6 Core vs. 8 Core MacOS Smoothness?

[MacBookGamer]

Does either one matter?

I have the base 2020 MacBook Air and it's noticeably laggy. Sometimes it'll just hang up for a few seconds. I want to upgrade to the 16" MacBook to get rid of this lag but am wondering which processor, either the 6 core or 8 core, if any, is snappier.

 

[drxcm]

most of the snappiness is based on single core performance.
currently the i7 10th gen 13" MBP is leader of the pack.

 

[leman]

I have the base 2020 MacBook Air and it's noticeably laggy. Sometimes it'll just hang up for a few seconds.

That has probably more to do with your software configuration than the CPU. Or maybe there is something wrong with your machine.

The "UI lag" for example occurs because an app takes too much time to redraw itself. This is not something you can solve with boosting the CPU/GPU — this is an algorithmic problem. Take the resize performance of things like App Store (or a browser with a complex website). The way how macOS works is that while resizing, apps have to recompute the UI layout multiple times per second, while triggering a full redraw. That is very expensive.

But this is the typical kind fo lag people complain about. You talk about short-term freezes. They should not happen.

 

[RumorConsumer]

That has probably more to do with your software configuration than the CPU. Or maybe there is something wrong with your machine.

The "UI lag" for example occurs because an app takes too much time to redraw itself. This is not something you can solve with boosting the CPU/GPU — this is an algorithmic problem. Take the resize performance of things like App Store (or a browser with a complex website). The way how macOS works is that while resizing, apps have to recompute the UI layout multiple times per second, while triggering a full redraw. That is very expensive.

But this is the typical kind fo lag people complain about. You talk about short-term freezes. They should not happen.

Here’s to hoping for improvements in 10.16

 

[pshufd]

Does either one matter?

I have the base 2020 MacBook Air and it's noticeably laggy. Sometimes it'll just hang up for a few seconds. I want to upgrade to the 16" MacBook to get rid of this lag but am wondering which processor, either the 6 core or 8 core, if any, is snappier.

I see that the base model comes with 8 GB of RAM so going up to 16 GB may help. We don't know your configuration or what you run so we're just guessing right now. My main desktop right now is a 2008 Dell Studio XPS. It doesn't lag unless I'm playing music or watching video from the hard disk (system disk is SSD), and there the lag is only for iTunes or VLC. I could fix that with an SSD but it's not a big enough issue at this time.