M1 Pro: 8 core vs 10 core CPU

[smirking]

I’m a lawschool master student who often has 50+ safari tabs on pretty heavy websites and lots of word/pdf files

I've run similar usage scenarios to yours on my 32GB i7 2018 MBP and also on an 8GB 13" M1 MBP. The M1 was actually a tiny bit faster for everyday usage tasks like Web browsing and viewing PDFs even when I overloaded the available memory.

The one area where it didn't shine was with MS Office. I don't know how to get Office to run acceptably. No matter what I do it's always the slowest dog in a geriatric dog race.

While I had problems with Office on the 8GB M1, I also have problems with it on my 32GB 2018 i7 so having lots of memory was no salvation. Excluding Office, I had no problems zipping along to heavy usage on the 8GB M1.

 

[SimonQ]

The one area where it didn't shine was with MS Office. I don't know how to get Office to run acceptably. No matter what I do it's always the slowest dog in a geriatric dog race.

While I had problems with Office on the 8GB M1, I also have problems with it on my 32GB 2018 i7 so having lots of memory was no salvation. Excluding Office, I had no problems zipping along to heavy usage on the 8GB M1.

Microsoft, eh? Who knew? I find Word with a few docs open takes up more memory and CPU than a lot of other apps that are more ‘active’. Necessary evil if you use your Mac for business.

 

[badsimian]

<sigh> and now I’m a complete hypocrite by cancelling original order and going 10c/16c …

 

[mhuang2286]

The 10/16 is the "true" M1 Pro chip. During the manufacturing process, some of the silicon will not yield fully, and TSMC will literally laser off the 2 bad CPU/GPU cores from the wafer. TSMC will sell these "B" grade chips to Apple to put in the base model for cheap for an 80% performance hit. Basically, do you want to pay more for the "true" chip or is an 80% performance hit acceptable for your workloads. Google "cpu binning" for more info.

 

[SimonQ]

The 10/16 is the "true" M1 Pro chip. During the manufacturing process, some of the silicon will not yield fully, and TSMC will literally laser off the 2 bad CPU/GPU cores from the wafer. TSMC will sell these "B" grade chips to Apple to put in the base model for cheap for an 80% performance hit. Basically, do you want to pay more for the "true" chip or is an 80% performance hit acceptable for your workloads. Google "cpu binning" for more info.

Does this matter? Wouldn't 10/16 be binned if there was a 12/16 above it? or 12/16 on a 14/16? You're talking 80% of insane performance is still excellent. Serious question by the way, not having a go. I am learning!

 

[Beau10]

The 10/16 is the "true" M1 Pro chip. During the manufacturing process, some of the silicon will not yield fully, and TSMC will literally laser off the 2 bad CPU/GPU cores from the wafer. TSMC will sell these "B" grade chips to Apple to put in the base model for cheap for an 80% performance hit. Basically, do you want to pay more for the "true" chip or is an 80% performance hit acceptable for your workloads. Google "cpu binning" for more info.

You mean 25% hit (6/8 perf cores) CPU and 12.5% GPU, and it doesn't matter how it's arrived at - performance is performance and money is money.

 

[mhuang2286]

You mean 25% hit (6/8 perf cores) CPU and 12.5% GPU, and it doesn't matter how it's arrived at - performance is performance and money is money.

Oh yeah my bad I meant you'll get 80% of 10-core CPU performance. Agreed, perf is perf, just adding some more context. Hence why all the marketing material is centered around the "full" 10/16 M1 Pro.

 

[tonyz123456]

Hi,
I have the same MBP 2015 8GB. I have MBA M1 and just bought the new MBP M1 Pro.

from the MBA M1 experience, I can Gurantee you it overkill the usage like yours far more for upcoming 5 years.

Why'd you decide to get the new Macbook Pro if you already have the MBA M1 out of curiosity?

I'm currently without a personal laptop and I'm torn between buying a MacBook Air refurb for around $1300 with 512 GB SSD and 16 gb of ram or the new MBP base model. I've probably ordered and canceled various configurations of the MBP 4 or 5 times at this point and decided to order both the new MBP and a refurbed MacBook Air M1 to compare against.

I have mixed feelings about the new design - it's a bit ugly in general, heavy and I actually have zero use for any of the ports since I've stocked up on dongles over the years and my LG Ultrafine 5K monitor has served as my dock for various computers I've gotten from work faithfully for a few years.

The main selling point for me is the mini-LED display when I use it undocked but I wonder if I would be better served by pairing the MacBook Air with an iPad Pro 12.9in + magic keyboard although they feel duplicative as two 13in screened machines but serving different purposes (currently using an 11in iPad Air).

 

[jouster]

If you're keeping it for six years, then why not go for the higher end option? Over that length of time the difference will amount to a few pennies a day.

 

[shower999]

Why'd you decide to get the new Macbook Pro if you already have the MBA M1 out of curiosity?

I'm currently without a personal laptop and I'm torn between buying a MacBook Air refurb for around $1300 with 512 GB SSD and 16 gb of ram or the new MBP base model. I've probably ordered and canceled various configurations of the MBP 4 or 5 times at this point and decided to order both the new MBP and a refurbed MacBook Air M1 to compare against.

I have mixed feelings about the new design - it's a bit ugly in general, heavy and I actually have zero use for any of the ports since I've stocked up on dongles over the years and my LG Ultrafine 5K monitor has served as my dock for various computers I've gotten from work faithfully for a few years.

The main selling point for me is the mini-LED display when I use it undocked but I wonder if I would be better served by pairing the MacBook Air with an iPad Pro 12.9in + magic keyboard although they feel duplicative as two 13in screened machines but serving different purposes (currently using an 11in iPad Air).

My M1 MBA is for my wife. I use it when wife is not around (dual account,that’s why i have 16GB RAM so I never need to worry)

I want to go to MBP 2021 because I like it, I also want my own machine. I rather overkill2 than sorry.

for general user. MBA is overkill, get the refurbish one. I throw in everything, open many apps, FCP, GarageBand, photos, watch apple TV+ and connect to eunuches curved monitor, it never slow down, never got hot, no fan. The design (gold is way more beautiful), portability, speaker will blow your mind too.

furthermore, the battery life is fantastic, I couldn’t drain it in 1 day, sometimes 3-4 days with each charge

 

[smirking]

Microsoft, eh? Who knew? I find Word with a few docs open takes up more memory and CPU than a lot of other apps that are more ‘active’. Necessary evil if you use your Mac for business.

Necessary evil indeed. It's one of many software licenses that I'd dump in a heartbeat if I didn't have clients who wouldn't stop sending me things that require me to own that software. Of course, there are ways to get around that requirement now, but the cost of an owned Office license isn't that much so it is what it is. It just irks me that whenever my computer is dragging it usually means I forgot to quit out of Excel.

 

[SimonQ]

Necessary evil indeed. It's one of many software licenses that I'd dump in a heartbeat if I didn't have clients who wouldn't stop sending me things that require me to own that software. Of course, there are ways to get around that requirement now, but the cost of an owned Office license isn't that much so it is what it is. It just irks me that whenever my computer is dragging it usually means I forgot to quit out of Excel.

100%! That’s the only reason why I use it too - dealing with other people. They need to get their act together.

 

[badsimian]

Another way of thinking about it is if you are doing anything, even for short bursts which taxes the CPU then you are getting a potential gain of 33% over the base model (8 perf cores vs 6 perf cores). Caveat being it would need to be a multithreaded workload, single threaded won't make much difference.

 

[SimonQ]

Another way of thinking about it is if you are doing anything, even for short bursts which taxes the CPU then you are getting a potential gain of 33% over the base model (8 perf cores vs 6 perf cores). Caveat being it would need to be a multithreaded workload, single threaded won't make much difference.

Thanks. Unless I am having a kernel panic my Intel i5 never really gets close to capacity, usually has half or more idle so an 8 perf base Pro should more than fine, a big step up. Where I do run into slowing is 8GB RAM where I regularly have orange with red spikes so that's where I would upgrade, if at all. That said, it is tempting to go up to 10!

 

[smirking]

Where I do run into slowing is 8GB RAM where I regularly have orange with red spikes so that's where I would upgrade, if at all. That said, it is tempting to go up to 10!

If you're trying to keep your costs minimal, going into the red on the memory graph may not be the same on an M1 vs an Intel. I had an 8GB M1 13" that I ran totally overloaded all the time. It was in orange and red pressure zones nearly 100% of the time and it barely stuttered.

 

[SimonQ]

If you're trying to keep your costs minimal, going into the red on the memory graph may not be the same on an M1 vs an Intel. I had an 8GB M1 13" that I ran totally overloaded all the time. It was in orange and red pressure zones nearly 100% of the time and it barely stuttered

 

[SimonQ]

Thank you! I think I will be fine on 16

 

[yitwail]

If you're trying to keep your costs minimal, going into the red on the memory graph may not be the same on an M1 vs an Intel. I had an 8GB M1 13" that I ran totally overloaded all the time. It was in orange and red pressure zones nearly 100% of the time and it barely stuttered.

How large was the ssd? They do eventually wear down, once they approach 80% of capacity, and continual page swapping would accelerate the wear.

 

[smirking]

How large was the ssd? They do eventually wear down, once they approach 80% of capacity, and continual page swapping would accelerate the wear.

The swapping was massive and I think the worst of it was caused by my Web development work that uses databases for render caching. My virtual servers were probably eating up 2-4 GB of my 8GB of RAM all the time. I had days where I hit just under 1 TB of swapping.

It was for this reason why I didn't keep the machine. I picked it up on a trial basis while my 32GB i7 was getting a new battery. Until I checked the swap stats, I was planning on keeping it and selling my i7 when it returned from Apple.

It had a 512GB drive. If I had kept up the pace that I was on, it would still have been good for at least 3.5 years.

It's pretty scary I was able to rack up writes like this, but it's also amazing that this happened without me seeing any obvious signs in terms of stutters and performance drops.

I should not have been riding on an 8GB machine and I very well knew that going into it. I intentionally picked up something under-resourced to see how an M1 would handle that situation.

 

[KPOM]

Oh yeah my bad I meant you'll get 80% of 10-core CPU performance. Agreed, perf is perf, just adding some more context. Hence why all the marketing material is centered around the "full" 10/16 M1 Pro.

It’s closer to 76% (the 8-core is 30% faster than the M1 in multicore and the 10-core is 70% faster), but either way, the M1 isn’t exactly a slouch, plus even the 8-core M1 Pro gets 14 GPU cores, so will be a significant improvement over the M1 for graphics-intensive apps.

 

[KPOM]

I mostly use Dutch websites like Kluwer Navigator, or Rechtsorde. I honestly never monitored my cpu usage, which I should have lol.

As others have said, even the MacBook Air would work, so certainly the 8-core MacBook Pro should hold up well for what you describe.

 

[kawa636r]

i have bought both.
Will try them and return one of them.

 

[aevan]

Sounds like you’ll be fine with the base CPU and GPU. With what you need as a user who multitask, RAM is the important factor. 16GB should be enough I think, if you have the extra $400, you’ll be more than secure for 5-6 years with 32GB.

16Gb will be fine for multitasking in 5-6 years. Heck, 8Gb will be fine for multitasking in 5-6 years.

We had these same comments in 2016.

 

[yitwail]

Additional reflections on ordering 8 core M1 Pro instead of the “real” M1 Pro as someone put it: if I decide it’s not quick enough, I can return it and order 10 core machine. Personally, I’d be very surprised if I feel that way. It won’t benchmark as well, but it’s unlikely I’d notice that it does something a couple of milliseconds slower than a full fledged M1 Pro. Either way, only thing that matters is hands on experience. The other day, I was at Costco and compared a iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 side by side, scrolling the same page in Safari and could not see any difference, unlike the numerous reviewers who gush over the 120hz display.

 

[kawa636r]

Additional reflections on ordering 8 core M1 Pro instead of the “real” M1 Pro as someone put it: if I decide it’s not quick enough, I can return it and order 10 core machine. Personally, I’d be very surprised if I feel that way. It won’t benchmark as well, but it’s unlikely I’d notice that it does something a couple of milliseconds slower than a full fledged M1 Pro. Either way, only thing that matters is hands on experience. The other day, I was at Costco and compared a iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 side by side, scrolling the same page in Safari and could not see any difference, unlike the numerous reviewers who gush over the 120hz display.

About iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 pro refresh rate, my eyes are incredibly sensible to the refresh rate, for me 120hz are really important and are very perceptible when you read a lot in the night (even if I feel difference through the day also).

Anyway, I was the one writing that I will test both machines. There are only 200 euros difference and I would try both to understand which one to keep.