10 cores vs 12 cores M2 pro

[monsterlamo]

I am looking at the new MacBook Pro and there is about $300 price (edu discount) difference (US) between 10 cores 12 cores CPU.

This is my first Macbook :>.

My work is just light-medium weight game dev 2D & 3D. (I know Window is better for game dev at the time, I just prefer PC rather than a Window laptop, which is suck with the battery and performance without the outlet)

My work flow is Unity with Rider/VisualStudio on the side, at least 20-30 tabs, discord, zoom (meetings), notion at the same time.

I currently branching into Graphics Programming using OpenGL/Vulkan and C++ and some work related to game engine & Full-stack (just learning here, nothing serious).

I expected to have at least 4 years with this macbook before another upgrade.

My current specs: 32GB RAM & 1TB & AppleCare+ (I want the piece of mind when using this macbook :> )

So should I go with the 10 cores or 12 cores M2 pro ? ($300 is just a little bit over for the current budget right now)

Thanks!

 

[Onimusha370]

I’m not an expert in the things you’re doing, but to me it seems like you’ll rarely be maxxing out the CPU cores. I’d stick with the 10 core unless you have the money to spare. If you’re planning to keep it for a long time, I’d say go for it for peace of mind.

 

[Analog Kid]

One question to ask would be how often you use all cores in your PC. In general, the usage will probably be the same. The things on my machine that will most often peg all cores is compiling (gcc/Xcode, I’m not sure how multicore aware Unity is these days), media encoding (Handbrake, etc) and data analysis using highly optimized math libraries.

If you are spending most of your day only loading two cores and only occasionally making the machine sweat, it comes down to a question of whether getting those tasks that take 10% of your day done 10-15% faster is worth $300 to you.