A quicker Mac is always a good Mac , and there are many things you may do to get the most performance from your computer . But what really work ? Here are some common myths about Macs and what does — and does not — affect carrying into action .
1. ‘More processing cores always means better performance.’
To test this possibility , we ran bench mark on two 2012 Mac Pros , one with 12 processing cores run at 2.4GHz and one with a quad - core central processing unit lead at 3.2GHz . With a MathematicaMark account of 5.70 , the 12 - heart and soul Mac Pro ’s resolution was twice that of the space - core Mac Pro . The 12 - core Mac Pro also finished the Cinebench CPU test in the half the time of the space - core Mac Pro .
But despite all of those additional cores , the 12 - magnetic core Mac Pro posted dim time than the quad - core group system in our iTunes encode , Aperture test , and file condensation tests .
While some professional coating can benefit greatly from multiple central processing unit , most app made for ecumenical consumers are n’t designed to take advantage of more than four cores . For the majority of applications , fewer but debauched processors are preferred .
2. ‘Having an external monitor plugged into your MacBook will slow down performance.’
We prove a late 2013 11 - column inch MacBook Air , with and without a 27 - column inch Apple Cinema Display attached , and find almost no operation differences between the two configurations in the 14 tests in our Speedmark 9 benchmarking retinue .
We cogitate that switch to an older , wearisome , MacBook Air might show more of a difference , but we were ill-timed . The only test to show any real departure was our iMovie test , which was less than 4 percentage quicker on the 2013 MacBook Air without the external monitor and just over 2 percent faster on a 2011 Air without the external monitor . Differences like that are just worth mentioning , much less disconnect a monitor over .
3. ‘Lower capacity SSDs are slower than high capacity SSDs.’
When it add up to upstanding - res publica drive ( SSD ) carrying into action , capacity matter . We took a duo of Toshiba Q series Pro private road and two Samsung EVO 840 drives and ran our performance psychometric test on them .
The 512 GB Samsung EVO 840 was 39 percent quicker than a 256 GB EVO 840 in our 10 GB big file write test and 26 percent quicker in our 10 GB files and folder trial run . Read speeds , however , were unmoved by the capacity . Black Magic and AJA tests both showed the 512 GB drive ’s write speed to be about 32 percent gamy than the 256 GB model , with read speeds again showing little change .
The difference of opinion in write speed were even more pronounced in our Toshiba tests . test two Q series Pro drive — one at 128 GB , the other at 512GB — the 512 GB Toshiba was 2.5 times as fast as the 128 GB SSD in our magnanimous file write psychometric test and 2.3 times as fast in our files and folders write test . Read time were within a percentage point of each other .
It ’s also worth take note that the small drives were wildly erratic in their write times . Occasionally they would lace to the speeds found in the larger capacitance driving , and other time they dropped way below the average . On the other hand , the big capacity drives were highly consistent in their read and write speeds throughout our examination .
4. ‘Keeping lots of free space on your startup drive will improve your Mac’s performance.’
Our trial on a late 2012 27 - column inch iMac with a 2.9GHz quad - core Core i5 processor , 8 GB of RAM and a 7200 - rev 1 TB hard crusade showed some serious carrying out abjection as the driving force fill up . The two tests that show the grown alteration in public presentation were in our 6 GB files and folders re-create mental test and unzip a 6 GB compressed file . Our service line tests , with the disk about 5 percentage full , showed the iMac taking 93 second in the written matter test and 84 seconds in the unzip mental test . When we filled the cause to 50 percent of its electrical capacity , the results slow down down by 4.3 percentage on the copy test and just under 8 percent on the unzip psychometric test . fill the drive to 80 percentage capacity , the service line results were more than 11 per centum quicker than the almost - full iMac in the copy test and 17.6 percent faster in the unzip test . Pushing it even further , we ran the tests again at 97 pct of capacity . This time the baseline results were nearly 21 percent faster in the copy test and almost 35 percentage faster on the unzip test .
With SSDs , it was a different storey . Only at the 97 - percentage - full electrical capacity did we see any difference in our SSD answer . The baseline lead for the SSD in the MacBook Pro was 35 percent quicker , but only in the unzip test .
5. ‘Adding RAM always improves performance.’
The lab has done quite a snatch of examination on this subject over the years;our most recent coverage was last May with Mountain Lionand older versions of apps . This time out , we took a mid 2012 15 - inch MacBook Pro with musculus quadriceps femoris - gist 2.3GHz Core i7 processor and a 512 GB voiceless drive and run it with 4 , 8 , and 16 GB of RAM on loanword fromCrucial .
The chore in our Photoshop test show the greatest welfare of increased RAM . Using our stock Speedmark 9 action script with a 100 mebibyte test file , the 8 GB frame-up was about 14 percentage quicker than the 4 GB configuration . Upping the Aries the Ram to 16 GB shave another couple of seconds off of the time and was 15.5 percent quicker than the 4 GB baseline form . We ran a more intensive test , one that uses more hardware acelerated tasks , and find an even enceinte benefit using increased RAM . In this test , the 4 GB configuration took almost exactly 10 minutes to discharge , upgrading the RAM to 8 GB brought down the clock time to 7 minutes 18 instant , and the 16 GB configuration finish the test in just under five second .
Many other test , however , were unmoved by the addition of RAM . These tests admit Cinebench CPU and Open GL tests , HandBrake , iMovie , Heaven and Valley graphics bench mark , and PCMark 8 ’s power app program exam . Some tests actually execute slower with more RAM . Our iPhoto importee trial run took 112 seconds with 4 GB of RAM , 117 mo with 8 GB of RAM , and 138 secondment with 16 GB of RAM . Similarly , our Aperture significance and unconscious process exam register the 4 GB contour need just over 121 seconds to complete , 8 GB took an supernumerary 10 irregular and the 16 GB configuration added another twenty seconds to the time . Copy , zip and unzip tests were also slower with 8 GB and even slower with 16 GB of RAM installed .
From our tests , 8 GB would belike be the mellisonant blot for most user . It offers a performance encouragement in applications like Photoshop , but with few performance penalties in apps like iPhoto and Aperture .
6. ‘Faster graphics cards only improve gaming performance.’
While faster graphics circuit card sure can pump up 3D gaming bod rates , more and more diligence are using OpenCL to take advantage of those powerful GPUs . Two such applications are Photoshop and Final Cut Pro X. Much of meter , the GPU acceleration makes for a smoother interface , quicker previewing and other UI enhancements . Photoshop has a handful of gist , filters , and manipulations that are GPU accelerated .
We took a 2012 Mac Pro — the most recent Mac to put up light swapping of graphics placard — and ran a Photoshop action at law script made up of these GPU accelerated tasks on the stock AMD Radeon HD 5770 with 1 GB of VRAM and a Sapphire HD 7950 with 3 GB of VRAM . The Sapphire finished the mental test in 239 seconds , 5 percent faster than the stock card .
In the Heaven and Valley graphics bench mark , the biggest differences showed up in high 2560 by 1600 resolution tests , where the Sapphire was able to push 14.2 frame per second in the Heaven benchmark versus the 5770 ’s unplayable 1.15 physique per second . vale results at that gamey resolution were similar , with the Sapphire achieving 18.3 fps versus the Radeon ’s 1.25fps .
