# Intel iMac: i9 (10 core) or i7 (8 core) for orchestral libraries?



## Vik (Aug 26, 2021)

I need a 'waiting machine' until an Apple Silicon Mac with 64 gb is possible, unless someone can prove that an Apple Silicon Mac with 32gb is as useful as an Intel Mac with 64 gb for orchestral work. 

Which of the two most powerful, current 27" iMacs would you recommend? The 3.8 GHz 8-core or the 3.6 GHz 10-core?


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## emilio_n (Aug 26, 2021)

Vik said:


> unless someone can prove that an Apple Silicon Mac with 32gb


This machine doesn't exist yet... Max at the moment is 16Gb. 
I am limited but working ok with an old iMac with 32Gb, so I think with the Apple Silicon infrastructure 32Gb will be ok for not very demanding projects.

About the i7 or i9... At this moment I think I will choose the i7 for a "waiting machine" as any of both will be resellable for a nice amount in a few years and I think is more efficient with 8 cores at 3.8 than 10 at 3.6 for music creation.


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## Vik (Aug 26, 2021)

emilio_n said:


> This machine doesn't exist yet


Sure, I only meant that I''m heading for a 64gb when they are available unless someone can demonstrate that 32gb will be enough for M-Macs. 

32 gb, on my Intel Mac Pro, was a lot less satisfying than 64gb, and I don't even make full orchestral tracks, so I doubt that investing in a future 32 gb Mac without user upgradable RAM is a bad idea for me.


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## jbuhler (Aug 26, 2021)

I have the i9 with 128GB of RAM and it’s been great. I got the i9 because i needed to speed up video work (I also have an upgraded GPU on it). I’d worried about the fan for audio work, but it’s basically silent while using Logic unless I’m bouncing out a longer bit of audio, then the fan might briefly come on near the end. 

I’m not certain the extra cores of the i9 are all that useful for audio work, but in terms of the potential drawback of added fan noise, it’s not been an issue. 

If I’d been buying for just audio work I’d have almost certainly gone with the i7. I’ve now had the i9 for about ten months, and it’s been totally solid on audio work and I’d probably go with it now over the i7 even if I was buying just for audio work.


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## orangupingu (Aug 26, 2021)

Generally speaking, clock speed is more important for heavy synths like Diva etc and low-latency monitoring and running lots of reverbs (single core performance score is important even though Diva and other synths has a multicore option), and number of cores is more important for running large amounts of Kontakt instances.

Although if it's only a hold-over machine I'd go for the cheaper option if the price difference between the two means anything to you. Having said that, you probably won't notice a 0.2GHz difference that much, more so if it's a 1GHz difference (which is common when custom building a Mac and selecting the most expensive option - often here the CPU comes with significantly more cores but at a significant speed cost), so if money isn't an object go for the CPU with the higher number of cores.


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## Vik (Aug 26, 2021)

orangupingu said:


> Having said that, you probably won't notice a 0.2GHz difference that much,


Here are the Geekbench 5 scores for the 8 core i7 (3800 MHz):
Single-Core – *1252*
Multi-Core – *8120*

For the 10 core i9 (3600 MHz):
Single-Core Score – *1245*
Multi-Core Score – *9001*

The single results are almost identical, so the question is if I really need the extra multi-core capacity that the 10-core offers.


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## orangupingu (Aug 26, 2021)

Vik said:


> the question is if I really need the extra multi-core capacity that the 10-core offers


How does the performance of these CPUs compare to your current/old rig?

Were you feeling the need to upgrade/struggling to load and run everything you wanted? If not then I'd go for the 8-core version and save the cash, or if the 10-core is significantly more expensive I'd also save the cash.


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## Vik (Aug 26, 2021)

My current rig (Geekbench 5):

Single Core 528
Multi-Core 4770


"Were you feeling the need to upgrade/struggling to load and run everything you wanted?" Sure. The biggest problem for me is single-core performance, which forces me to use higher buffer settings = a lot of latency –plus various pops and clicks often in situations where I play only monophonic stuff. I use libraries like Berlin Strings and prefer libraries with enough dynamic laters to not sound 'MIDI' and several levels of vibrato crossfade. I want to use the mic positions that eat up most of my disc space without getting in trouble, and also – sometimes – layering, when needed. 

String libraries are already/in many cases sampled with soft/slow attacks, and this also adds to the latency when being forced to use high buffers. Before I went all Logic and native many moons ago, I had a Pro Tools HD rig with 2-3 milliseconds latency, and when I had to increase the buffer sizes , I disliked the delay. But the total latency when working with string libraries is of course much higher than what could get with with audio recordings. 

I hope to replace having to mix and match favourite presets from various libraries a new library (not yet released?) with more dyn. layers, more attack and release options, always enough round robins and enough vibrato options, so if it takes a year or two before Apple Silicon Macs with enough memory become available and not ridiculously priced (for enough RAM), I may need to keep my replacement for my 2010 Mac for a year or two – so I want something which involves as few compromises as possible. If I buy a used 2020 iMac, maybe it won't even cost me that much (and I may possibly get an OK price for it when I sell it).


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## rnb_2 (Aug 26, 2021)

If you're looking for a stop-gap solution, have you considered an i7 Mac mini? If you're coming from a 2010 Mac Pro, you'll see more than twice the single-core performance and an improvement in multi-core, as well. Since Intel has not improved single core performance much over the last few years, the Mac mini will get you most of the single core performance of the latest 27" iMac, but for a lot less money. You can upgrade the mini to 64GB with 3rd party RAM and a couple special tools.

For anybody buying an Intel Mac right now, my gut feeling is to minimize your outlay to make it easier to make a move when the Apple Silicon machine comes out that suits your needs. Depending on your needs, that could be next month, next year, or later, but I hesitate to recommend dropping $2k-3k on an Intel machine right now, especially if you're coming from a very old machine where *anything* modern will be a big upgrade. If you're not coming from an iMac, you already have displays that you should be able to use with the mini (possibly with adapters) and you may be able to use your current peripherals, as well.


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## Vik (Aug 26, 2021)

rnb_2 said:


> If you're looking for a stop-gap solution, have you considered an i7 Mac mini?


Yes, I have, and I just checked the benchmarks (1100/5477), but where I live there are more 2020 Intel iMacs around than minis, and to save some cash my plan is to buy a used, new one.


rnb_2 said:


> Intel has not improved single core performance much over the last few years


True. All this is politics, of course: already in 2017 they had an Intel Mac (the 14-core) with a multi score of almost twice as high as the current Intel mini, but they decided to only sell it as with a monitor and call it iMac Pro. The 18-core iMac pro multi score was 13400, so they had the Intel power we needed. The 2021 Intel Mini still has 2018 specs, doesn't it? I may actually go for one of those, but also need a better monitor, and in the end I plan to only have one Mac anyway, a MacBook Pro, so it's difficult to decide.

There are some differences between the 2018 mini specs and the current Intel iMacs which somehow makes me interested in them as an interim solution. They are also harder to sell, so easier to get for an OK price.


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## rnb_2 (Aug 26, 2021)

If you do just want to have a MacBook Pro, you may have something in the next couple months that will do the trick. The 14" and 16" M1X MacBook Pros are supposed to have the same processing power, so the only question will be the RAM limit and cost.


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## jcrosby (Aug 26, 2021)

Vik said:


> Here are the Geekbench 5 scores for the 8 core i7 (3800 MHz):
> Single-Core – *1252*
> Multi-Core – *8120*
> 
> ...


Depends on the DAW. Logic for example can and will make use of all 10 cores, and that difference will be noticeable... It might not be huge, but I definitely have a noticeably higher instrument count on an 8 core i9 MBP for example. While my older 6 core i9 MBP had a higher theoretical clock speed; (little difference in single-core numbers on paper - as is often the case); I can absolutely run more instruments on the 8 core MBP, and have more robustly mixed/pre-mixed templates...


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## Vik (Aug 27, 2021)

Interesting, thanks! The multi-core specs for the two iMacs a consider are 8120 vs 9001, so the fastest one has a performance which is roughly 10% higher than the other one, which would, I guess, support getting 10% more tracks. That would give you 110 tracks on the i9 if the i7 gives you 100. Are these numbers realistic, or is my maths worthless here?


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## jcrosby (Aug 27, 2021)

Vik said:


> Interesting, thanks! The multi-core specs for the two iMacs a consider are 8120 vs 9001, so the fastest one has a performance which is roughly 10% higher than the other one, which would, I guess, support getting 10% more tracks. That would give you 110 tracks on the i9 if the i7 gives you 100. Are these numbers realistic, or is my maths worthless here?


Not necessarily. Some kind of DAW bechmark would be a way more realistic way to ballpark what kind of difference to expect. If you are in Logic then the current version of the Logic benchmark (on GS) would be a much better way to the difference between the two...

Also, again the difference isn't huge. But I do tend to be able to finish a piece via midi without having to bounce in place most of the time, whereas on the 6 core I'd inevitably have to start bouncing before finishing an arrangement...

This post shows 125 tracks on the 8 core imac:








Gearspace.com - View Single Post - Logic Pro Multicore Benchmarktest !


Post 15266446 -Forum for professional and amateur recording engineers to share techniques and advice.



gearspace.com





Here's a link to the entire thread. (Imagine there's a 10 core somewhere buried in all of those pages...):









Logic Pro Multicore Benchmarktest ! - Page 111 - Gearspace.com


I just did this benchmark on my 2017 iMac (4.2 i7) and the new M1 MacBook Air. Once I figured out the weirdness with processing threads, I got a score of 145 on the iMac, 153 on the MacBook Air natively, and 130 on the MBA under Rosetta. Both using 64 sample buffers through built-in audio...



gearspace.com


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## Vik (Aug 27, 2021)

The voting is 50/50... have any of you had any first hand experience with the 8-core i7 (with orchestral sample libraries)?


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## jcrosby (Aug 28, 2021)

Vik said:


> The voting is 50/50... have any of you had any first hand experience with the 8-core i7 (with orchestral sample libraries)?


I've actually never owned an imac! I have owned a bunch of MBPs though, and I personally have found the i9s to be more powerful than i7s. It's not a huge difference necessarily, but those 5-15 instruments can make a big difference when it comes to delivering on a deadline... 

Even if no-one's posted on GS yet, I'd at least post the question.... Like here, there's a decent handful of helpful folks that might just take you up on the requests, do a few benchmarks, and give you some kind of comparison you can work from...


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## rnb_2 (Aug 28, 2021)

jcrosby said:


> I've actually never owned an imac! I have owned a bunch of MBPs though, and I personally have found the i9s to be more powerful than i7s. It's not a huge difference necessarily, but those 5-15 instruments can make a big difference when it comes to delivering on a deadline...
> 
> Even if no-one's posted on GS yet, I'd at least post the question.... Like here, there's a decent handful of helpful folks that might just take you up on the requests, do a few benchmarks, and give you some kind of comparison you can work from...


Just keep in mind that the difference between the mobile i7/i9 is greater than the difference between the desktop i7/i9 - Geekbench for the former shows >20% performance difference, where the latter is around 10%.

My gut feeling is still to minimize your outlay on an Intel Mac right now - get what you need and no more, as in less than two years, there's going to be an Apple Silicon Mac that will be much faster. In two months, there may be Apple Silicon Macs 50% faster than any Intel iMac you can currently get new - M1X should benchmark somewhere in the neighborhood of the 18-core iMac Pro/16-core Mac Pro. The M2 (probably coming next spring) will bring a MacBook Air faster than all but the i9 iMac and 10+-core Xeons; M2X in 12-18 months will probably be faster than all but the 24 and 28-core Mac Pros.

If you can get a great deal on a 10-core i9, go for it, but if not: how long will you be able to hold out in the face of a machine just shy of twice as fast in *both* single-core and multi-core performance 18 months from now? That's a scenario that hasn't ever existed with an Intel Mac.


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## Vik (Aug 28, 2021)

The best performing single core performance in Macs are found in the M1s (1700+ Geekbench score), and the best multi core performance are the Mac Pros and iMac pros (1100+ single core, 13 500-19800 multi-core), but let's not forget that lots of users praise the current Intel iMacs for what they do. Do most of us, even for orchestral work, really need something much more powerful than the current iMacs (1250 single core, 8000/9000 multi-core)? I think that the answer is no, or more specifically 'not yet'.





rnb_2 said:


> If you can get a great deal on a 10-core i9, go for it, but if not: how long will you be able to hold out in the face of a machine just shy of twice as fast in *both* single-core and multi-core performance 18 months from now?



I may need something twice as powerful if I invest in libraries with lots of dynamic layers – which I probably will do. And since I also prefer as low latency as possible, I may also be one of those who would be happy with better performance than the current iMacs. Still, enough RAM is more important, and we don't know anything about what Apple will deliver in terms of M-Macs with 64 or 128 gb RAM. Under normal circumstances, maybe I would have been waiting for the next gen Apple Silicon Macs, but with a 11-12 year Mac, even if it's 'Pro' and has 12 cores, I've been sticking with vintage Macs for too long already. So I'll probably go for the i7.

The increased sales tax, the bad dollar rate and the much higher Mac prices in Scandinavia (compared with US) supports your suggestion about not spending too much on something that relatively soon will be replaced by something much better. And – for what we know – Apple may have no plans about selling the Apple Silicon Macs with RAM prices in the neighbourhood of 'normal'. Maybe they think that since the performance is much better and cheaper, those who need 32, 64 or more gigabytes of RAM are professionals who can afford to spend as much on a top spec'ed Mac as they do today.


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## Kery Michael (Aug 29, 2021)

I made the jump from a quad core, 16 GB iMac to an 8 core 64 GB iMac. Both intel. And of course, I can add up to 128 GB of RAM. But haven’t felt the need to as of yet.

I made the jump now, rather than wait for Apple silicon, for two reasons. First, i think it’ll take time for everything to work without bugs on the new technology. Even right now, NI’s Battery is finally supported on Big Sur. I’m seeing this just now, up until now Battery wouldn’t work, Monark didn’t work for a while. And even though Massive X is supposedly supported, it still cuts my audio out. So that’s just with a change in OS, never mind the hardware.

who knows how long until all your plugins will finally work error free on Apple silicon. I would give the new technology a year or two before jumping in.

Second, how much is Apple going to make us pay for 64 or 128 GB of RAM? I don’t believe there will be 3rd party retailers. It’ll all be controlled by Apple. If they make the new machines upgradeable, which is a big if, and if the past is any indicator Apple will make you pay big bucks for an additional 32 GB of RAM.

So those two thoughts made me stick to what is tried and true. Maybe in 5+ years I’ll consider upgrading but a lot can change in 5 years.


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