# Macs: Xeon’s vs. Non Xeon (or Mac Pro vs. New iMac 2020 10 core)



## wayne_rowley (Sep 12, 2020)

Hi,

I watched this video earlier: 



When it came to the Logic Pro benchmark:

The 10 core 2020 iMac achieved 131 tracks
The 8 core 2017 iMac Pro achieved 162 tracks
The 12 core 2019 Mac Pro achieved 227 tracks

My question/topic - why are the older Xeon Mac’s getting significantly more tracks than the new non-Xeon processors?

The 12 core Mac Pro gets nearly 100 extra tracks - and even the ‘slower’ 8 core iMac Pro gets an addition 31 tracks. Any thoughts as to why? The suggestion in the video was that it was to do with memory channels, but I don’t see how that would help. Could it be that Logic is better optimised for the Xeon processors? Any other thoughts? If you go by this the old base iMac Pro will give you better performance than the new iMac.

Wayne


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## gst98 (Sep 12, 2020)

I was under the impression that the processors in the iMac are Apple's mobile type. I think they are the same in their macbooks, execpt they are tailored for a desktop size, cooling and power. Where as the Xeons are server grade and are much better under high temperature and sustain workloads, hence why the iMac pro fans never come on( also the iMac pro has a better cooling solution). Also they make very few iMac pros and Mac pros, so the bin they are taken from in the Intel factory is going to smaller and of a higher quality than the standard iMac. I'm sure the memory channels have a significant contribution too.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 12, 2020)

What kind of tracks, and is it the processor that's crapping out at 131 tracks or something else? I'm curious enough to want to know, but not curious enough to sit through a 12-minute video for one sentence of information. 

And why would a computer crap out at 131 tracks? We were able stream far more sample voices than that off Firewire 400 or USB2 drives 15 years ago.


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## ridgero (Sep 12, 2020)

gst98 said:


> I was under the impression that the processors in the iMac are Apple's mobile type. I think they are the same in their macbooks, execpt they are tailored for a desktop size, cooling and power. Where as the Xeons are server grade and are much better under high temperature and sustain workloads, hence why the iMac pro fans never come on( also the iMac pro has a better cooling solution). Also they make very few iMac pros and Mac pros, so the bin they are taken from in the Intel factory is going to smaller and of a higher quality than the standard iMac. I'm sure the memory channels have a significant contribution too.



Not at all

The i9 10910 is a desktop class high end CPU. Not related to mobile chips.


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## wayne_rowley (Sep 12, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> What kind of tracks, and is it the processor that's crapping out at 131 tracks or something else? I'm curious enough to want to know, but not curious enough to sit through a 12-minute video for one sentence of information.
> 
> And why would a computer crap out at 131 tracks? We were able stream far more sample voices than that off Firewire 400 or USB2 drives 15 years ago.



They don’t give the details of the test, other than it is a Logic Pro project playing some kind of VI track which they replicate until they get a system overload message.

You don’t have to watch the whole video, if you expand the description you can jump to the Logic Pro test.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 12, 2020)

So it sounds like a nothingburger with no there there.


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## wayne_rowley (Sep 12, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So it sounds like a nothingburger with no there there.



It may be. Certainly it’s an artificial benchmark. But unlike Geekbench they are at least using Logic. What struck me was the relatively large increase in track count between the Xeons over the newer i9. It‘s not just a couple of tracks. Even accounting for the artificial test, surely that must also work out similarly in real world Logic projects?


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## gst98 (Sep 12, 2020)

They used the same test that got resurfaced here a week or two ago I think. I'm not sure its the best or well rounded benchmark. Also people use their DAW is so many different ways, with synths or audio or kontakt instances so its very hard to compare unless you do the tests yourself designed for your workflow. They tested the 10-core vs the 8-core and the 10-core was barely any better, where as I'm sure it should have more noticable improvments than this test would suggest.


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## hazza (Sep 12, 2020)

Glad to see this discussion pop up today, since I've been offered a 2nd hand 14-core iMac Pro and am wondering if I should cancel my i9 order (~£1300 difference). These numbers I find confusing, my old cheesegrater I'm sure can stream more than 131 voices from SSD through Kontakt, obvs Logic is coded differently but I would have expected a higher track count, particularly given the NVMe drives. Anyway, I assume the iMac Pro track count increase also plays out in VI streaming performance. Still torn between reports of generally well-behaved fans on the new iMacs, and thinking a full orchestral arrangement with loaded mixer page must surely bring them out in a noisy sweat.


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## gst98 (Sep 12, 2020)

hazza said:


> Glad to see this discussion pop up today, since I've been offered a 2nd hand 14-core iMac Pro and am wondering if I should cancel my i9 order (~£1300 difference). These numbers I find confusing, my old cheesegrater I'm sure can stream more than 131 voices from SSD through Kontakt, obvs Logic is coded differently but I would have expected a higher track count, particularly given the NVMe drives. Anyway, I assume the iMac Pro track count increase also plays out in VI streaming performance. Still torn between reports of generally well-behaved fans on the new iMacs, and thinking a full orchestral arrangement with loaded mixer page must surely bring them out in a noisy sweat.



I've just ordered a 10-core iMac and I am conerned about the fan/noise. I've heard that the iMac pro's cooling is amazing and it near impossible to get the fans to an audible level. The downside to the iMac Pros new cooing system is that it takes up the space where you can add your own RAM on the standard iMac. So if you need the extra power and/or want less noise then the iMac pro is probably worth it.


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 12, 2020)

The new MacPros will usually win a test of who gets the most tracks because they have more cores and decent single-core performance also. The single core performance of an i9 is a little better then the new MacPros...which means you could theoretically use a CPU heavy plugin and get lower latency while in live mode recording the part...which is where the single core performance matters. But when you're talking about many tracks and none are in live mode...then really...the more cores the better...

Interesting what he said about the iMac sounding like a hair dryer under load. no thanks for me on that one.

The truth is that the iMac probably will be the system of choice for an awful lot of musicians because the MacPro, is still just ridiculously priced. In a few years we should see some used ones hit the market, then maybe some of us can get into those...that's exactly how I got my first cheese grater, which as far as I'm concerned is happily still my system of choice rather then a hair dryer.


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## hazza (Sep 12, 2020)

Well the MaxTech test above suggest otherwise, that even though the iMac i9 CPU beats the iMac Pro 8-core by a decent margin, the Logic track count was lower on the iMac than the iMac Pro. So there is definitely something about the iMac Pro RAM or Xeon chip architecture that trumps the CPU performance, in this scenario.

My options are i9 3.6Ghz 10-core vs Xeon W 2.5GHz 14-core - iMac wins for single core performance, iMac Pro quite far ahead in multi core. But somewhat unrelated to this discussion IMO!


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 12, 2020)

The Macpro 6 channel memory could definitely be a factor! In the video he had a section talking about that when he was talking about photoshop performance. Very well could be a factor for sample playback...


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 12, 2020)

So if someone had both machines, an interesting comparison test would be iMac vs Macpro with two different projects... one project with CPU heavy synth plugins that aren't reading any samples from RAM, versus say a sample based project that is playing back a lot of samples from RAM.

If the 6 channel memory is having a significant impact on MacPro performance then it would beat the iMac with the sample based project, but probably would not win by as much or might even just tie or maybe even worse when comparing the same two machines with a synth oriented project that uses hardly any RAM.

There is always some RAM reading going on...no matter which plugins you're using, but the 6 channel memory improvement would show greater gains with a RAM heavy project. Theoretically anyway. We'd need a test like above to confirm that it actually makes a difference, which might explain the results quoted by the OP.


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## davidson (Sep 12, 2020)

If someone wants to send me a new mac pro, I'm more than willing to run any bloody test you want.


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## hazza (Sep 12, 2020)

Looking at some other Logic benchmark test stuff, I think I may have misinterpreted.. I assumed they were stacking audio tracks, however it looks like the test runs Sculpture with a handful of channel plugins. So yeah, these track counts make a lot more sense, doh! Anyway, makes the CPU inverse performance paradox all the more intriguing.


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## davidson (Sep 12, 2020)

So are we saying if the tests were more midi track based, the 2020 imac may well beat the imac pro?


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## hazza (Sep 13, 2020)

davidson said:


> So are we saying if the tests were more midi track based, the 2020 imac may well beat the imac pro?


No, the opposite in fact. For some reason although the iMac beats the iMac Pro in most areas, in terms of Logic benchmarks the iMac Pro seems to come out on top.


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## wayne_rowley (Sep 13, 2020)

hazza said:


> No, the opposite in fact. For some reason although the iMac beats the iMac Pro in most areas, in terms of Logic benchmarks the iMac Pro seems to come out on top.



And it's the lower 8 core iMac Pro too. I would imagine the 8 core Mac Pro would also give a similar result.


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## gst98 (Sep 13, 2020)

hazza said:


> No, the opposite in fact. For some reason although the iMac beats the iMac Pro in most areas, in terms of Logic benchmarks the iMac Pro seems to come out on top.



Yes, but most of those tests are simulated benchmarks, and the iMac Pro performed better in the real life test.


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## hazza (Sep 13, 2020)

Indeed, it's strange when every other test goes in the iMac's favour. I wonder if Apple could have decided to optimise Logic for the iMP architecture but not for the iM?!


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## davidson (Sep 13, 2020)

hazza said:


> Indeed, it's strange when every other test goes in the iMac's favour. I wonder if Apple could have decided to optimise Logic for the iMP architecture but not for the iM?!



Or bottlenecked logic to run worse on the 2020 imacs. It's not like they haven't undertook similar practices in the past. Also, I like a good conspiracy.


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## gst98 (Sep 13, 2020)

I think its more a case that simulated benchmarks never really tell the whole story


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## hazza (Sep 13, 2020)

But these aren't 'simulated' benchmarks - Geekbench scores you could say were - they are actual real world tests of consistent Logic VI + plugin tracks across various platforms. Don't think MaxTech have given details of exactly what the channel content was though, which is frustrating.


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## davidson (Sep 13, 2020)

Someone in the comments said;

"Hello Max, i wanted to point out one thing about the Logic Pro test, as building DAW is my job: sadly, that test is completely useless as it does not by any mean tell the real story about audio production performance. The logic test represents an ideal workload for multi core cpus, scaling with the number of thread in a linear manner (similar to a cinebench test) but realtime usage shown that Xeon multi core cpus like the ones in imac pro and mac pro are TERRIBLE for audio production because of the high latency mesh design of the cpus. I'd love to find a better test to reflect that , but working on real music projects shown that while the cpu was barely hit, on x299 14 core hackintosh (and also x99 12 core) cpu i was not able to work without stutters / digital noise at the same projects that worked fine on our previous 6700k , even when using high buffer size. We moved to 9900k and never looked back."

Does anyone here have any thoughts?


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## wayne_rowley (Sep 13, 2020)

X299 and X99 CPUs are not Xeons, and a hackintosh is not a Mac. An interesting comment, but his setup just muddies the waters further.


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## gst98 (Sep 13, 2020)

hazza said:


> But these aren't 'simulated' benchmarks - Geekbench scores you could say were - they are actual real world tests of consistent Logic VI + plugin tracks across various platforms. Don't think MaxTech have given details of exactly what the channel content was though, which is frustrating.


Yeah that’s what I’m talking about. In his videos he does about 10 benchmarks and then does (in this case) 1 real world logic test.


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## davidson (Sep 13, 2020)

wayne_rowley said:


> X299 and X99 CPUs are not Xeons, and a hackintosh is not a Mac. An interesting comment, but his setup just muddies the waters further.



I just read another article with the 2019 imac vs the imac pro, and it stated apple have tweaked logic to run better on the xeon processors specifically. The waters arent so much muddied at this point, but more like oil


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 13, 2020)

I would think they would have tweaked LogicPro to run as well as possible on each machine they well. In other words it could detect its running on MacPro and do things one way or detect its an iMac and do things in the way that makes sense for iMac. I'm not sure if that information is true that they are doing that kind of app-specific optimization...but in any case, I think its safe to assume that Apple is trying to make it run as efficiently as possible on all machines that they sell.


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