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48 vs 64 core GPU differences?

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Foxdog175

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 3, 2008
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What applications would see a difference with 48 vs 64 core GPU in the Ultra? If I can save a grand, this seems be a good place for it.

My main work needs:
- 4k prores video editing
- GB's-sized photoshop work as my day job
- music production (some of my sessions beachball for 10 minutes+ on my maxed out 2013 Mac Pro as it loads in sample libraries). This sounds more like a RAM or CPU issue.

Would I see any benefit to going with the higher GPU count or are the differences negligible?
 
No. PS mostly depends on single core and memory bandwidth. Prores will be covered by the M1 accelerators. Music is probably similar performance profile to PS.
 
ProRes as said will be assisted by the media engine silicon.
Video rendering will be about all get a boost from and depends on how long the video is, but general consensus seems to be that very few people will get benefits of the bigger GPU and unlikely to be worth the extra 1k.
 
ondioline said:
No. PS mostly depends on single core and memory bandwidth. Prores will be covered by the M1 accelerators. Music is probably similar performance profile to PS.
Click to expand...
Does PS really not take advantage of multi-core? That surprises me as image manipulations seem like an easy application to thread.
 
When reviewing the various benchmarks that have been run on the Mac Studio, it appears that while you do get 16 additional graphics cores, or a 33% increase, the performance difference has been working out to about an 11-12% increase. So, you don’t see the full expected jump in the benchmarks at least. Real world usage may differ, but at this point it doesn’t seem like the value is there in the upgrade.
 
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Foxdog175 said:
What applications would see a difference with 48 vs 64 core GPU in the Ultra? If I can save a grand, this seems be a good place for it.

My main work needs:
- 4k prores video editing
- GB's-sized photoshop work as my day job
- music production (some of my sessions beachball for 10 minutes+ on my maxed out 2013 Mac Pro as it loads in sample libraries). This sounds more like a RAM or CPU issue.

Would I see any benefit to going with the higher GPU count or are the differences negligible?
Click to expand...

You should watch this review. Art's nailed it explaining what Mac Studio configuration you should and shouldn't get if you work with PS.

 
I’m really interested in the differences in the Ultra’s 48 and 64 core GPU’s but it seems everyone is unhealthy obsessed with fan noise, replacing non replacable SSD’s and comparisons to Window’s machines.

Being professionally involved in photography (Capture One) and video (FCP) the £1k difference while quite significant, could be of benefit to me but I’ve not seen any real world results between the two Ultra versions.

I have a Ultra 48 with 128GB RAM on order and keep flip flopping if to cancel and get the bigger GPU. As the RAM is shared between CPU and GPU, I’m very interested how much differences 64GB vs 128GB RAM makes in the real world.
 
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ronm99 said:
Does PS really not take advantage of multi-core? That surprises me as image manipulations seem like an easy application to thread.
Click to expand...
Partially, only filters and some other operations are multi threaded. It scales really poorly in general. I frankly doubt you’d see any performance gain from an Ultra vs Max since the memory bandwidth and clock speed aren’t increased for individual cores.
www.pugetsystems.com

Adobe Photoshop CC Multi Core Performance

With hundreds of CPU models available, it can be a daunting task to determine which CPU will give you the best performance in Photoshop. In this article we will be examining the multi-threading capabilities of Photoshop CC to determine whether a CPU with a high frequency or a CPU with a high...
www.pugetsystems.com www.pugetsystems.com
 
ondioline said:
Partially, only filters and some other operations are multi threaded. It scales really poorly in general. I frankly doubt you’d see any performance gain from an Ultra vs Max since the memory bandwidth and clock speed aren’t increased for individual cores.
www.pugetsystems.com

Adobe Photoshop CC Multi Core Performance

With hundreds of CPU models available, it can be a daunting task to determine which CPU will give you the best performance in Photoshop. In this article we will be examining the multi-threading capabilities of Photoshop CC to determine whether a CPU with a high frequency or a CPU with a high...
www.pugetsystems.com www.pugetsystems.com
Click to expand...
It’s been my understanding for some time that Photoshop doesn’t do much with additional cores but as the linked article pointed out in it’s header, that was written seven years ago. Is it possible that Photoshop has been updated in that area since then?
 
Daverich4 said:
It’s been my understanding for some time that Photoshop doesn’t do much with additional cores but as the linked article pointed out in it’s header, that was written seven years ago. Is it possible that Photoshop has been updated in that area since then?
Click to expand...
Like I said, only some things are accelerated and multi-threaded. Even to this day. It's not a monolithic situation, the performance is highly situational because individual tools are all seemingly implemented differently.

Like these are the ONLY things that utilize the GPU, for example. You'd have to look at this list, consider your workflow, and determine if a purely theoretical (and probably marginal) gain is worth the $1000 upgrade.

Screen Shot 2022-03-25 at 12.47.46 PM.png
 
ondioline said:
Like I said, only some things are accelerated and multi-threaded. Even to this day. It's not a monolithic situation, the performance is highly situational because individual tools are all seemingly implemented differently.

Like these are the ONLY things that utilize the GPU, for example. You'd have to look at this list, consider your workflow, and determine if a purely theoretical (and probably marginal) gain is worth the $1000 upgrade.

View attachment 1980689
Click to expand...
I'm a little confused because we were talking about CPU and this is about the GPU but in any event, there isn't much on this list that affects me either way. However, the question I posed in my previous post still stands. I'm interested in CPU performance and Photoshop and the link you posted was to an article from 7 years ago. I'd just like to confirm that that information is still current. Thanks.
 
F-Train said:
What's confusing? If it isn't on the list, it relies principally on the CPU. Only question is who made the list and how current it is.
Click to expand...
What's confusing is the article link I was asking about was a discussion of CPU cores, not GPU cores. My interest is in how much those matter. The link is in post #8.
 
ArtIsRight has posted a short about exporting from the M1 Ultra in Lightroom Classic, which is 5 minutes faster than his Mac Pro 7,1 with 96GB of RAM.

 
I'm going the whole hog to future proof - 128GB memory (my 2017 iMac Pro often gets to it's upper limit), max cores, 4TB SSD (I do video editing) and 2 x SD's. I figure if I'm not going to buy a $50,000 Mac Pro (or ever will unless I win lotto !), this will cover all my needs.

Often swing between FCP and Premiere Pro CC.
 
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ondioline said:
Partially, only filters and some other operations are multi threaded. It scales really poorly in general. I frankly doubt you’d see any performance gain from an Ultra vs Max since the memory bandwidth and clock speed aren’t increased for individual cores.
www.pugetsystems.com

Adobe Photoshop CC Multi Core Performance

With hundreds of CPU models available, it can be a daunting task to determine which CPU will give you the best performance in Photoshop. In this article we will be examining the multi-threading capabilities of Photoshop CC to determine whether a CPU with a high frequency or a CPU with a high...
www.pugetsystems.com www.pugetsystems.com
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link. It is kind of shocking how bad Photoshop is at taking advantage of multiple cores. As a programmer who is currently working on threading some complicated algorithms, I know that it is difficult, but image processing should be one of the easier applications to thread. The only thing I can think of is that most people don’t complain about PS performance, and Adobe prioritizes more features over speeding up existing features.
 
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