Only 4 cores system usage on M1 Macs

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Customer base asks to see all info, customer base gets to see all info. It was better when we only saw performance cores, now we do not know what is causing problem, audio processing or gui processing.

Okay, so to be clear - you're saying that the meters used to be useful, but now they are junk and do not give any information whatsoever regarding actual core use? They are a visualisation toy?

Also you are suggesting that actually there's no change in performance at all - that the P cores still only work on audio tasks, and E cores only work on non-audio, and that hasn't changed? In short, there's been no performance changes at all, and we just have toy meters now?

Weird.

I'd be sorta interested to hear someone from Avid explain what is - or isn't - going on.

[JFreak]

Basically what you said. PT had this same metering in beta, but production releases only showed P-cores. Until now. Be careful what you wish for

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Basically what you said. PT had this same metering in beta, but production releases only showed P-cores. Until now. Be careful what you wish for

Well how utterly bizarre. Time for some quick tests.

I just put a ton of the heaviest CPU plugins I own into a project - on playback the PT meters were showing the highest at 25% and lowest at around 5%, a fairly even distribution between these values. The Mac's CPU history showed 1 P core at 60%, 3 P cores at 50%, 4 E cores on about 30%.

I then deactivated all those plugins. PT's meters were all showing about 5%. The Mac meters were showing about 40% on one P core and 15% on the others. The E cores were all on about 20%.

Two things to deduce from this rough and ready test.

1. PT's meters are indeed woefully unreliable, but there is a very imperfect correlation to the load.
2. The E cores are doing more in a heavily loaded CPU session, with no plugin GUIs open. So they seem to me be used in some modest way to share processing load.

Well, would love to hear from Avid here.

[gives]

PT 24.3 now supports both performance and efficiency cores (previously only performance). I highly doubt you will perceive a dramatic difference on my M1Ultra system.
The newer machines like M3 especially have more efficiency cores - so yeah that’s why you won’t feel it much.

G

[thin ice]

I've only loaded the heaviest processing session I could find with my typical usage. Meters may well be unreliable, but CPU usage was higher on 2024.3 overall.

Maybe this is why Avid rigidly stuck to just using the performance cores for so long. It's a good thing the Silicon Macs are so powerful, so this is not an issue either way for me.

[gives]

Originally Posted by thin ice

I've only loaded the heaviest processing session I could find with my typical usage. Meters may well be unreliable, but CPU usage was higher on 2024.3 overall.

Maybe this is why Avid rigidly stuck to just using the performance cores for so long. It's a good thing the Silicon Macs are so powerful, so this is not an issue either way for me.

I totally agree. I mean even with ATMOS session. I see very low usages.

G

[noiseboyuk]

Until we hear something meaningful from Avid, almost everything is suspect at the moment. Janne claims that nothing has changed processing-wise, so any effects we think we see are illusiorary. My own rough and ready tests on the other hand suggests that the E cores are now doing something, but relatively little next to the P cores.

I presume that the Mac's own CPU history is reliable, in which case PT's meters are under-representing what is really going on. But the good news is that so far even on my humble base M2 PT is handling all I throw at it. As long as stuff keeps playing without a hitch, it's all that matters really.

[JFreak]

Only real proof would be if PT CPU meter would show processing used for audio/video in different color than processing used for GUI and such. But no.

[sw rec]

64 gb M1 Studio MAX, Ventura…8 cores showing, only using 1-2 % on the average session. Never had a problem in the first place, but wanted to chime in anyway.

[gives]

Originally Posted by sw rec

64 gb M1 Studio MAX, Ventura…8 cores showing, only using 1-2 % on the average session. Never had a problem in the first place, but wanted to chime in anyway.

That's my thinking also. I'm not really paying attention to this since I upgraded to my Mac Studio in Nov 2022

G