MP 7,1 Monterey 12.1 vs Catalina 10.15.7 on nMP

[egmusic42]

For the past few weeks I've been experimenting with a NVME Monterey 12.1 Boot Disk inside my 2019 24 core Mac Pro (Vega II 32GB GPU). Today, I booted back into my MAIN (apple) Catalina Boot disk and was struck by how much faster certain visual GUI operations are. As a music composer, I spend most of my time scrolling/zooming a complex DAW that really puts the CPU to work and comparing apples to apples - same big music project loaded on both Catalina and Monterey - it seems like Monterey is much laggier with all of these typical scrolling/zooming GUI operations.

Curious if anyone else with a nMP (or any other machine) has noticed the same? Wondering if maybe there's some kind of optimization for the Vega II that Monterey still hasn't quite nailed and metal is having to try too hard?

Evan

 

[4wdwrx]

It's probably going to get laggier from now on, since there is less priority in optimizing for x86 CPUs.

 

[AlexMaximus]

For the past few weeks I've been experimenting with a NVME Monterey 12.1 Boot Disk inside my 2019 24 core Mac Pro (Vega II 32GB GPU). Today, I booted back into my MAIN (apple) Catalina Boot disk and was struck by how much faster certain visual GUI operations are. As a music composer, I spend most of my time scrolling/zooming a complex DAW that really puts the CPU to work and comparing apples to apples - same big music project loaded on both Catalina and Monterey - it seems like Monterey is much laggier with all of these typical scrolling/zooming GUI operations.

Curious if anyone else with a nMP (or any other machine) has noticed the same? Wondering if maybe there's some kind of optimization for the Vega II that Monterey still hasn't quite nailed and metal is having to try too hard?

Evan

Hi Evan,
what kind of adapter for that NVMe drive do you use and in which slot do you have it? Do a BlackMagic speed run on that and compare it with your internal Apple ssd speed. There can be differences. In my MP 5.1 world these differences are huge and do impact performance. Other than that, keep in mind Monerey is a very young OS X, compared to Catalina. In the PRO World of yours, you should stay a OSX system behind anyways because of slow driver development on third parties and stuff of that nature.
The other thing, .. your Vega II is in reality a pimped Vega 7 with double vram and a cover name tag for Apple only. Vega 7 was really a bridge technology for amd. Unfortunately the card was rare and not very long on the merket. Apple is usually very slow on updated drivers. However, I had that vega7 for two years in my mp5.1 via pixlas mod and was very happy With it. With your machine, you should be set for many years to come.

 

[egmusic42]

Thanks for your reply! NVME is inside a Sonnet 4x4 card in an x16 slot and reads about 3000MB/s in Black Magic, slightly FASTER than Apple's own internal Mac Pro SSD so i don't think its that lol.

Gonna have to do some more testing to really try to get to the bottom of it.

 

[profdraper]

For the past few weeks I've been experimenting with a NVME Monterey 12.1 Boot Disk inside my 2019 24 core Mac Pro (Vega II 32GB GPU). Today, I booted back into my MAIN (apple) Catalina Boot disk and was struck by how much faster certain visual GUI operations are. As a music composer, I spend most of my time scrolling/zooming a complex DAW that really puts the CPU to work and comparing apples to apples - same big music project loaded on both Catalina and Monterey - it seems like Monterey is much laggier with all of these typical scrolling/zooming GUI operations.

Curious if anyone else with a nMP (or any other machine) has noticed the same? Wondering if maybe there's some kind of optimization for the Vega II that Monterey still hasn't quite nailed and metal is having to try too hard?

Evan

Can't say I've noticed any issues like this re. Catalina vs Monterey. Two Vega IIs in my box, running Nuendo, DP, Logic, Live etc. However, FWIW I've used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for quite a long time (& also used to use this for large scale deployments of OS images in University labs & studios).

My practice is usally: Current sysyem on the mac internal boot disk; when a new OS or its beta is released I install this on an M.2 (this one is an external OWC Thunderbay 6; could just as easily be on my Sonnett 4x4). More accurately: I usually clone the old OS onto the M.2, then upgrade to the new OS. This then helps check for compatability with various apps & plugs & update those as the new OS rolls out.

When I'm confident the new OS is good to go, I then flip the images around with CCC, ie, new system coped to the mac internal boot disk, the old system copied to the M.2. I also have a number of CCC images backup & so can revert to a particular system if needs be, or have an older system on hand for a computer that may not support Monterey.

I hope this helps.

 

[egmusic42]

Can't say I've noticed any issues like this re. Catalina vs Monterey. Two Vega IIs in my box, running Nuendo, DP, Logic, Live etc. However, FWIW I've used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for quite a long time (& also used to use this for large scale deployments of OS images in University labs & studios).

My practice is usally: Current sysyem on the mac internal boot disk; when a new OS or its beta is released I install this on an M.2 (this one is an external OWC Thunderbay 6; could just as easily be on my Sonnett 4x4). More accurately: I usually clone the old OS onto the M.2, then upgrade to the new OS. This then helps check for compatability with various apps & plugs & update those as the new OS rolls out.

When I'm confident the new OS is good to go, I then flip the images around with CCC, ie, new system coped to the mac internal boot disk, the old system copied to the M.2. I also have a number of CCC images backup & so can revert to a particular system if needs be, or have an older system on hand for a computer that may not support Monterey.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for chiming in. This is EXACTLY what I do w CCC as well. Test out new OS's on NVME sonnet PCI cards and then when I feel it's ready, swap and copy to the actual Mac Internal SSD. I was actually neeaarrrrlllyyy al set to do that with Monterey earlier this week after months of testing Monterey until I realized DP (which is my Main DAW) is giving me a weird issue where it's noticeably slower with horizontal zoom operations (command+--> or command+<--) when booted into Monterey than Catalina. Same exact project, version of DP, version of VEP etc. Very strange. Gonna have to do a lot more testing to figure out what could be causing it. Really good to know though that you haven't noticed anything on your end.

 

[profdraper]

Thanks for chiming in. This is EXACTLY what I do w CCC as well. Test out new OS's on NVME sonnet PCI cards and then when I feel it's ready, swap and copy to the actual Mac Internal SSD. I was actually neeaarrrrlllyyy al set to do that with Monterey earlier this week after months of testing Monterey until I realized DP (which is my Main DAW) is giving me a weird issue where it's noticeably slower with horizontal zoom operations (command+--> or command+<--) when booted into Monterey than Catalina. Same exact project, version of DP, version of VEP etc. Very strange. Gonna have to do a lot more testing to figure out what could be causing it. Really good to know though that you haven't noticed anything on your end.

Hmmm ... it 'could' be a DP thing, I don't use it that much (is installed for a few friends that do) but I recall that the DP10 to DP11 paid upgrade was for Monterey compatibility (plus a few other bells & whistles). May be worth checking other DAW9s) that is convenient, in my case Nuendo (or Cubase), Logic, Ableton Live. Nuendo is improved if anything re. graphics ... otherwise, it may be best to take it up with MOTU? And good luck with that ....

Other side of the possibilities - what's wrong with staying with Catalina? In my view, nearly all of the recent OS updates are about Apple walled garden (shareholders, not customers) and I don't see they add much in terms of pro recording studio practice - expect that Apple OS keeps mac user stressed about updates & breaking things, while clealry making money through forced updates by various vendors (eg MOTU). Meanwhile on Windows, old apps and plugs just keep on going ... just saying.

So maybe just stay with Catalina? Why do we need Monterey in a recording studio, really?

PS: could be worth checking for any known DP11 /Monterery issues with the folks at MOTUnation? https://www.motunation.com/forum/index.php