Big, thanks to Anker for sponsoring this video.
If you're looking to buy one of the new M1 Pro MacBooks,
you would have noticed
there's quite a few configuration options.
And the cheapest upgrade option
is upgrading from an 8-core CPU to the 10-core CPU version.
And in this video,
we're going to be seeing if those extra CPU cores
make a difference,
how hot they make the M1 Pro
compared to the base model M1 Pro,
what effect they have on battery life,
and finally, if the extra $200 price tag is worth it.
Now, I will make sure to put timestamps down below
if you want to skip to a section
that you're particularly interested in,
apart from that,
let me unplug both of these machines from battery.
As you can see, they're both at 100% charge,
and we're going to see at the end of all this testing
which one has more charge left.
So first of all, let's start with some standard benchmarks
and the first one's going to be Geekbench 5.
So let me just start this CPU benchmark.
And while it runs,
let's just quickly talk about some of the pricing options.
So, like I said previously,
this is an extra $200 more expensive.
So on the base model M1 Pro,
you get six high-performance cores
and two high-efficiency cores.
And on the upgraded or the less binned M1 Pro chip
with 10 CPU cores,
you get eight high-performance cores.
And the same two high-efficiency cores.
Apart from that,
everything on these machines are exactly the same,
down to physical dimensions,
weight,
cooling,
everything else exactly the same.
So the results are in,
as you can see, we got 9,933 for the base model M1 Pro
and then 12,386 on the upgraded CPU version.
And in terms of single core scores, it's exactly the same,
which makes sense,
because it is the exact same type of CPU cores
on either machine.
Obviously this one just has two additional ones.
So if we now move onto a metal compute
between the two machines,
you'll see that when this finishes running in a second,
they're going to be almost exactly the same.
And that's because the GPUs on these machines are identical.
And as expected as you can see,
they're both almost identical.
So let's move on to something a little bit more demanding,
and that is a Cinebench R23 benchmark.
So I'm going to run this test,
and after about eight minutes,
I'm going to come back
and I'm going to see what the internal temperature is like
on each of the CPUs.
And I'm also going to see what the external temperature is like
with the FLIR thermal camera.
So let's start the benchmark on both devices.
So we're about three minutes into this benchmark,
and there's something I want to show you real quick.
So you might be able to see there
that the fans on the 10-core M1 Pro have kicked on
and they're sitting at about 4,400 RPM
versus the fans on just the base model
only at about 2,700 RPM.
Now, in terms of actual fan noise,
these definitely are more audible than the fans on the left.
So that's interesting to see such a difference
only three minutes into this benchmark.
All right, so it's been about eight minutes at this point.
So let's check out what the internal temperature
of the CPU is like.
So, as you can see on the base model 8-core CPU version,
we're sitting at about a 92 degrees average temperature.
If we look at the performance cores here,
we're sitting at about low 90s in terms of temperatures,
and then moving over to the 10-core CPU,
we're a little bit hotter by about three or four degrees
for the average CPU temperature.
We can see all the performance cores here
are actually getting into the mid 90s.
So definitely is running hotter.
You can see again,
still the fans are a little bit higher as well.
So we're sitting at about 4,500 RPMs versus 3,200.
And if we now take a look at the exterior thermal profile,
it looks like they're about the same.
So if we look right in the middle of the base model
8-core CPU,
we're getting around 45 degrees,
47 degrees absolute max,
in terms of the rest of the chassis, about 34, 33.
Moving over to the 8-core CPU,
we're going to see if this is hotter at all.
And it's almost exactly the same.
So maybe half a degree difference.
And obviously it seems like the higher RPM speed of the fans
is keeping this chip relatively cool
even though it is running hotter
than the 8-core CPU version.
So this Cinebench benchmark has completed.
And once again, the single-core score was exactly the same,
but for the multi-core score on the 8-core CPU version,
we got 9,541.
And then on the 10-core CPU version, we got 12,335.
And that is a relatively significant difference.
It's about 20% in favor of the 10-core CPU M1 Pro.
Now moving into some more real life benchmarks,
as you can see,
I have compressor opened up on both machines.
I've loaded a compressed H264 file onto here
that we're actually going convert.
So this is a Sony A7S mac 3 clip,
it's in 4K,
really high quality, but very, very compressed.
And I'm going to transcode this from H264
into ProRes 422.
So if we come over here and we add a translation.
So it's finished and we got exactly the same score,
just 17 seconds to transcode that clip on both devices.
And this is probably more so relying on the hardware
and video encoder and decoders built into the M1 Pro
less so on the CPU.
So let's try out some Lightroom
and see if we can find any differences between the two.
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So as you can see,
here I have 50 raw 24 megapixel photos.
And if we flip through these photos of the created cat,
I can't tell any difference.
They're both pretty much exactly the same.
So moving on to exporting these images,
I've done some minor color correction,
so let's export and we'll hit the start button.
Okay, so the 10-core CPU has just finished,
followed by the 8-core CPU,
and that has just finished as well.
So a difference of only eight seconds between the two,
but again, guys, like I've said in previous benchmarks,
if this was maybe 50 megapixel photos
instead of 24 megapixel photos,
or it was 500, instead of 50,
that particular gap can really start to add up over time.
So moving on to some 3D applications,
let's start with Blender.
So I have the Mr. Elephant demo file up here.
I'm in the wire frame view at the moment,
if I switch between views,
you probably won't notice a massive difference
between the two.
And you can see that I am using the Eevee render engine
for this one.
We will check out a Cycles one in a second guys.
Let's go up here to render
and let's render out a single frame.
And they've both finished at exactly the same time here.
So 35 seconds, which makes sense.
Eevee isn't really CPU heavy,
it's more so on the GPU.
So let's move on to a more Cycles heavy render.
Here we have the barbershop demo file
off the blender website.
Now this is obviously Cycles heavy.
So if we come in here, we just check.
Yep, that's Cycles.
Yup, device using the CPU.
Cool.
So let's come up here to the render tab
and let's just render out a single image.
Now that the render has completed,
we can see a pretty big difference between the two.
So on the base model, M1 Pro with the 8-core CPU,
we have 16 minutes and 35 seconds
versus the upgraded less binned, 10-core CPU
with 12 minutes and 47 seconds.
So moving onto some editing, testing and benchmarking,
as you can see on the screen,
I have Resolve,
it is the most up to date apple silicon-native
version of Resolve.
I have some Sony A7S mac 3 footage.
So 4K, 422 10 bit,
basically some of the highest quality 4K footage
you can get.
That is on the timeline right now.
It's H264 and the actual codec is really compressed.
So it's typically very difficult to play back.
If we play back both of these scenes and timelines,
you can see as playing back perfectly fine.
There's no issues there.
The FPS counter is green,
which means there's no dropped frames or anything like that.
In terms of actual scrubbing,
not going to notice a difference,
and guys I did some testing on this earlier
before this video.
In the actual editing process,
so when you're color coding,
adding effects and things like that,
you're really not going to see any kind of difference.
If there is any kind of difference with editing,
it doesn't matter what program you use,
whether it's Premier, Resolve or Final Cut,
it's going to be at the render stage.
Just to test something out real quick.
You can see this first clip here is two minutes long.
So let's actually add a stabilization effect to this
and see if there's any difference between the two.
Okay, so I'm just using the default stabilize settings.
So I'm going to click stabilize,
also going to start the timer.
So the stabilization effect has been applied.
There was a one second difference between the two,
which is essentially margin of error.
I probably just clicked one button
a little bit quicker than the other.
But apart from that, almost no differences at all.
So let's render out this particular timeline,
and this is a six-minute 4K timeline.
So I'm just going to select the default YouTube 4K settings.
And we're going to add to render queue,
and we're going to render both of those projects.
And the render has finished.
And once again, guys,
absolutely zero difference between the two.
They both finished the render in three minutes
and 11 seconds.
And that kind of makes sense
because these days editing programs like Resolve
don't really rely on the CPU any longer,
it's mainly the RAM and more specifically the GPU.
And obviously now on these M1 Pro Macs,
you're going to also see a big increase
with the in-built hardware, encode and decode engines
specifically for editing and for footage.
Moving on to gaming,
we have some GFX metal benchmarks that we're going to run.
So we're going to click start
and the benchmark has completed,
and turns out again, no difference at all.
So we've got 93.4 FPS on the base model M1 Pro
with 8-core CPU,
and then 93.47 FPS on the less binned 10-core CPU.
Moving onto a Tomb Raider benchmark.
As you can see, we've got the display settings
all exactly the same,
resolution 1920 by 1200
and the refresh rate at 120 Hertz
to take advantage of that really nice pro-motion technology.
Our graphics settings, exactly the same as well.
So let's run this benchmark
and see what kind of scores we can achieve.
And once again, guys,
absolutely no difference between the two.
43 FPS on the 8-core CPU
versus 43 FPS on the 10-core CPU.
So at this point it's been about an hour and a half
of continuous testing,
benchmarking,
rendering, et cetera.
So let's have a look at the battery life
and how they differ between the two.
So on the 10-core CPU M1 Pro,
you can see we have 59% battery remaining
versus the 8-core M1 Pro,
we have 61% remaining.
So that's just a 2% difference between the two.
And if we were to continue for another one or two hours
and completely drain these batteries to zero,
that's about a 4% difference in battery life
in favor of the M1 Pro.
It's going to last about 4% longer than the M1 Pro
with the additional two CPU cores.
Okay, so let's talk about what this means for you
and your purchase decision.
So is it worth the extra $200?
Well, I'm actually going to go against the grain
and say that yes, it is, only for certain people.
So if you're doing a lot of really CPU intensive stuff,
so a lot of Lightroom,
a lot of Cycle renders on Blender for example,
those programs and apps and processes
where you're really going to be stressing that CPU.
Yes, you will see a difference of about 15 to 20%,
which isn't massive.
But again, guys, over the long run
that can really start to add up.
Now, some of the drawbacks of that obviously,
it's an extra $200,
for an extra $200, you can double the storage
from 512 gigabytes to one terabyte,
or you can put that towards possibly upgrading to the M1 Max
or the 16 introversion,
or possibly even spend another $100
and spend $300 in total,
get the extra two GPU cores
on top of the extra two CPU cores.
So it's really up to you.
And another drawback of course is slightly less battery
and slightly increased fan noise.
So if you're one of those people
that does a lot of Cycles render,
or perhaps you use a lot of Photoshop and Lightroom
where you're exporting photos constantly,
I think possibly it would be worth $200,
but for everyone else,
I definitely do not think that you need it.
You're not going to be using it in editing,
and other things like gaming.
It's not going to make any kind of difference.
It's just an extra $200
that you could just spend elsewhere.
But yeah guys,
pretty interesting results.
I was pretty excited myself to test this out,
and benchmark it to see if the discrepancy was large
or small.
Hopefully you guys found this interesting as well,
and hopefully it helped you make
a more informed purchase decision.
But apart from that guys, thanks for watching.
And I'll catch you in the next one.