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User profile for user: djanthonyw
djanthonyw Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

i5 / i7 MBP / Logic Pro benchmark test

So I have been thinking about consolidating both my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro into one newer MBP i5 or i7. I stumbled on a benchmark test and ran it on both my Mac Pro and MBP.

http://www.evan.se/logicprobenchmark/EvanLogicBenchmark.zip

My MacBook Pro is a 2.2 Core 2 Duo (3.1, not unibody) and I was able to play around 18 tracks by dragging the loop point right before the tracks, un-muting all tracks, starting playback and then dragging each track one by one until it can't played anymore.

I did the same thing with my Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 Xeon (first gen). I was able to get about 28 tracks going.

I got to stop in the Apple store for a short while tonight and was really disappointed by the new i5/i7's with this benchmark test. I actually got better results with the i5 than the i7 (really strange). I tried the i5 2.53 and was able to get about 22 tracks going and on the i7 2.66 I was only able to get about 16 tracks going.

Something is definitely wrong because the i7 should definitely be able to do more than the i5. I for sure thought the i7 would at least be able to match my current Mac Pro.

One more thing is that Logic Pro is not loaded on the Macs in the Apple store, only Logic Express is, so Space Designer was not present in the test at the Apple store. This was even more of a let down because when I was running the test on my Macs, Space Designer was obviously running as well.

Other people have gotten similar results in this thread on Gearslutz:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/371545-logic-pro-multicore-benchm arktest.html

Please run this benchmark test and give some feedback on your results, there might be something I'm missing here...

Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Logic Studio, iPhone, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 1, 2010 12:21 AM

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169 replies
User profile for user: Mike Connelly
Mike Connelly
User level: Level 4
1,791 points

May 4, 2010 10:50 AM in response to djanthonyw

There's a lot of confusion over on that gearslutz thread.

Logic DOES take advantage of HT cores, at least on all the desktop models that have it. And generally the chips that have HT DO have a big performance advantage in both benchmarks and real world apps - not as much as full cores but pretty close.

The i7 MBP shows big improvements on most other apps. And Logic uses the HT cores on other machines. So something is going wrong with the specific combination of these new machines and Logic that is giving performance results that make no sense compared to other macs. Could be anything, from battery/energy saving, to something in the graphic system, a peculiarity in the mobile i7 that makes it the only HT chip Logic doesn't recognize, or anything else. Hopefully Apple will figure it out and provide a fix, either a Logic update or a firmware update for the new laptops.

Those of you who have these new machines, definitely contact Apple and let them know that you aren't seeing the performance you expect. They'll probably say that's how it's supposed to be, but at least get the data in their system. Also, it might not hurt to bring this up at sites like macrumors and others to get the issue some more press. That's what it took in the case of the audio playback heat bug with the MPs, nothing got done until the mac websites picked it up and gave them some publicity about it. I definitely think a case of zero improvement on one of the pro apps would get people interested over there.
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User profile for user: gshenaut
gshenaut
User level: Level 1
0 points

May 4, 2010 1:03 PM in response to gshenaut

After doing some reading, I rebooted my i7 MBP while holding down the 6 and 4 keys, and I turned off the "Load in 32-bit mode" option in the Finder's information window for Logic Pro, and I repeated the benchmark in full-bore 64-bit mode. I got up to 27 tracks this time. I had to redo a few levels when they crapped out once, but then they repeated many times successfully after that. 28 tracks is where it just wouldn't go.

FWIW, the previous result of 21 tracks was on the same machine booted in 32 bit mode running 32-bit LP.

Greg Shenaut
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User profile for user: Jazzmaniac
Jazzmaniac
User level: Level 3
518 points

May 7, 2010 6:46 AM in response to Scalar

I'm not so sure that there is something to fix. EXS24 and ES1 use very different abilities of the system. EXS needs a lot of memory bandwidth and HD bandwidth for streaming. ES1 uses raw floating point performance and can probably rely on cached memory access almost entirely.
So depending on which plugin you use you can determine limits of certain bottlenecks. The test therefore implies that floating point and cache performance have gone up, but that either HD streaming performance or main memory interfacing bandwidth hasn't improved that much. And that's consistent with the technical specification changes between the models.

So please, stop thinking and complaining that something is wrong. Rather consider what you are actually measuring.

Cheers,

Jazz
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i5 / i7 MBP / Logic Pro benchmark test

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