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ProgRocker

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 24, 2018
84
33
I'm looking into purchasing either an M1 Pro or Max Desktop. The Max comes with 400 GB/s Memory Bandwidth whereas the Pro comes with 200 GB/s .

I'm hearing a lot of conflicting opinions on how Memory Bandwidth affects DAW (music production software) performance. Does the faster Memory Bandwidth actually make any difference in the audio/DAW world or is the higher speed memory bandwidth mostly for video/graphics users ?

Thanks, PR
 

uller6

macrumors 65816
May 14, 2010
1,067
1,754
The memory bandwidth of the base M1 (~60 GB/s) is already about 2X as fast as the previous Intel chips, but of course faster is always better. I've found the limiting factor for my recordings (16 tracks live rock music, 2-5 plugins per track) is single-core CPU speed and not memory bandwidth. The M1 is a huge speed improvement over my old quad-core i7 recording machine, and I haven't had any hiccups since the upgrade to M1. Hope this helps!
 

yurkennis

macrumors member
Dec 1, 2010
84
65
I'm not any expert in music production software, but here is the bottom line of Anandtech research:
  • CPU cores together can only saturate 243GB/s of memory bandwidth
  • Anandtech could not find any scenario to fully load 400GB/s bandwidth with CPUs and GPUs only
  • only together with media engines and other parts of the chip, CPUs+GPUs can possibly utilize the 400GB/sec fully
In a nutshell, if music production software is driven mostly by CPU, you likely won't be able to benefit from 400GB/sec bandwidth.
 
Last edited:

ProgRocker

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 24, 2018
84
33
Thanks for the replies guys. It does seem as though I wont get much benefit from the faster bandwidth.
 
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