal Balance Control.

DAW: Bitwig. All plugins are loaded by manufacturer (memory sandbox).
Track1: Bitwig-Polygrid. + Neutron 4
Track2: RS-Player + Bitwig PolySynth + Neutron 4
Track3: Friktion + Stereo Split + Convolution + Neutron 4
Track4: RS-ElectricBass + SideChained EQ + Neutron 4
Track5: Bitwig Drum Machine + Neutron 4
Track6: Audio + Neutron 4
Track7: RS VK2 & Pulverizer + Sidechained EQ + Neutron 4
Track8: Izotope Iris + Peak Limiter + Neutron 4
Track9: Isotope Iris
Track10: Bitwig Grain Synthesis + Serum Effects + Peak Limiter + Neutron 4
Track11: Surge XT + RS Aligator + Neutron 4
Track:12: Bitwig Arpegiator + Sampler + Neutron 4
Track13: Bitwig Arpegiator + Sampler
Track14:Bitwig Arpegiator + Sampler
Track15: RS - Drum Sequencer / Umpf + Neutron 4
Track16: RS - Dr Octo Rex + Neutron 4
Track17: RS - Dr Octo Rex
Track18: RS - Dr Octo Rex
Track19: RS - Dr Octo Rex

The tracks has a lot of chords and make my Razer CPU goes to the max (but not clicking).
The m1 stays around 40-50% DSP.

hope it helps...
As you can see, a lot of the plugins are not native.

[Jac459]

I should add that this benchmark is interresting only for the memory part of it... The fact that the m1 is a cpu beast, even in a mb air is already an established fact...

[avasopht]

What's even more interesting is that the MacBook air doesn't run the M1 at its full potential.

Think it was a cooling or airflow issue that causes it to reduce the clock speed when the CPU load is high.

Intel should have a similar processor next year but I highly doubt it can ever be as efficient with its 40+ years of baggage.

Unless they offered a new instruction set with x86 support provided the same way as M1, but allowing easier switching so that plugins can be used interchangeably.

[Heater]

Yeah. I love my MacBook Air M1.

[Jac459]

Yeah. I love my MacBook Air M1.

Do you use it for music? If I knew it would be so powerful wen I bought it I would have gone for slightly bigger screen... I find it a bit small for music (manageable but not super confortable).

[Heater]

Yeah. I love my MacBook Air M1.

Do you use it for music? If I knew it would be so powerful wen I bought it I would have gone for slightly bigger screen... I find it a bit small for music (manageable but not super confortable).

Yep. I use it for music. Easy to connect another screen to it.