Multicore tests shows something of course, but you need to study overloading a CPU with even more concurrent tasks to gain deeper knowledge how a specific CPU will shine or not shine under heavy loads.Īnother deeper test could be more geared towars what happens with more heavy load tracks that are within a single core capability, but when running out of cores another such track is added to a core already under heavy load. The only thing that matters is how effective your DAW and plug-ins can utilise your processor. The only way to know for sure is of course to some do some reliable multi-track tests and single track tests with Ableton Live. I think with the Intel W CPUs in the iMac Pros this is not very likely.

My suggestion is that for DAW work more cores (with hyper-threading) beats a 23% faster per core CPU with less cores, unless it's likely that one single track, likely with an instrument and heavy processing will break a single core. Of course there is also some overhead in both cases, but my assumption is switching in other tracks that run in their own threads will be more costly with less cores compared to more hyper-threading virtual cores. That's 33% more work negating some of the speed differences. In contrast a 12-core, also with hyper-threading can serve 24 or less tracks before adding another track to the same core. Yes, hyper-threading, or virtual cores, means it is adding another track on the same physical core, but these threads are not running at the exact same time. Likely an 8-core with hyper-threading can serve about 16 tracks or less without having to add another track to one of the cores.

I am confused - here you can see that the benchmark of the 8 core is better than the 12 core.Īll of this is pretty much assumptions, but in the spirit of starting to think about these tings: If the processors are the same otherwise, memory registers, cache size and such, then each core could, with an emphasis on could, be assumed to be about 23% faster. My question: Would an 8 core Mac Pro with 3,5 ghz be better than a 12 core with 2,7 ghz?

8 core mac pro socket