DAW benchmarks on new Mac M4 chip

[woodsdenis]

Very interesting and fair test on all leading DAWs with the new M4 chips. Interesting to see how some DAWs don't use all the cores (including Logic).

[jonljacobi]

Apparently, the Minis are screamers, though Apple as per usual charges $200 - $400 for every upgrade step. By the time you get to something really top-notch, memory- and storage-wise, you're talking near $2k.

If I didn't already have a Mac Studio though...

[jonljacobi]

deleted

[jonljacobi]

Also, not a lot of DAWs use queued I/0 so don't take full advantage of NVMe. Neither do the OS's last time I checked. Marvelous, under-utilized technologies.

[woodsdenis]

Not going to directly get involved in which DAW is best as they all are to there if that's your choice, however questions should be asked about CPU usage and non utilisation of cores by some manufacturers. Also interesting how well some DAWs do compared to Reaper, the acknowledged leader in CPU consumption.

[Teksonik]

I'm planing on getting a new studio system Q1 of next year. But I'm failing to see any reason to buy even the M4 Pro 14 Core. I'm not totally married to the Windows environment but moving to Mac would have to make a lot of sense financially and performance wise.

CPU Benchmark 11-12-24.png

[pekbro]

Looking into the mac studio and pc, building
a new pc would be pretty close to $2k as well, especially considering the min gpu
card (imo) would be $800 by itself.

[apoclypse]

I have the M1 Max. I was waiting for the new Studio to drop but frankly the Mini is just too good.

[agharta]

I'm planing on getting a new studio system Q1 of next year. But I'm failing to see any reason to buy even the M4 Pro 14 Core. I'm not totally married to the Windows environment but moving to Mac would have to make a lot of sense financially and performance wise.

The Intel 1400 and also 1300 series have had such serious issues, to the extent that Intel has had to extend the warranty to 5 years to try and allay people's fears.
Plus they are power hogs under full load and especially the one you linked to.
It needs to use the 320W Extreme Power Delivery profile to deliver the advertised performance:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/inte ... ks/22.html

In some cases these chips are experiencing irreversible damage using stock settings.
Not sure if this is down to Intel, the board manufactures or both.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is usually the much better option and at a much lower wattage.
As for the M4 Pro offering lower multi-core performance, that is usually irrelevant for DAW usage.
How often do you see your DAW pegging all cores at anywhere near a 100% load?
It's not really an issue outside of fringe cases.

[Funky40]

in the benchmarks i saw, was the apple M4 fastest. Especially in SC speed.

The M4 mini pro meaningfully speced is above $2000.-
you get it below 2k with only a 1TB SSD / 24GB RAM.
Thats on both ends very minimal.

The noise situation with the M4Mini pro seems not clear yet.
The reports are completly mixed. Some send it back, due to fan noise it seems . Some say they don´t hear it, or just barely.

price wise makes the mini no sense vs. a studio assoon you ramp up RAM and SSD.
The M4 Studio max is supposed to come in march or june.
And it is to expect that the cooling situation will be better.

So far, It really looks like that mini housing is not equivalent for any sustained high loads + the requirement for a hush PC.
i run my system on only 1-2 cores under heavy load. i can live with the M4mini. I´ll have to. I couldn´t wait for the studio max to come

[Sindikhate]

I'm planing on getting a new studio system Q1 of next year. But I'm failing to see any reason to buy even the M4 Pro 14 Core. I'm not totally married to the Windows environment but moving to Mac would have to make a lot of sense financially and performance wise.

The Intel 1400 and also 1300 series have had such serious issues, to the extent that Intel has had to extend the warranty to 5 years to try and allay people's fears.
Plus they are power hogs under full load and especially the one you linked to.
It needs to use the 320W Extreme Power Delivery profile to deliver the advertised performance:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/inte ... ks/22.html

In some cases these chips are experiencing irreversible damage using stock settings.
Not sure if this is down to Intel, the board manufactures or both.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is usually the much better option and at a much lower wattage.
As for the M4 Pro offering lower multi-core performance, that is usually irrelevant for DAW usage.
How often do you see your DAW pegging all cores at anywhere near a 100% load?
It's not really an issue outside of fringe cases.

Do not start that. I do not use the full 320W Extreme power delivery blabla. I have a 14900K and I have NOT touched the BIOS since I built the machine (Jan24) and my BIOS is from Dec23. I just turned off the Asus Auto settings, tuned my machine to a t and it works as advertised, it has not degraded at all, it rips through every project you can imagine thrown at it and my temps and consumption are just perfect. Motherboard manufacturers shipped their boards with really aggressive settings in order to win on the benchmarks, hoping to bring sales etc. Then people started having some issues here and there, then the INFLUENCER youtube moaners started throwing shade, BIOS manufacturers brought out half measure BIOS after BIOS, that caused more trouble than solved anything, then Intel finally got the crap thrown at them and it went on and on. Now how much of this was actually planned to happen since they ran out of vulnerabilities to nerf your system no one can tell, but a lot of people have started being really suspicious.

If someone knows how to tune their cpu/mobo/ram combo they have nothing to fear. PC as I type this idles at 23C, CPU consuming between 22W to 25W (how much does AMD consume "idling" HA!) (browser with 120 tabs open, spotify playing, a couple pdfs open, HWinfo, and a python IDLE IDE open) running a cheap-ish Arctic LF2 420mm AIO, nothing special, case fans are obvioudsly inaudible and at low rev (it helps to have a big case though, 7000D here). The only "problem" I found on my system is that my GPU (4090) sits on top of/covers the NVMEs (both 990 Pro) and while the motherboard has a good cover/material to keep the NVMEs cool, the heat goes to the GPU and gets trapped there. The GPU fans are idle up to 50C so instead of the GPU idling at 40C which normally does, it idles at 48C and the heat from the NVMEs cause themelves to also stay at 48/50C. Of course these are not dangerous temps and it probably helps the NVMEs to work better but they are 10C higher than they normally would be at. If I turn the GPU fans on, the GPU when it idles, its temp drops to 23C lol and the NVMEs can even drop to 32C. Crazy... Who is to blame for this? I guess (Samsung? it is the tech though, and PCIE 5.0 NVMEs get even warmer) and the motherboard vendors.

The AMD is NOT a better option for DAW work, and the power consumption is a lot higher on "idling".

[PAK]

I'm planing on getting a new studio system Q1 of next year. But I'm failing to see any reason to buy even the M4 Pro 14 Core. I'm not totally married to the Windows environment but moving to Mac would have to make a lot of sense financially and performance wise.

You appear to be quoting Passmark numbers, which aren’t an ideal indicator of what you can expect for audio performance. EG Here’s Cinebench 24 showing something different.. Point being things depend a LOT on what’s being ran. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_bench ... ingle_core

For audio use almost every plugin is single core with the host distributing. That’s why host choice matters hugely for performance, and why single core performance sets the “ceiling” for most individual instruments. That’s also why you want as much performance, as possible, coming from the “performance cores”, rather than “efficiency” cores. These can create a more impressive multi-threading benchmark number, but require audio plugins which are able to “fit” into the efficiency cores.

Current M4 chips are from Apple’s laptop and compact desktop form factor devices, which are near noiseless in many cases. Based on the scaling of M-series chips (which makes things quite predictable), the Passmark number will be somewhere around 80,000 for the M4 Ultra. So it’ll require very high core count Threadrippers and Xeon’s to beat. These, in turn, tend to have very low single core performance.

It’ll be interesting to see whether certain audio benchmarks reflect this, or if the performance desktop Macs are curiously absent because it’s bad for business

[Lerian]

If someone knows how to tune their cpu/mobo/ram combo they have nothing to fear. (...)

The AMD is NOT a better option for DAW work..

Wrong and wrong.

The damage occurred also in servers where temps and voltages are very stable and monitored. Your CPU might be safe due to.. surprise - not using it pass a certain point. If you only use just 1-2 cores at 30-50%, chances are you will not have any issues. Anyone who used their cpu to a certain extent experienced stability issues that eventually ended in permanent damage to the cpu.

And yes, AMD is THE choice for audio workstation in 2024. 7900x, 7950x, 9900x, 9950x, they are all beasts for audio work, using all 12/16 cores at 100% without sweating. If you undervolt them you have constant speeds over 5.2-5.3 ghz, which means 20 to 30% more performance than stock in DSP processing, while keeping the temps around 70-80 degrees celsius in full load (they are designed to work 24/7 at 90 degrees). And undervolting is safer than stock.

Just yesterday, yet another testimonial on intel (among the dozens you can find on a simple google search):

While not everyone's experience of the 14900K will be the same (and in fact, with updates, it might be fine now), this has been my personal experience with a CPU that surprised me with how unstable it was. I have friends with the 13900K and the 14900K, and all of them are having issues, too. While none of them have been as severe as the ones I have experienced, the truth is that all of them have computers that feel like ticking time bombs.

https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-co ... eriorated/

Also, watch this:

[keyman_sam]

Who cares about intel really? Tune it to your hearts content and get 2x the performance while making a grilled cheese on top on the cpu. We’re here for the M4..
I’m interested in the thermal efficiency and noise of the m4 pro.

[Sindikhate]

Well I will say wrong and wrong back to you.

But let's start that the guy you posted is a complete clueless ********* in the tech circles and has been called out lately especially regarding the intel issues. The fact that 500k viewers watch him and reproduce his mumbling tells you a lot about where the world is heading today. The guy does not know what more than 50% of BIOS settings are doing.

Then you are posting the xda guy (website reviews mobile phones and is not what we call PC hardcore site) who managed to trash his cpu which means the guy is also clueless, and did EXACTLY what I pointed that people did from the beginning of this madness to today. He literally followed youtubers giving bad content, ruined his cpu and then he goes crying about it when intel TOLD HIM NOT TO install those BIOS updates for months. The people who know how things work, just tuned their PCs from the start and did not update to any of the 10 or so next BIOS updates for months and probably will not even touch them ever. He did exactly what I described people did wrong. The plan when you build a new system is to buy during the first 2/3 months of its release, do a proper setup and do not touch it unelss you have issues. If you do not have issues after your proper setup you will be good for many years as long as nothing is pushed through the OS (which is another reason a lot of people want their DAW PCs to stay offline but developers seem to not give a poop and only care about themselves).

Of course there are bad products, and this can happen to anyone, maybe he got a bad cpu. Another crazy thing that retailers do is they allow people to buy 20/30/40 cpus, they bin them (they choose the best performance ones) and then they return the rest, without having to pay anything for it. Usually they pay these through their credit cards and if any retailer would dare say anything they would call their card issuer. This way all the good bins end up in the hands of very few people, who keep one or two for themselves and then sell the rest for profit.

On the other hand, Intel increased the warranty period of 14900K cpus from 3 years to 5, he can return his CPU and get another one. I like how in his article (which I read, as well as the comment section where many people call him out) where he went from talking about his issue (if it actually happened) to foul mouthing the newer intel CPUs and talking great about the AMD ones. That is about 20% of his article and it was not needed if he only wanted to write about his REAL CPU experience. Why did he use the website for his personal experience? It is a bit odd. He had downclocked his CPU to 4.7Ghz and he had not returned it by then? Then to 4.5 and 4.4 and 4.2? Sorry but that makes me laugh. Utterly ridiculous. He had blue screens from the start, another hint that he should have returned it. Also he never mentioned his full build so I would not be surprised if his motherboard is a gen behind or something else crazy (bad PSU <- big culprit many times). On a PC many things could go wrong and affect another part.

For the record I do heavy tasks, (obviously I have done a mild undervolt) I may lose 3/4% in performance max 6% on some tasks but I am not running my CPU at 400A like him or whatever mistakes motherboard vendors did releasing those baseline blabla BIOS updates while they were taking flak from the youtube army. It was never designed to run 24/7 at 400A without degrading. Do not be surprised if you place someone who actually knows how to tune a system properly vs one of these youtubers and they just look like 5 year olds trying to understand what is going on. There are very very few youtbers you could trust regarding PCs and even some of these sometimes try to follow the companies' directions. The best are Roman, Aris (best for PSUs) and occasionaly (half the time) Steve from GN, with Aris avoiding to say bad things most of the times and sticking to the good ones when he reviews something. And if you like PC tweaking a lot, you could enjoy Buildzoid's experiments.

AMD is NOT the choice for audio in 2024 and has never been. There are many reasons for that. Drivers, compatibility with hardware (major one), bad thunderbolt support if any. WORSE single thread performance (the most important thing for DAW usage and single track long plugin chains), in general compatibilty issues on AMD (even with USB). Even ilok was not working properly on the new AMD cpus. They provided some beta solution to customers who got in contact with them but not all developer plugins were working. This may have been fixed by now, I have not followed it but read it over at Steinberg forums. Also comparisons that you see online not always tell the truth because for example some decide to run the Intels with lower speed RAM to equate it to the AMD max ram speed. Some crazy stuff like that.

Intel has been targeted heavily lately from other companies and the high ranks have def made some strange moves for sure. AMD totally lost the GPU game to NVIDIA and does not do that well on the CPU side either. You probably did not know that but the NVIDIA and AMD CEOs are close relatives (undle and niece). There is a lot under the table against intel who started from having low cash flow the last few years and everyone else thought it would be a great idea to attack them and steal their customers, one way or another. Not to mention political pressure from Taiwanese companies, wanting bigger share of the pie if they are to move some production in the west etc etc. There is a lot to it and it is not for a music forum.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/735 ... ket-share/

Though it seems like we will be moving to ARM sooner or later. Steinberg has already developed Cubase to run on ARM
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows- ... n-windows/

Even if AMD cpus did not have all those issues, single thread performance is the most important thing in DAW usage as well as performance at 64 samples to record live. Once you go into mixing or if you add midi notes by hand cpu power is not that important at 1024 samples as all top line i9, ultra 9, 9000s AMD are all way more than enough. And even then since many of us here use VSTi s,Intel previous gen has a lot more polyphony than the newest AMDs for example.

Anyway as with everything nowadays do a personal research and be careful who you listen to.