Logic Pro Multicore Benchmarktest !

[blinkfrog]

Mac Pro 8x2.26/6GB
10.6.2/9.0.0/32bit/HTon - 68 tracks
10.6.3/9.1.1/32bit/HTon - 68 tracks
10.6.3/9.1.1/64bit/HTon - 65 tracks
10.6.3/9.1.1/32bit/HToff - 69 tracks

[PhonoquO]

Originally Posted by Bretster

A whopping 12 tracks with my 2007 macbook core 2 duo 2ghz, 2GB, 80G HD on LP 8.02

Amazing what my little machine will do running LP 9.02

EDIT: 14 tracks after a restart and quit safari

I run OSX 10.5.8 ( with 8.02 for test )

that's really good! what interface and Hd config are u running?

[everythinglouder]

Logic 9.1.1, OS 10.6.3

Logic 64-bit: 75 tracks


2008 Mac Pro 8 x 3.2 GHz

[Firechild]

Originally Posted by everythinglouder

Logic 9.1.1, OS 10.6.3

Logic 64-bit: 75 tracks


2008 Mac Pro 8 x 3.2 GHz

Is that a little improvement since Logic 9 on 10.5.8?

[everythinglouder]

Originally Posted by Firechild

Is that a little improvement since Logic 9 on 10.5.8?

I actually never had 10.5.8 installed on this Mac Pro. I bought it refurbished last November and installed SL on right when setting it up.

But I believe I was at 72 tracks on Logic 9.0.2 32-bit.

[zackpennington]

White Macbook 2.1 C2D.
4GB RAM
7200 RPM 500GB (like it matters!)

10.6.3, 9.1.1, 32bit





.......................17 tracks.

Man, to think a Mac Pro is 4-5 times better (in this case) might actually justify the price for me.

Hopefully they release the new 6/12 core MP's or Quad MBP's before I quit working at Apple! I need to use my 25% off!

[Firechild]

Originally Posted by zackpennington

White Macbook 2.1 C2D.
4GB RAM
7200 RPM 500GB (like it matters!)

10.6.3, 9.1.1, 32bit





.......................17 tracks.

Man, to think a Mac Pro is 4-5 times better (in this case) might actually justify the price for me.

Hopefully they release the new 6/12 core MP's or Quad MBP's before I quit working at Apple! I need to use my 25% off!

Yes, it is very sad that the current macbook/macbook pro line has the same CPU power as 3 years ago...
It will be an interesting summer though !

[NewSc2]

Originally Posted by Firechild

Yes, it is very sad that the current macbook/macbook pro line has the same CPU power as 3 years ago...
It will be an interesting summer though !

Would love to see how the new Core i5/i7 MBP's do.

Firechild, could you update the table with the new Core i5/i7 iMacs?

[Firechild]

I have promised to update the charts when the new MacPro´s will arrive...so in June I will do a completely mega update of the chart

[NewSc2]

Originally Posted by Firechild

I have promised to update the charts when the new MacPro´s will arrive...so in June I will do a completely mega update of the chart

If they'll come out in June... it was originally projected in February, then April...

[dannys1]

68 tracks in 32bit mode.

Between 73 and 75 tracks in 64bit (Booting to 64bit kernal got one extra but then seemed to weirdly throttle back and have one of my cores operating at 65% when idle)

This is i7 iMac, 16gb Ram, Dual Raid 0 160 Intel X25-m G2 SSD.

Logic 9's very very poor ram management is a massive problem though. Ive upgraded to this beats of a machine along with Logic 9 and I run into memory problems I never had using Logic 7 on a 7 year old G5 with only 3gb of ram...and that used to run 100+ tracks just fine!!

[fantomen]

Originally Posted by dannys1

68 tracks in 32bit mode.

Between 73 and 75 tracks in 64bit (Booting to 64bit kernal got one extra but then seemed to weirdly throttle back and have one of my cores operating at 65% when idle)

This is i7 iMac, 16gb Ram, Dual Raid 0 160 Intel X25-m G2 SSD.

Logic 9's very very poor ram management is a massive problem though. Ive upgraded to this beats of a machine along with Logic 9 and I run into memory problems I never had using Logic 7 on a 7 year old G5 with only 3gb of ram...and that used to run 100+ tracks just fine!!

That is really impressive!!! Maybe the 16 gb are also a part of that phenomenal performance. Will also consider this instead of the new Mac Pros if they take too long.

[dannys1]

Originally Posted by fantomen

That is really impressive!!! Maybe the 16 gb are also a part of that phenomenal performance. Will also consider this instead of the new Mac Pros if they take too long.

No its not...ram has no affect on performance (until you start running out of it and your system slows to a crawl)

The 16gb of ram in my system is complete over kill at the minute...but within a year or so could become quite useful as hopefully most apps will move over to 64bit.

Logic's 64bit is currently unusable for me, despite having about 250 plugins only ONE is 64bit compatible, the rest run in the horrible Audio Unit bridge which is nasty to use and still falls to the same (if not worse) problems of 32bit Logic.

The bad fact is Apple seem to have been lax with Logics ram management in 9, its turned into Microsoft-esque bloatware that doesn't empty its ram resources (90% of the time when Logic says you are nearly out of memory, if you close and reopen that memory will be back again to use!!!)

Logic is using 200meg of ram just for an empty instance of Kontakt 4, when your limited to 2gb real and 2gb virtual ram (which go up matching each other in the activity menu) you reach the 32bit barrier very quickly.

If Apple doesn't improve Logics ram management though 64bit performance will eat into all ram very quickly, it needs to be as good as it was in Logic 7 or 8 and just because in 64bit mode it CAN access all ram that shouldn't make Apple lax and stop programming it to be as efficient and well run as possible as most people dont have more than 8gb of ram at the minute, my 16gb of ram is very unusual (and still expensive) especially as audio programs cannot make use of that yet (unless running Vienna Ensemble Pro and Kontakt 4's ram engine outside of your DAW)...

...16gb of ram would be very good for heavy heavy multi-tasking though which we dont do with audio programs.

[Firechild]

Originally Posted by dannys1

68 tracks in 32bit mode.

Between 73 and 75 tracks in 64bit (Booting to 64bit kernal got one extra but then seemed to weirdly throttle back and have one of my cores operating at 65% when idle)

This is i7 iMac, 16gb Ram, Dual Raid 0 160 Intel X25-m G2 SSD.

Logic 9's very very poor ram management is a massive problem though. Ive upgraded to this beats of a machine along with Logic 9 and I run into memory problems I never had using Logic 7 on a 7 year old G5 with only 3gb of ram...and that used to run 100+ tracks just fine!!

Wow, that is EXTREMELY good for a quad core machine!

Are you sure every track is playing, activity on every track in the arrange window? I´m not saying it must be something wrong but it is kind of cool that the iMac is faster than the quad 2.66 Ghz MacPro in this CPU test.

[dannys1]

Originally Posted by Firechild

Wow, that is EXTREMELY good for a quad core machine!

Are you sure every track is playing, activity on every track in the arrange window? I´m not saying it must be something wrong but it is kind of cool that the iMac is faster than the quad 2.66 Ghz MacPro in this CPU test.

Yep, all playing fine...as i said the problem I had was when after a bit for some reason I was getting 66% usage of the processor on idle, then my track count drop by ten. But I closed and reopened and got it back..

Dont foget it is a Quadcore 2.8ghz i7 it is more powerful CPU to CPU wise than a Quad 2.66ghz Xeon.

[fantomen]

Originally Posted by dannys1

No its not...ram has no affect on performance (until you start running out of it and your system slows to a crawl)

The 16gb of ram in my system is complete over kill at the minute...but within a year or so could become quite useful as hopefully most apps will move over to 64bit.

Logic's 64bit is currently unusable for me, despite having about 250 plugins only ONE is 64bit compatible, the rest run in the horrible Audio Unit bridge which is nasty to use and still falls to the same (if not worse) problems of 32bit Logic.

The bad fact is Apple seem to have been lax with Logics ram management in 9, its turned into Microsoft-esque bloatware that doesn't empty its ram resources (90% of the time when Logic says you are nearly out of memory, if you close and reopen that memory will be back again to use!!!)

Logic is using 200meg of ram just for an empty instance of Kontakt 4, when your limited to 2gb real and 2gb virtual ram (which go up matching each other in the activity menu) you reach the 32bit barrier very quickly.

If Apple doesn't improve Logics ram management though 64bit performance will eat into all ram very quickly, it needs to be as good as it was in Logic 7 or 8 and just because in 64bit mode it CAN access all ram that shouldn't make Apple lax and stop programming it to be as efficient and well run as possible as most people dont have more than 8gb of ram at the minute, my 16gb of ram is very unusual (and still expensive) especially as audio programs cannot make use of that yet (unless running Vienna Ensemble Pro and Kontakt 4's ram engine outside of your DAW)...

...16gb of ram would be very good for heavy heavy multi-tasking though which we dont do with audio programs.

Yep, all your points are very fair indeed. But for some reason you are getting many more tracks than people with similar configuration, that scored around 50 tracks. Maybe the new firmware update or something, but that performance is way more than I expected. Great news for you, my friend!

[dannys1]

I thought other i7 users were getting 67 tracks?

I would say it was the SSDS which are the biggest upgrade to speed up a system you can get - but its literally that, speed, not power and this is a power test. The raid 0 SSDs are great for loading large sample libraries like Scarbees stuff (Alicas Keys piano loads in a matter of seconds...)

I would get a screen grab of the tracks and my setup but I def dont think it'll have enough processor left to record a video at the same time haha.

[uberdrums]

I am planning on getting a new daw, I was thinking of getting a mac mini and logic pro. my uses are relatively modest.
im not sure I understand the benchmark. less than 20 tracks of audio? seem very small. do the audio tracks have loads of plugins loaded onto them or something?

any more details of the benchmark would be useful.

thanks in advance.

[crimsonnoise]

66 Tracks

2008 Mac Pro 8 x 2.8 GHz
10.5.8, 10 GB RAM
Logic 9.1.1 (32 bit mode)

[NewSc2]

Originally Posted by uberdrums

I am planning on getting a new daw, I was thinking of getting a mac mini and logic pro. my uses are relatively modest.
im not sure I understand the benchmark. less than 20 tracks of audio? seem very small. do the audio tracks have loads of plugins loaded onto them or something?

any more details of the benchmark would be useful.

thanks in advance.

Yeah, this loads up the most processor intensive tracks to try and pummel your computer. By no means a real world situation.

[uberdrums]

Originally Posted by NewSc2

Yeah, this loads up the most processor intensive tracks to try and pummel your computer. By no means a real world situation.

thanks 4 your reply. its what I expected.

[bjorn]

0 track....
couldn't play even one track..

Macbook Pro 2.16 GHz Core Duo
2GB ram
10.5.8
Logic 9.1.1

I really want mac pro now..
my 5 year old MPB is barely living
I want to make it rest in peace asap

[peder]

Originally Posted by bjorn

0 track....
couldn't play even one track..

Macbook Pro 2.16 GHz Core Duo
2GB ram
10.5.8
Logic 9.1.1

I really want mac pro now..
my 5 year old MPB is barely living
I want to make it rest in peace asap

hello bjorn

i have the exact same configuration .. (the black one) and i get around 19 tracks ..
you must be doing something wrong

.peder

[Larz]

First off, great thread and thanks Firechild for the benchmark test. I'm about to buy a new MBP and trying to decide if it's worth the extra $ to bump up from the i5 to the i7. I hope some folks post benchmarks soon!

Benchmark results for my current system:
24" iMac C2D 3.06 GHz, 4GB ram, Leopard 10.5.8, Logic Pro 9, 256 buffer
21 tracks repeatedly without fail
22-24 tracks with sporadic overloads

I'm very curious to see how the i5 and i7 in the new MBPs compare.

[The Beatsmith]

my i5 2.53ghz/hires matte/7200rpm will be here as soon as apple build and deliver the damn thing. probably about 10 days. i imagine someone will do the test sooner though.

i also have an 8 core 2.8ghz 6gb and a mbp 2.16ghz core duo 15", i think they've already been done though

[KarmaPolice]

@bjorn:

You have to mute the midi regions not the Channel Strips in the mixer.

[Andrew07]

New 15'' i7 2.66 GHz Macbook Pro
8 GB RAM
7200 RPM, 500GB hard drive
OSX 10.6.6

I can play back 23 tracks no problem at 256 buffer rate.
24 tracks and I start getting sporadic overloads


hm, bumping up the Buffer Size doesn't seem to increase the system's processing capacity. In Pro Tools LE if I jumped from 256 to 1024 samples I would get a significant boost in processing juice.

[Skywalker]

Originally Posted by Andrew07

New 15'' i7 2.66 GHz Macbook Pro
8 GB RAM
7200 RPM, 500GB hard drive
OSX 10.6.6

I can play back 23 tracks no problem at 256 buffer rate.
24 tracks and I start getting sporadic overloads


hm, bumping up the Buffer Size doesn't seem to increase the system's processing capacity. In Pro Tools LE if I jumped from 256 to 1024 samples I would get a significant boost in processing juice.

Is this on Logic 8 or 9? I thought the i7 would be able to do around 30 tracks.

[Andrew07]

Originally Posted by Skywalker

Is this on Logic 8 or 9? I thought the i7 would be able to do around 30 tracks.

Logic 9.1.1

yeah, i thought it would be higher too

[Skywalker]

Give it a try on Logic 8 and let us know how it goes, might score a bit higher.

We ran a test the other day and Logic 8 ran about 17-18 tracks and Logic 9 around 11-12 on a 2.4 macbook