is it worth paying a hundred dollars more for the 10 core gpu option on the
m2 macbook air well that is exactly what we're gonna find out in this video by
testing a bunch of different things including some benchmarks some graphics
tests lightroom classic photo editing video exporting blender rendering as
well and we're gonna see if the 10 core model actually thermal throttles more
than the eight core now before we get into i want to mention that both of
these machines are new we didn't open the bottoms of these we didn't mess with
the logic board the thermal pads nothing and what makes this video special is
that both of them are configured exactly the same way except for the gpu yes both
of them have 512 gigs of ssd and 16 gigs of ram so we're not going to have any
limitations with a single man chip on the base storage model or anything else
we have enough ram to light up those gpu cores so we're going to see only the gpu
differences between the 8 core and the 10 core so let's start with the first
one which is of course the classic geekbench 5 test and while this is
running i want to mention that we are doing a giveaway of one of our four m2
macbook air models yes we're going to give it away and the only thing you have
to do to enter is to subscribe to our channel and comment on each of our m2
macbook air launch week videos and the best part is that we're going to pay for
the shipping and all the other costs like the import taxes and everything
else definitely don't get scammed by people trying to get you to pay shipping
charges so comment to enter and there you go we have our scores we have 30 000
compared to 26 353 on the 8 core so that's about 15
higher score now the interesting part is if we look at acetone look at how much
peak wattage the gpus use it looks like the 10 core took
13.54 peak watts compared to 10.97 now that is 23 more peak wattage for 15
more geek men score so maybe that's because it's about geekbench not being
completely optimized so let's run some more tests jump into gfx bench metal
which is a pretty optimized metal benchmark now we're going to be running
the 1440p aztec ruins high tier offscreen which is what we prefer over
the years and it looks like they also added a 4k aztec ruins test so we're
also going to run that as well the test is finished and it looks like the 10
core gpu model is giving us between 21 and 22
better scores in terms of fps with the 4k test on the top so i'd actually say
that's pretty impressive because if you compare the price points 1600 compared
to 1700 that's only about six percent more cash for around 22 better
performance at least in this gaming benchmark but enough with those
synthetic benchmarks let's actually do a real world test which is now going to be
a lightroom classic photo export with 50 42 megapixel raw photos now i do want to
show you guys in the preferences that the gpu is now enabled for export which
is a nice new feature for lightroom classic so let's go ahead and export
these 50 images now as you guys can see the gpus are maxing out in the menu bar
right there and it's using cpu as well so they're both heating up and you can
see 91 degrees celsius on the 10 core so it's heating up faster compared to 87
there you go the 10 core just finished and oh the a chord just finished right
behind it a minute and 10 seconds compared to a minute and 15 seconds on
the a core so that is a very small difference now what i want to do is i
want to increase this test to a larger number of photos because it's only 50 so
it's very quick and there you go i have 300 photos selected on both of them and
let's hit export and you can pay attention to the gpu clock speed right
here you can see that we're running at around 1300 megahertz on both of them
when they're maxed out of course there are some things that happen so it kind
of clocks down every once in a while for the cpu to do some of the tasks the
eight core just finished and wow i am shocked by this result it's just insane
the 10 core took 12 minutes and 41 seconds and the a core took 12 minutes
and 53 seconds so it is absolutely not worth spending a hundred dollars more
for the 10 core if you're doing some photo editing that uses gpu like
lightroom classic there's almost no difference now i definitely want to test
blender for 3d rendering but before that i want to do a couple of video editing
tests in final cut pro to see if it's worth spending the extra money if you
are a video editor so let me first just play them and show you guys the playback
they're both running it perfectly smooth how much gpu power is actually being
used during this test as we can see looks like the gpu usage is 51 on this
eight core and interestingly about 62 percent oh went down to 58 on the 10
core now let's go ahead and export both of these
the test is running and it looks like in terms of progress they're both neck and
neck and that is of course because hevc is using the actual hardware encoders
the media engine to process it oh they both finished at exactly the same time
two minutes and 20 seconds absolutely zero difference which means in this test
the 10 core is giving you nothing for basic 4k editing so do not pay for the
10 core if you're doing stuff like this and now let's move on to something a
little bit different but actually the same pro res raw this is a 4k a five
minute timeline and the reason it's the same is because the media engine also
supports pro res on the m2 chip which is very nice so let's go ahead and run this
and let's see what differences we get it looks like both of them are both
perfectly smooth i'm not seeing any drop frames and in terms of the actual gpu
usage we're looking at around 71 on the 8 core 74
on the 10 core which is interesting because i expected more overhead on the
8 core oh look at that 71 on both there's really no difference in terms of
overhead which is very interesting so let's go ahead and export it and right
off the bat it looks like the 10 core is a little bit faster and it's definitely
heating up over 100 we're looking at 101 degrees celsius 102
on the 10 core wow compared to 89. now this test is the best chance for the 10
core to get ahead because prores really benefits from extra gpu power as you can
see they're both maxed out at 100 and there you go we have our times it looks
like the 10 core took a minute and 40 seconds and the 8 core took a minute and
52 so also around 12 seconds slower now even though we have some differences in
terms of temps it's still looking like the 10 core is not worth the 100 so the
interesting thing is i did see a little bit of throttling where the 10 core down
clocked to around 1250 megahertz compared to almost 1400 on the 8 core
which did not down clock but this was a pretty short test so let's do something
a little bit longer to see if we can put some more stress and temps into it this
test right here is canon c200 4k 60 raw so it's a little bit more of an intense
test and this is also a five minute export and right off the bat it is
hammering the gpu we're looking at 102 degrees celsius on the 10 core compared
to 92 that's a 10 degree celsius difference so far and would you look at
that it looks like the 10 core is already down clocking we just started
the test not even a minute in it's already at 13.20 and it looks like the
difference here is that the gpus are maxed out as you can see in the menu bar
but we have a heavier load on the cpu look at that 86 percent 63 on the cpu
and actually comparing the package power it looks like 19 watts total package
power on the 8 core 15.4 the 10 core is already thermal throttling holy moly
only three watts is used on the gpu right now it is throttling right like
crazy only two minutes in compared to six watts on the acor it's holding up a
lot better now let me actually grab my thermal camera out and see the actual
surface temps of each of these macbooks wow okay looking at the eight core model
looking at 50 degrees celsius right there on top of the keyboard 49
going over here 48 looks like the 10 quart is actually
cooler because of how much it's throttling and this is guys 4k 60 raw
it's not like it's crazy 8k raw or anything it's 4k 60 49 degrees celsius
compared to 47 it looks like the 10 core is cooling down more alright guys i
can't believe it the 8 core has now taken the lead this is insane all right
there we go they both finished and this is absolutely insane the 10 core took 13
minutes and 25 seconds to complete the test and the 8 core took 13 minutes and
35 seconds to complete this export 10 seconds faster on the 10 core for a
hundred dollars so in this case if you're doing
anything that maxes out the gpu it doesn't rely on the encoders and it also
puts a good cpu load on there as well this 10 core is going to throttle and
it's basically going to kill the performance down to around the same
level as the 8 core it is absolutely not worth it for anybody doing this type of
work and this includes anything like 8k editing as well that doesn't rely on the
media engine so that is disappointing and with that said let's go ahead and
switch over to something different 3d rendering in blender here we are in
blender and the first thing we're going to do is the classic classroom render
we're just going to be doing the render image and we'll see if there's any
improvements on the 10 core and there you go we finally have a difference it
looks like the 10 core finished this classroom render in 4 minutes and 13
seconds compared to 5 minutes and 25 seconds on the 8 core and once again
that means that the 10 core is essentially 22
faster the same results that we got in those other benchmarks in gfx bench very
interesting and now getting into the next test i went ahead and just ran the
party tug render using cycles once again and it looks like the 10 core finish in
4 minutes and 52 seconds compared to 6 minutes and 32 seconds that's actually a
bigger difference looks like the 10 core is 25 faster now which is actually
decent so if you're doing 3d rendering with blender it's actually probably
worth spending another hundred dollars to get 25
better performance in things like blender that's the one area so far in
this video where i actually see that it could be worth the 10 core and now for
the final test that i want to run i want to do something that's more of a gaming
workload which is 3d marks wildlife extreme stress test which basically is
going to run 20 minutes of a simulated game in an actual game because this runs
just like a game does it maxes out the gpu to get as much fps as possible while
also putting a little bit of load on the cpu as well because as we know games
also use a little bit of cpu so let's go ahead and start the stress test and
we're going to see how fast this 10 core throttles if it does and see what kind
of differences in performance we get right off the bat the 10 core is
hammering the gpu we're looking at 12.5 watts of usage which is pretty high
compared to around 10.96 watts in terms of the clock speeds
they're both running at 1400 maxed out or essentially 1398 100 workload on the
gpu and the 10 core is definitely getting hotter 97 degrees celsius
compared to 87 so around 10 degrees celsius difference actually 100 degrees
celsius so about 11 degrees celsius difference so far and then looking at
the fps we're sitting at around 25 right there actually i want to have the same
one look at 32 37 so around a 5 fps difference and look at that we have 103
degrees celsius so already just over a minute or two we're starting to get
really hot temps on the gpu clusters on the 10 core while the 8 core is still
below 100 this is simulating a real gaming workload and just like that the
10 core is now using less watts we're looking at 10.5
10.3 watts compared to over 11 11.5 on the 8 core and now the 8 core is finally
starting to thermal throttle as well now that it's over 100 degrees celsius we're
looking at what is that 13 20 1300 megahertz while the 10 core is down to
12 30 megahertz so it's thermal throttling more as expected just like we
experienced before and now with that said i'm just going to let this stress
test run for the next 15 minutes or so and then we'll check back and see how
everything stabilizes and we'll see what kind of results we get after this is
done all right and now that we're around 15 minutes into this stress test it's
interesting i'm only seeing around two to three fps difference between these
two models and the even crazier thing is that the average gpu wattage is now
higher on the 8 core model than the 10 car look at that 5.38 compared to about
5.03 watts and of course just like before the
clock speed is higher looking at about a thousand over a thousand thousand sixty
to around 900 950 on the 10 core all right and there you go we finally have
our scores and we have this nice chart showing us the difference with every
loop every score and the first thing i want to point out is the difference in
the best loop score which is basically the very first test and looking at
scores the 10 core got 67.42 and the acor got
56.27 so here in a gaming workload at the best case scenario within the very
first minute the 10 core is 20 faster however if we look at the lowest
loop score we have 44 66 for the 10 core and 41 41.80
for the a core which makes it only 7 faster so for the worst of the worst
with the most throttling going on the 10 core ended up being only 7
faster and we can actually see that in terms of the stability score you can see
that the 10 core stability is only 66.2 percent compared to 74.3 percent on the
8 core so it does show that the 10 core does thermal throttle more and there's a
bigger difference between the best and the worst but overall we can tell that
the 10 core is still faster throughout all the testing now this is only a 20
minute stress test so most people if you're actually going to be doing gaming
you're going to be gaming for maybe an hour maybe more some people game for
hours on end so the best way to actually test the real difference going forward
is to compare the differences between the very last loop which is loop 20. and
right there at the end it looks like the 10 core was only
5.5 higher in terms of the fps or the score so you're basically for gaming
paying a hundred dollars for an extended gaming workload over 20 minutes you're
getting five and a half percent more performance and it's up to you if you
think that's worth it personally i think it is not worth it for gaming especially
since this is a metal optimized test and there are not that many games that are
optimized for metal there are more that actually use rosetta translation and
it's interesting because rosetta uses more of the cpu which is going to cause
more throttling and according to a video from greg's gadgets he actually got
worse performance with the 10 core model in the shadow of the tomb raider
benchmark which is a little bit mind-blowing because it thermal
throttles more of course since it uses more cpu so overall i do not think the
10 core is worth it for gaming either so based on everything honestly for paying
a hundred dollars more i don't think it's worth it because video editing
barely any difference gaming barely any difference the only real difference we
saw was in blender and in reality if you're someone who does blender and you
actually care about the performance or getting faster times with exports you're
not going to be buying a macbook air you're at least going to buy a macbook
pro with a fan or even the 14 and 16 inch macbook pros because those are much
faster and even ian's elbow which does a lot of renders for front page tech and
his own renders he himself said that even the m1 ultra max studio did not
have enough gpu performance for him for his renders he's waiting for the mac pro
so in reality i don't think anybody doing blender or any kind of 3d
rendering is going to be looking at the macbook air so with that said the final
conclusion is this no i do not think that anybody should be
buying the 10 core gpu model i don't think it's worth the small improvements
that you are getting so with that said everybody looking at the m2 macbook air
should just be sticking to the eight core save the 100
put it somewhere else maybe put it towards an ssd upgrade or more ram do
not spend the 100 extra so
there you go hopefully you enjoyed this video and if you learned something new
then comment down below because it's going to enter you into the giveaway
don't forget that and be sure to subscribe as well which is another
requirement so check out one of those two videos right there thanks for
watching and we'll see you in the next
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