Difference in single v multicore on daily basis

[Bomberton]

Hi Forum. And thanks for letting me in.

i have preordered the imac 16gb and 8 core, 256gb ssd and cant wait to get my hands on it.
Now - other m1 Mac’s is very impressive in singlecore benchmarks and ok average in multicore.

Am i right assuming that multicore is for multipurpose use?
Lets say Music in background, webbrowsing and movieclips on a 3 window?

i have bought my for a dailybasis computer. My Old imac 2013 will now serve as plexserver and this new one will mostly by browsing, picturehandling.
So i expect a rather powerfull upgrade.

 

[Spindel]

I replaced my 2013 iMac with a M1 mini and the performance difference is big.

The thing with multicore performance is that it only matters for certain workloads. But for the vast majority of people using computers you don't need more cores than the M1 offers.

I personally mainly use the computer for: Excel, Teams, Mail (outlook and built in client), AutoCAD, PDFs, Word, powerpoint, music in the background etc (basically engineering office work) and in my use case having more cores would not really make any difference in my daily use. Single thread is what matters.

The main reason the multicore score falls "behind" for the M1 is because it simply has less powerful cores compared to most of the competition. The M1 has 4 high powered cores, it performs on par with 6 or 8 cores competition but of course it will be beaten by a modern 12, 16 or 24 core CPU in multi core scores simply because it has less high power cores.

As long as the software you need runs on M1 you will not be disappointed with the performance.

 

[leman]

Am i right assuming that multicore is for multipurpose use?
Lets say Music in background, webbrowsing and movieclips on a 3 window?

No, multicore performance is about demanding (often pro) workloads that can be split across multiple CPU cores to achieve a speedup. Think about stuff like content creation, rendering, scientific applications etc. This is of course a gross oversimplification, which I think is appropriate in this particular case. Bottom line is that M1 is likely to be more than fast enough for your daily use.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Am i right assuming that multicore is for multipurpose use?

Yes and no.

Yes, as you yourself mention, you can have multiple programs running, and they each utilize a CPU core, giving each free run so to speak. No, as multicore benchmarks, which you likely base your assumptions on, are usually based on how good single applications can utilize multiple cores, and is therefore not a measure of how fast all your applications you have running will be performing at the same time.

So if you don't use applications that can utilize multiple cores, the multicore benchmarks are pretty much pointless. But yes, multiple cores are pretty much always good, as it makes your workflows more versatile.

 

[Bomberton]

Ahhh ok. Thanks for explaining.

I dont work in final Cut and such programs. 90% is done by apple’ own app.

 

[Gnattu]

Lets say Music in background, webbrowsing and movieclips on a 3 window?

This is not a heavy multitasking, M1 handles such case very easy.

 

[Significant1]

For multitasking (running apps simultaneously, as you suggest) and multiprocessing/threading (same app able to parallelize workload). Parallelizing work is best, but harder to code and not always possible, therefore singlethreading performance is also important.

 

[Lvivske]

Am i right assuming that multicore is for multipurpose use?
Lets say Music in background, webbrowsing and movieclips on a 3 window?

I dont mean offense by this but reading this thread made me mentally teleport to 2006 like the Intel Core 2 Duo just came out