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iMac Pro iMac Pro boots 2x slower than MBP

D

duman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2018
22
3
Hi

I have purchased a new iMac pro (27" 10x cpu with Vega 64 Graphs + 64GB Ram)

I also have a MacBook Pro (13", 2016 3,3 i7 16GB Ram)

MBP boots in 17 seconds but iMac boots in 33 seconds. Both of them have macOS High Sierra 10.3.2

There are no Login items. I don't know why but maybe it is just it meant to be! I am not sure. What do you think?

Thanks
 
This is probably more to do with the T2 secure boot co-processor in the iMac Pro. The other reason is the larger RAM size needing to be initialized, but that's a relatively minor component compared to the former reason.

There's nothing wrong with your machine, the iMP just is being extra secure about booting up, and thus taking longer.
 
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SecuritySteve said:
No. It's theoretically possible to go faster with updates, but I doubt it will be anything meaningful. You might be able to disable the secure boot features in system preferences somewhere, but I wouldn't recommend that from a security standpoint of course.
Click to expand...

I habe disabled it from full control to none and nothing changed fyi
 
duman said:
I habe disabled it from full control to none and nothing changed fyi
Click to expand...
Interesting, maybe it still has to go through some architectural hoops. The boot process is very secretive, and Apple does a good job keeping a tight lid on the exact interworking of the T2 coprocessor / secure enclave / etc in their devices.

One last thing you might want to check as a sanity check would be to check the speed of the drive in your iMac Pro. There are plenty of benchmarks, one that I quickly looked up was the iMac Pro – Write 2996MB/s / Read – 2450 MB/s (2TB SSD). I suggest using Black Magic Speed Test to run this benchmark. If you're getting much less than those two benchmarks, then that would definitely explain your issue.
 
SecuritySteve said:
Interesting, maybe it still has to go through some architectural hoops. The boot process is very secretive, and Apple does a good job keeping a tight lid on the exact interworking of the T2 coprocessor / secure enclave / etc in their devices.

One last thing you might want to check as a sanity check would be to check the speed of the drive in your iMac Pro. There are plenty of benchmarks, one that I quickly looked up was the iMac Pro – Write 2996MB/s / Read – 2450 MB/s (2TB SSD). I suggest using Black Magic Speed Test to run this benchmark. If you're getting much less than those two benchmarks, then that would definitely explain your issue.
Click to expand...

Yep I have tried it already. The surprising thing is, writing speed is faster then read :)
 
Screenshot 2018-01-12 02.44.07.png
Here you go!
 
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Wow - does it ship by default SSD split into a RAID0? 2 banks presumably? Is that in hardware controller or OSX software RAID? Anyone got the milestone >3000MB/S write yet?
 
ECC RAM is tested on boot up. It’s a different type of memory and you have more of it than then MBP. The system is functioning normally.

These SSDs benchmarks are useless for trying to improve boot speed. Over the years on the Mac Pro forum we have tested boot times on SATA 2, 3 and PCIE. Makes no difference. Booting doesn’t saturate that much bandwidth as mostly very small files are loading.
 
wardie said:
Wow - does it ship by default SSD split into a RAID0? 2 banks presumably? Is that in hardware controller or OSX software RAID? Anyone got the milestone >3000MB/S write yet?
Click to expand...

Actually mine usually gets over 3K. I will post one if i can get again
[doublepost=1515746241][/doublepost]
wardie said:
Wow - does it ship by default SSD split into a RAID0? 2 banks presumably? Is that in hardware controller or OSX software RAID? Anyone got the milestone >3000MB/S write yet?
Click to expand...

Here you go!

imacpro-bm-ssd.png
 
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duman said:
Hi

I have purchased a new iMac pro (27" 10x cpu with Vega 64 Graphs + 64GB Ram)

I also have a MacBook Pro (13", 2016 3,3 i7 16GB Ram)

MBP boots in 17 seconds but iMac boots in 33 seconds. Both of them have macOS High Sierra 10.3.2

There are no Login items. I don't know why but maybe it is just it meant to be! I am not sure. What do you think?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Your post made me think of something.

This is just an anecdote and it’s not scientific at all;

this week I was at the Apple Store playing with the new iMac Pro and a new Macbook Pro on display.

I navigated in the OS, opened pictures and videos, web pages, finder windows etc... And I could swear there was a “lag” on the iMac Pro that wasn’t there with the Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro was more responsive. I did the same actions on each computer.

I wonder if the iMac pro was indexing or something.
 
lali said:
Your post made me think of something.

This is just an anecdote and it’s not scientific at all;

this week I was at the Apple Store playing with the new iMac Pro and a new Macbook Pro on display.

I navigated in the OS, opened pictures and videos, web pages, finder windows etc... And I could swear there was a “lag” on the iMac Pro that wasn’t there with the Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro was more responsive. I did the same actions on each computer.

I wonder if the iMac pro was indexing or something.
Click to expand...

One other thing i have realized is the wifi. It only shows 54 mbps which is not! And sometimes there are problems downloading sometimes not.
 
duman said:
Hi

I have purchased a new iMac pro (27" 10x cpu with Vega 64 Graphs + 64GB Ram)

I also have a MacBook Pro (13", 2016 3,3 i7 16GB Ram)

MBP boots in 17 seconds but iMac boots in 33 seconds. Both of them have macOS High Sierra 10.3.2

There are no Login items. I don't know why but maybe it is just it meant to be! I am not sure. What do you think?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Boot with the "V" key pressed to expose the Verbose startup mode. What you see on the screen may provide some clues what's going on. Maybe the stream of text suddenly stalls and that would then give you an explanation for where in the Startup process things are stalled and/or slowing down. Do same on the MBP and compare the results.

Just an idea to help run this issue down for you and us.... thanks. :)
[doublepost=1515864138][/doublepost]You might try booting up with verbose mode set. Press and hold the V key down when booting up. The stream of text may provide you with some clues, especially if the stream of text slows down or stops echoing to the screen for a while. Looking at the text when this might happen could provide an explanation possibly.

BTW... My 2016 15" MBP13,3 with 256GB SSD and 16GB RAM with all 4 USB-C ports in use takes 18 seconds to boot up from the first instance of seeing the Apple logo to the login display.

My MP6,1 6-core/32GB RAM/1TB SSD and a ton of storage hanging off the machine (TB devices, USB devices, etc) takes around 90 seconds from the boot chime to the login screen. Having lots of externals will typically cause Startup to be slower than having no externals connected.
 
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duman said:
One other thing i have realized is the wifi. It only shows 54 mbps which is not! And sometimes there are problems downloading sometimes not.
Click to expand...
I read somewhere here on these forums that it is just a display bug (speed incorrectly displayed) and the actual speed is fine. Do an actual test of your wifi speed to see if ok. Thanks
 
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