Hey guys,
I wanted to share this, as all of the chatter about throttling on the new MBP i9 is everywhere.
I have a Mid-2015 2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB
I use it on set with photographers on a daily basis, for 3 years now I've been using this machine. I have never investigated deeper into its performance via Intel Power Gadget, the furthest investigation I've done is through activity monitor.
I use Capture One and ask quite a lot, through tethering high resolution cameras to intensive TIFF and JPEG processing. What I've always found is that Graphics acceleration turned on in Capture One yields a processing time that is half of that in which Graphics acceleration is turned off. I just ran a test processing 2 TIFF files from a single Nikon D850 RAW files(lossless compressed), with Power Gadget running, toggling gfx acceleration on and off.
With gfx acceleration turned on in Capture One, the CPU clock speed fluctuates quite greatly between 1.8-2.2GHz, well below the advertised base clock speed of 2.8GHz. You can also see the green line(graphics card) fluctuate in sync with the CPU, hovering around 1GHz. The temperature hovers around 95ºC. The time it took to process 2 TIFF files from the aforementioned D850 RAW file is 5 seconds in this test.
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With gfx acceleration turned off in Capture One, the CPU clock speed hovers around 3.1 GHz, with temps right at 98-99ºC. In the screenshot below, you can see where I turned off gfx acceleration, where the green line(graphics card) drops and flatlines at .75GHz. The time it took to process 2 TIFF files from the aforementioned D850 RAW file is 10 seconds in this test.
So, with the graphics card turned ON, there is a massive throttling of the CPU occurring, down to 1.8GHz at it's lowest. Here's the thing : The Capture One process took HALF the time to complete the process with graphics acceleration turned on, even with the massive throttling of the CPU.
Conclusion :
Going by the clock speeds alone, it would appear that it would be more ideal to run without graphics acceleration to maintain a high CPU clock speed, but in the case of processing files via Capture One, this is anything but true. I recognize that this is a specific usage case, but I thought the results would be interesting for many of you on here as well. I do not use Lightroom(can't stand it, but it is great for batch printing), so I can't offer insight as to how LR may utilize the CPU/GPU differently, but with Capture One, the results speak for themselves.
With this kind of usage, I'm tying to work out which new MBP would suit my needs best. Ideally, running these tests on a 2.6 i7 and again on the 2.9 i9 would be the most ideal. The new 4GB of GPU will be very welcomed in the new machines, and I expect to see a solid improvement from that alone, so I feel I will be going for the 2.6 i7 with 560X GPU.
Any opinions are welcomed!
I wanted to share this, as all of the chatter about throttling on the new MBP i9 is everywhere.
I have a Mid-2015 2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048 MB
I use it on set with photographers on a daily basis, for 3 years now I've been using this machine. I have never investigated deeper into its performance via Intel Power Gadget, the furthest investigation I've done is through activity monitor.
I use Capture One and ask quite a lot, through tethering high resolution cameras to intensive TIFF and JPEG processing. What I've always found is that Graphics acceleration turned on in Capture One yields a processing time that is half of that in which Graphics acceleration is turned off. I just ran a test processing 2 TIFF files from a single Nikon D850 RAW files(lossless compressed), with Power Gadget running, toggling gfx acceleration on and off.
With gfx acceleration turned on in Capture One, the CPU clock speed fluctuates quite greatly between 1.8-2.2GHz, well below the advertised base clock speed of 2.8GHz. You can also see the green line(graphics card) fluctuate in sync with the CPU, hovering around 1GHz. The temperature hovers around 95ºC. The time it took to process 2 TIFF files from the aforementioned D850 RAW file is 5 seconds in this test.
----
With gfx acceleration turned off in Capture One, the CPU clock speed hovers around 3.1 GHz, with temps right at 98-99ºC. In the screenshot below, you can see where I turned off gfx acceleration, where the green line(graphics card) drops and flatlines at .75GHz. The time it took to process 2 TIFF files from the aforementioned D850 RAW file is 10 seconds in this test.
So, with the graphics card turned ON, there is a massive throttling of the CPU occurring, down to 1.8GHz at it's lowest. Here's the thing : The Capture One process took HALF the time to complete the process with graphics acceleration turned on, even with the massive throttling of the CPU.
Conclusion :
Going by the clock speeds alone, it would appear that it would be more ideal to run without graphics acceleration to maintain a high CPU clock speed, but in the case of processing files via Capture One, this is anything but true. I recognize that this is a specific usage case, but I thought the results would be interesting for many of you on here as well. I do not use Lightroom(can't stand it, but it is great for batch printing), so I can't offer insight as to how LR may utilize the CPU/GPU differently, but with Capture One, the results speak for themselves.
With this kind of usage, I'm tying to work out which new MBP would suit my needs best. Ideally, running these tests on a 2.6 i7 and again on the 2.9 i9 would be the most ideal. The new 4GB of GPU will be very welcomed in the new machines, and I expect to see a solid improvement from that alone, so I feel I will be going for the 2.6 i7 with 560X GPU.
Any opinions are welcomed!
