Utility of 8th GPU core outside of gaming?

[Loa]

Hello,

A friend of mine, who doesn't do any type of gaming, wants to buy the Macbook Air. In order to decide if the 8th GPU core will be useful to him, he wonders which non-gaming app will benefit from it.

Will video editing apps benefit?

Thanks.

 

[Gudi]

Will video editing apps benefit?

Sure, but not in a meaningful way. If video editing is a common task, he should wait for the upcoming M1X MacBook Pros with 16 or 32 GPU cores.

 

[leman]

In most real world scenarios the M1 will be limited by memory bandwidth, so the practical difference between the 7-core and the 8-core GPU is rather small. It has been hypothesized however that M1 chips are power-binned, which would mean that 7-core units tend to run hotter which again would mean slightly lower performance across the board. So far I have not seen any detailed analysis on the matter, so it remains just a supposition.

 

[Loa]

Thanks for the two replies.

Sure, but not in a meaningful way. If video editing is a common task, he should wait for the upcoming M1X MacBook Pros with 16 or 32 GPU cores.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about video editing. Then again, when I see cinebench benchmarks, the MacBook air with 7 or 8 GPUs get the same exact result.

Which aspect of video editing will be improved by an extra GPU?

Thanks.

 

[solouki]

Hi Loa,

I don't use Cinebench, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that Cinebench is a CPU performance tester and not a GPU performance tester...so it's really just testing the frequencies of the CPUs on the two M1 chips. Perhaps the 8 GPU core M1s can maintain a higher CPU frequency than the 7 GPU core M1s?

On the other hand, Apple's video editing software, such as Compressor, does indeed utilize the GPU cores of the M1 and thus should see an incremental speed increase, assuming no heat/power imposed frequency limitations. I haven't seen any test results though, but I also haven't really been looking either.

Regards,
Solouki

 

[Loa]

Thanks, I'll try and find compressor benchmarks!

 

[PsykX]

Since Mac OS X, macOS relies heavily on the GPU, as opposed to Windows.
I know Windows has been using more and more in therecent years, but I don't know to which extent.

Nonetheless, the difference is marginal.

He does video editing you said? Then if he some has extra money to spend (than the base model), I think he would be better to go with 16 GB of RAM.

Or he buys the base model now, he should be able to accomplish a lot with it, and then he sells it in 1-2 years and buys the M2/M3. If he goes for the base model, it won't depreciate too much.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I think for non-gaming one might want to consider the MacBook Pro M1 for the cooling as there's a slight throttle on the Air when it sits at 100% CPU for 10 mins. Non gaming tasks tend to sit at high CPU for a long period of time (at least mine do).

Like others said, the Air is the best choice for the $ tho - especially with the next iterations coming out fairly soon (supposedly).