new Macbook Pros and Pro Tools

[Becharax]

Hello !!

I was checking the newly released Macbook Pros from Apple with the M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max Chips ....

I was wondering that do Pro Tools really benefit from the Extra GPU cores in the M1 Pro Max CPU if I don't do Video and only Audio ??

Feedback and discussion is appreciated

[dominicperry]

No, the extra GPU cores for audio are of no benefit.
However, only the M1 Max can be purchased with 64GB of RAM, so if you need that, you need the bigger processor.

The real problem at the moment is that you are stuck with MacOS Monterey, and it doesn't work very well. In my case, I have a bunch of icons hidden under the notch which I can't see (and I don't really care about the notch one way or another), and I can't get Eucon to work with my iPad.
There are also reports of USB hubs not working properly, and of memory leaks cropping up in random applications - which is an OS problem, not the fault of the applications themselves.
None of the M1 machines (the original MBA and MBP) nor the new ones (M1 Pro and M1 Max) run USB at full speed compared with the intel machines - this probably won't matter unless you are doing video, but the USB hub problem is more significant, as some people are unable to get USB SSDs to work properly at all - bad if you are using them for session or sample libraries.
Running the Logic Benchmark test, my Mac Pro 7.1 16-core 48GB can handle 160-180 tracks at any buffer size, and my 16" MBP M1 Max 64GB gets an almost identical performance. I don't have any big Pro Tools sessions to try with but they both run the demo song with no trouble. The fans on the M1 Max eventually come on after 5-10 mins, but they are literally off to start with (unlike the old MBPs where they were always running) and just idle away at their minimum speed (1500 rpm). So, impressive performance.

In normal day-to-day non-DAW use, the Mac Pro rarely uses more than 10% CPU whereas the M1 Max hits 35% quite often. The Mac Pro feels more solid and stable, but it's hard to know how much of that is hardware and how much is down to the maturity of Catalina vs Monterey. I suspect the latter has the biggest effect.

EDIT: Almost forgot - the Avid Complete PlugIn bundle doesn't work with Monterey. Discussed elsewhere on the forum......

Dominic

[JFreak]

At least for now, GPU is useless in regards of plugin processing.

What the future may hold is however uncertain. Remember the olden days of G4 and so called "velocity engine", which meant those processors were better in floating point processing than others at that time. That meant developers needed to code their plugins to take advantage of the hardware feature.

Just the same, in the not so foreseeable future though, plugin developers may find a way to utilise GPU for plugin processing. It will take a lot of time and effort and we still do not even have Apple Silicon native PT software and iLok, so don't hold your breath.