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14in Macbook pro, external displays, 8 core or 10 core?

T

TitusVorenus

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 28, 2011
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Posting here because I can't find the answer in the guides and the "genius" at the apple store just said "buy it and if it doesn't work bring it back".

From Apple's site:

Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or

Up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)
Click to expand...

I'm looking to buy a 14 in macbook pro with 1 tb, 16gb, and either 8 core or 10 core cpu. What I haven't found, is if the 8 core or 10 core CPU will make a difference for my use. I currently run up to 2 external extended displays with 2 types of trading software running, multiple excel spreadsheets, and various browsers and sometimes videos playing.

Apple's language is pretty vague here. Will the 8 core potentially bog down?
 
It is impossible to answer your question without trying it on your specific use case. So actually “geniuses” suggestion is not that dumb.

But to be fair, I am fairly certain that if the 8-core model is too slow for your use, so will be the 10-core. They have the same everyday performance, the bigger model simply has more cores if you need to do some intensive multi-core computing. Which doesn’t seem to be your case.
 
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I got the 10 core CPU chip, and it's just 2 extra performance cores it's not anything related to the GPU which would affect the external displays.

I have never used more than 25% of my 10 core CPU

1659083198827.png
 
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I have an M1 Mac mini 16/512 and I run 2 4k monitors with Active Trader Pro and Think or Swim. I have 3 ToS windows with 80 simple charts and two windows with 10 charts each with multiple studies. I can add a third 2k monitor over Ethernet and run my office stuff (web browser, spreadsheet, Notes, Reminders, Calendar) and this uses about 35% CPU. The mini only has 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.

One of the major factors on performance is whether or not your software runs natively or not. Programs that go through multiple layers (such as programs that are based on WINE or Java) can experience significant performance hits. Which trading programs are you planning on using?

I'd recommended going with 32 GB of RAM if your trading programs use a lot of it. The iGPU uses system RAM for display storage so a lot of RAM can be allocated to the windowserver process for your displays (and, I assume your Spaces).

My M1 mini setup (you can just look at the picture of the video)
 
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mdnz said:
More RAM would be more useful because the graphics memory is shared with the main memory. The more displays you have the bigger the amount of memory that is needed to display the image on the screens.
Click to expand...

The amount of RAM needed for displays is negligible. A 5K floating-point (HDR) framebuffer needs around 100MB, a regular 8-bit color one half of that. You can have fully triple buffered rendering on two 5K displays and still be well below half a GB.

I'd gather that the trading software might be more problematic in this regards. These apps are usually of very low quality are tend to RAM like nothing.
 
leman said:
The amount of RAM needed for displays is negligible. A 5K floating-point (HDR) framebuffer needs around 100MB, a regular 8-bit color one half of that. You can have fully triple buffered rendering on two 5K displays and still be well below half a GB.

I'd gather that the trading software might be more problematic in this regards. These apps are usually of very low quality are tend to RAM like nothing.
Click to expand...

In theory yes but windowserver is happy to disagree in practice.
 
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leman said:
The amount of RAM needed for displays is negligible. A 5K floating-point (HDR) framebuffer needs around 100MB, a regular 8-bit color one half of that. You can have fully triple buffered rendering on two 5K displays and still be well below half a GB.

I'd gather that the trading software might be more problematic in this regards. These apps are usually of very low quality are tend to RAM like nothing.
Click to expand...

This is on my MacBook Pro 16 with no external monitors.


Screen Shot 2022-07-29 at 9.19.20 AM.png
 

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leman said:
How much does that change when you use external monitors and what is the detailed breakdown of that memory (i.e. private, shared, purgeable?)
Click to expand...

I don't know. I hooked it up to 2 4k monitors when I got it last year and had a lot of problems with the displays and gave up using it as a desktop. I recall that it used up a ton of RAM but I just bagged it and used an Intel solution. All of the RAM problems appear to be fixed with 12.5 but I am running a different desktop setup using my mini now.

I have not looked at a breakdown of the memory used. I am glad that I got 32 GB of RAM, if nothing than so that I wouldn't have to reboot the system so frequently.
 
pshufd said:
I have an M1 Mac mini 16/512 and I run 2 4k monitors with Active Trader Pro and Think or Swim. I have 3 ToS windows with 80 simple charts and two windows with 10 charts each with multiple studies. I can add a third 2k monitor over Ethernet and run my office stuff (web browser, spreadsheet, Notes, Reminders, Calendar) and this uses about 35% CPU. The mini only has 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.

One of the major factors on performance is whether or not your software runs natively or not. Programs that go through multiple layers (such as programs that are based on WINE or Java) can experience significant performance hits. Which trading programs are you planning on using?

I'd recommended going with 32 GB of RAM if your trading programs use a lot of it. The iGPU uses system RAM for display storage so a lot of RAM can be allocated to the windowserver process for your displays (and, I assume your Spaces).

My M1 mini setup (you can just look at the picture of the video)
Click to expand...
I will be using active trader pro and think or swim. Most intense usage is on think or swim similar to your setup, but I also have excel and probably 40-50 browser tabs going also for additional trading info.


pshufd said:
I don't know. I hooked it up to 2 4k monitors when I got it last year and had a lot of problems with the displays and gave up using it as a desktop. I recall that it used up a ton of RAM but I just bagged it and used an Intel solution. All of the RAM problems appear to be fixed with 12.5 but I am running a different desktop setup using my mini now.

I have not looked at a breakdown of the memory used. I am glad that I got 32 GB of RAM, if nothing than so that I wouldn't have to reboot the system so frequently.
Click to expand...

That's disappointing. I travel a lot and plug into monitors at different locations, and often need to use it between locations making the mini impractical.
 
TitusVorenus said:
I will be using active trader pro and think or swim. Most intense usage is on think or swim similar to your setup, but I also have excel and probably 40-50 browser tabs going also for additional trading info.

That's disappointing. I travel a lot and plug into monitors at different locations, and often need to use it between locations making the mini impractical.
Click to expand...

I had the problems back last November. I'm pretty sure that they've all been fixed by now.

If you want to use Think or Swim on Apple Silicon, you should look at this video:

The Think or Swim macOS installer ships with Intel Java and the performance hit is about 66%. The workaround in the video runs it with Apple Silicon Java.

I'd say get the 14 inch MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM. I don't think that the number of CPU cores matters. Neither ATP nor ToS is GPU-intensive. You have to remember that the MacBook Pro 14 has double the CPU horsepower of the M1 Mac mini.
 
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It sounds like your scenario and apps leans towards single-core usage, so it's unlikely that the extra cores will be particularly beneficial.
 
BanditoB said:
It sounds like your scenario and apps leans towards single-core usage, so it's unlikely that the extra cores will be particularly beneficial.
Click to expand...

Why would you think this?

I'm running Think or Swim and Active Trader Pro and CPU and GPU resources are shown below.

It does look like the number of GPU cores is important. So the 16 GPU cores of the M1 Pro MacBook Pro would give you more GPU headroom than an M1 Mac mini. The decision on CPU cores is dependent on how much in CPU resources the other stuff you're running will use.

Screen Shot 2022-07-29 at 2.17.14 PM.png


Feel free to ping me if you need any help in setting up ATP or ToS.
 
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TitusVorenus said:
Posting here because I can't find the answer in the guides and the "genius" at the apple store just said "buy it and if it doesn't work bring it back".

From Apple's site:



I'm looking to buy a 14 in macbook pro with 1 tb, 16gb, and either 8 core or 10 core cpu. What I haven't found, is if the 8 core or 10 core CPU will make a difference for my use. I currently run up to 2 external extended displays with 2 types of trading software running, multiple excel spreadsheets, and various browsers and sometimes videos playing.

Apple's language is pretty vague here. Will the 8 core potentially bog down?
Click to expand...
Any of those CPU options will work for dual monitor support just fine.
 
pshufd said:
Feel free to ping me if you need any help in setting up ATP or ToS.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all the advice. Just bought a refurb m14 8/14 core with 32 gb ram. I'll let you know if I have any problems getting this set up, probably won't get a chance to know until the weekend.

First i want to run some tests and make sure everything is ok with the machine. It's got 2 battery cycles and the hard drive is at 994.66GB capacity.
 
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