13" MBP Logic Pro X Performance coming down from an iMac

[Javik]

My Situation

So my current rig is a 2013 27" Top End iMac. Work with projects with anywhere between 50-150 tracks with heavy use of things like Kontakt and Battery and minimal to mid use of other FX and plugins.

It works absolutely flawlessly now (albeit the initial slow loading of heavy Kontakt instruments from the HDD).

My Question

Thinking of getting a 13" MBP for portability and just wondering if I'd experience much of a slowdown with my use case of LPX. I'd obviously get 16GB of ram, but am just a bit worried that the processor is only dual-core.

From experience, is there that much of a performance degradation coming from a quad-core system to a dual core system like this one?

Just a bit hesitant as my previous 2010 13" MBP was absolutely unusable as i got past 80+ tracks. Granted that was only with HDD and 4 Gb Ram.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Adam

 

[Brian Y]

My Situation

So my current rig is a 2013 27" Top End iMac. Work with projects with anywhere between 50-150 tracks with heavy use of things like Kontakt and Battery and minimal to mid use of other FX and plugins.

It works absolutely flawlessly now (albeit the initial slow loading of heavy Kontakt instruments from the HDD).

My Question

Thinking of getting a 13" MBP for portability and just wondering if I'd experience much of a slowdown with my use case of LPX. I'd obviously get 16GB of ram, but am just a bit worried that the processor is only dual-core.

From experience, is there that much of a performance degradation coming from a quad-core system to a dual core system like this one?

Just a bit hesitant as my previous 2010 13" MBP was absolutely unusable as i got past 80+ tracks. Granted that was only with HDD and 4 Gb Ram.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Adam

With that many tracks, you will notice a difference. Things will just take a few more seconds here and there.

Personally, for logic, I'd get the 15". 13" was always too small for things like Logic , etc IMO.

 

[ChrisA]

My Situation

So my current rig is a 2013 27" Top End iMac. Work with projects with anywhere between 50-150 tracks with heavy use of things like Kontakt and Battery and minimal to mid use of other FX and plugins.

It works absolutely flawlessly now (albeit the initial slow loading of heavy Kontakt instruments from the HDD).

My Question

Thinking of getting a 13" MBP for portability and just wondering if I'd experience much of a slowdown with my use case of LPX. I'd obviously get 16GB of ram, but am just a bit worried that the processor is only dual-core.

From experience, is there that much of a performance degradation coming from a quad-core system to a dual core system like this one?

Just a bit hesitant as my previous 2010 13" MBP was absolutely unusable as i got past 80+ tracks. Granted that was only with HDD and 4 Gb Ram.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Adam

Look a the Activity Meter as you work with Logic on the iMac. If the CPU never goes much over 25% then you will be OK downgrading to the Macbook. But if the iMac is using over 50% you will have to change the way you work if moving to a 13" MBP

One thing is the smaller screen. You will have to work with fewer track and scroll around more.

You can always bounce (freeze) tracks to reduce the CPU load.

 

[Javik]

Look a the Activity Meter as you work with Logic on the iMac. If the CPU never goes much over 25% then you will be OK downgrading to the Macbook. But if the iMac is using over 50% you will have to change the way you work if moving to a 13" MBP

One thing is the smaller screen. You will have to work with fewer track and scroll around more.

You can always bounce (freeze) tracks to reduce the CPU load.

Yeah this sounds like a great idea, I'll check this out when back on my rig

 

[ChrisA]

Yeah this sounds like a great idea, I'll check this out when back on my rig

I forgot to add that the way to think about CPU load is this: If the current load is 50%, that leans if a process needs to use the CPU, there is a 50% chance it will have to wait of the next scheduler cycle. If the CPU load is 100% then there is a 100% chance it will have to wait.

You'd like to keep the load on the Macbook below 50%. Just figure your iMac is twice as fast as the Macbook Pro.

(Yes, this is a major simplification. All process don't have equal access to CPU cycles but as a first order approximation it's close enough.)