Can LMG at least try to be reasonable? - screen recording is possible on a dual-core.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

So I'm watching the short-circuit episode on the new MacBook Air, and I'm 1 minute in and Alex already says something that's just not true. 

 

he goes on about how you can't multitask with a dual-core and that screen recording is a pain. so, I figured I'd debunk those things. I often have more than 10 tabs open, sometimes more than 20 in Safari, and other than getting some messages of pages reloading because I only have 8gb of ram, my 2017 dual-core MacBook Pro feels fluid still, desktop animations look smooth, and it's in general not a bad experience. 

 

now, about screen recording. I was watching the video with a bunch of other stuff open (check my Dock in the video below) and I thought I'd just debunk what he said right there, so I paused the video, didn't close any apps and just started recording. 

 

if you watch the video, you can see my cpu was fine, when I opened About This Mac you can see it spike a bit, but otherwise totally fine. keep in mind I have a web browser open with this forum and YouTube, discord and some other stuff that you can see in the Dock. 

 

now full disclosure, I did open this video in Handbrake and converted it to MP4 because it was 22mb, 2mb over the size limit, but I didn't do any sort of editing. 

 

 

LMG, next time proof-read your scripts because this was just straight up misinformation. 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Twilight
corrected LTT to LMG...

[TetraSky]

Didn't watch SC video and I'm sure you could do screen recordings on a single core CPU too, really, but I'll be honest. Dual cores need to die in a fire.

It's 2020, dual cores were already outdated back in 2010. 
 

I'm not sure about macs, but on Windows, it's not rare to see dual cores working at over 50% most of the time on IDLE, only to be pinned at 100% more often than not because it just can't handle the load the moment you start doing anything. Even more so when you have more and more stuff running in the background these days.

Does it work? Sure. Could it be better? Absolutely.

 

Considering how expensive apple devices are, I'd expect at the bare minimum, to see a modern quad core in there, especially in 2020, for all the software that do benefits from having more cores.

Can't wait until more laptops are released with AMD Ryzen 4000 mobile series... Intel won't have any more excuses to keep releasing Dual Cores mobile cpus just because there was still no "competition" on that market.

[jaslion]

I've notice this too that they severely underestimate the power of lower end hardware. Sure a dual core hyper threaded cpu ain't great to edit video on but you can still do it and such. But for like general work it's more than fine. I used a i5 4310u laptop from time to time and well it's totally fine even when using Photoshop and the like. Sure it's not the fastest thing but like still a dual core is a lot more capable than you'd think.

 

The weirdest thing is that a couple years ago when 2c/4t intel u series cpu's were the only thing they even did things like mobile workstation video's with them and such and suddenly those systems are not even good enough for basic tasks?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

I'm not sure about macs, but on Windows, you can easily see dual cores working at over 50% most of the time on IDLE, only to be pinned at 100% more often than not because it just can't handle the load the moment you start doing anything.

it's all about optimisation. with 2 forum tabs and 1 YouTube tab in safari, discord, preview, mail, activity monitor, whatsapp and QuickTime player open my cpu is sitting at 12% if I just don't move my mouse or click things. 

 

in the video you can see when I click stuff it spikes, but then calms right back down. 

 

3 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Considering how expensive apple devices are, I'd expect at the bare minimum, a quad core in there, especially in 2020.

sometimes it's not about specs. Alex even says in the SC video that the build quality is very good, and you are also paying for macOS and all the software that comes with it like a full office suite, video editor and music production software. (pages, keynote, numbers, iMovie and garageband for context). you have to factor that in to the price. 

 

 

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I've notice this too that they severely underestimate the power of lower end hardware. Sure a dual core hyper threaded cpu ain't great to edit video on but you can still do it and such. But for like general work it's more than fine. I used a i5 4310u laptop from time to time and well it's totally fine even when using Photoshop and the like. Sure it's not the fastest thing but like still a dual core is a lot more capable than you'd think.

again, optimisation. I edited 1080p video's on this Mac and yeah, rendering is a little slow but come on, it's a dual-core with iGPU. actually editing was completely smooth. 

 

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

The weirdest thing is that a couple years ago when 2c/4t intel u series cpu's were the only thing they even did things like mobile workstation video's with them and such and suddenly those systems are not even good enough for basic tasks?

i know right! I also have a 2012 13" MacBook Pro, and yeah it feels a little slower, loading websites is a bit slower and it lacks the snappiness of this newer Mac, but it's certainly still usable. this 2017 Mac has PCI-E storage too, which helps compared to the sata storage of the 2012. 

[SenKa]

My online accounting course requires the midterm and final exams to be screen recorded and uploaded via Tegrity. I did this on my Macbook Air, and noticed no real performance issues in chrome (though i only had one tab open, admittedly), doing okay sized excel worksheets with lots of formulas, and doing (im assuming native res) recordings of my screen and webcam.

 

Mind you, the upload process (which included re-encoding and compressing the clips) easily took an hour for the ~2 hour recording.

 

I find people underestimate the power of software optimization, as my 2014 macbook air still goes along just fine as my main laptop. On it I do light video editing, and lots of multitasking with Apple Music open, ~10 chrome tabs, discord, and word open while writing research paper. I am ONLY upgrading because of RAM limitations, as 4GB of RAM is finally becoming not enough on the macOS side of things on catalina.

[jaslion]

9 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Can't wait until more laptops are released with AMD Ryzen 4000 mobile series... Intel won't have any more excuses to keep releasing Dual Cores just because there was still no "competition" on that market.

I'd say dual core's will still have a place in the market for a little bit. Mainly in ultra low power devices. Otherwise I'm all for them not being used anymore and just giving everyone a full quad core.

[GoldenLag]

18 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

I'm not sure about macs, but on Windows, it's not rare to see dual cores working at over 50% most of the time on IDLE, only to be pinned at 100% more often than not because it just can't handle the load the moment you start doing anything.

My 3210m would beg to differ. 

 

Outside of the load for 10 sec at startup, its rarely getting high loads. 

 

Offcourse its personal anecdote from 7 years of regular tasks. But even windows knows to some extent how to handle a dualcore

[TetraSky]

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I'd say dual core's will still have a place in the market for a little bit. Mainly in ultra low power devices

Considering the quad core i5 in the new Air that they got (went and checked the video) has a TDP of 9W... And dual core i3s have a TDP of, wait for it, 9W....

It really doesn't change much. Funny thing though, Intel says the i3 can "scale down" to 8W but for the i5, it apparently only "scales up" to 12W... There's no reason why the i5 wouldn't be able to scale down too.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

Considering the quad core i5 in the new Air that they got (went and checked the video) has a TDP of 9W... And dual core i3s have a TDP of, wait for it, 9W....

It really doesn't change much. Funny thing though, Intel says the i3 can "scale down" to 8W but for the i5, it apparently only "scales up" to 12W... There's no reason why the i5 wouldn't be able to scale down too.

Fair enough. Time to move on then.

[SenKa]

3 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Considering the quad core i5 in the new Air that they got (went and checked the video) has a TDP of 9W... And dual core i3s have a TDP of, wait for it, 9W....

It really doesn't change much. Funny thing though, Intel says the i3 can "scale down" to 8W but for the i5, it "scales up" to 12W... There's no reason why the i5 wouldn't be able to scale down too.

*note that intels TDP is taken at base clock, at the i5 has a lower base clock at an (honestly quite impressive given its boost clock) 800MHz base clock, while the i3 is at 1.1GHz.

[AndreiArgeanu]

Sure you can screen record but that doesn't mean it works very well under load, try recording for example an editing tutorial for premiere, or after effects, or illustrator, or just trying to record for that matter something that requires more resources than discord and safari. To that may I add that your "Discord helper" stopped responding as well.

Like sure, the i3 3240 I had a over 1 year ago worked perfectly fine, edited videos and what not, but when trying to record anything that used more resources it just chugs, like in CS:GO I was able to feel how cut back the FPS was, and it was CS:GO, not a game known to put a lot of stress on hardware or have high system requirements. To that you can also add the extremely long rendering times, like waiting over an hour for a video to process.

 

Also for that money you should expect at least a quad core in 2020, like seriously, other manufacturers manage to fit a quad core easily in with similar great build quality in their laptops.

 

[SenKa]

1 minute ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Sure you can screen record but that doesn't mean it works very well under load, try recording for example an editing tutorial for premiere, or after effects, or illustrator, or just trying to record for that matter something that requires more resources than discord and safari. To that may I add that your "Discord helper" stopped responding as well.

Thats a bug. The same thing happens to me doing literally nothing

[AndreiArgeanu]

16 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I'd say dual core's will still have a place in the market for a little bit. Mainly in ultra low power devices. Otherwise I'm all for them not being used anymore and just giving everyone a full quad core.

In the lower end sure, especially in chromebooks

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

2 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Sure you can screen record but that doesn't mean it works very well under load, try recording for example an editing tutorial for premiere, or after effects, or illustrator, or just trying to record for that matter something that requires more resources than discord and safari. 

there was no specifics as to what was recorded. I'm just showing that even with a recording running I have like 70% of my "weak" cpu free to do other things. 

 

3 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

To that may I add that your "Discord helper" stopped responding as well.

that's a bug in discord, it always does that on macOS for me. 

 

4 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Also for that money you should expect at least a quad core in 2020, like seriously, other manufacturers manage to fit a quad core easily in with similar great build quality in their laptops.

show me a laptop with similar build quality, a 2560x1600 screen, an amazing trackpad and that comes with an office suite, video editor and music production suite included for free. no trials, the apps are free. 

 

5 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Like sure, the i3 3240 I had a over 1 year ago worked perfectly fine, edited videos and what not, but when trying to record anything that used more resources it just chugs, like in CS:GO I was able to feel how cut back the FPS was, and it was CS:GO, not a game known to put a lot of stress on hardware or have high system requirements. To that you can also add the extremely long rendering times, like waiting over an hour for a video to process.

that 3240 is a cpu without turbo boost. it's unfair to compare that to cpu's that ship in recent Mac's (newer than 2010 iirc) that have turbo boost. 

[Kilrah]

Can you flex some old hardware to do it without it being atrocious? Yes. Should you buy that hardware at full new price when you know that is one of the things you're going to do regularly for several years? No.

You really don't want to buy a new dual core today.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

27 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

In the lower end sure, especially in chromebooks

that's for sure. 

 

16 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

You really don't want to buy a new dual core today.

depends on price difference and who it's for. 

[AndreiArgeanu]

2 minutes ago, Twilight said:

that 3240 is a cpu without turbo boost. it's unfair to compare that to cpu's that ship in recent Mac's (newer than 2010 iirc) that have turbo boost. 

I was comparing a dual core hyper threaded cpu to another dual core hyperthreaded cpu, the same thing applies to other dual core hyper threaded cpu's I've tried, the story does not change much, I just used the i3 3240 as i've used it for the longest.

21 minutes ago, Twilight said:

show me a laptop with similar build quality, a 2560x1600 screen, an amazing trackpad

Razer Blade is a very good example of that.

22 minutes ago, Twilight said:

office suite, video editor and music production suite included for free. no trials, the apps are free.

Final Cut Pro X is not free and neither is Logic Pro X. Also there are free video editor, music suites and office apps for free on most OS's as well

 

26 minutes ago, Twilight said:

that's a bug in discord, it always does that on macOS for me.

didn't actually know that.

 

Macbooks are great for certain purposes, it's just that it does not make sense to get a dual core Macbook, they won't last you very long as apps become more demanding, it just makes much more sense just to spend the extra 100$ on the i5. It'll make a significant difference in performance and only a small dent in battery life.

[18358414]

I think that 90% of the time when people are screen-recording, they're showing something off (like the features in a program, or a game).  You'll want your recording software to have its own thread, anything else you do would have its own thread, so it should work as long as you don't open a program that needs to heavily multi-thread.  A bunch of idle applications in the background don't really add up that much (as evidenced by the 78% idle processor). 

 

I'd be interested to see how the quality holds up while actively browsing in firefox or editing in Krita, or with the youtube video still running in the background.  It's a question of 'where is the breaking point' because without knowing the limitations how can you decide if it's something you can use?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Final Cut Pro X is not free and neither is Logic Pro X. Also there are free video editor, music suites and office apps for free on most OS's as well

iMovie and Garageband are free versions of those apps. they do most things the casual user would do. 

 

the free apps for other platforms aren't as good, I speak from experience. 

 

6 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Razer Blade is a very good example of that.

where is the 2560x1600 screen? where is the build quality? even LMG admits that Apple builds laptops better than Razer. 

 

7 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

it's just that it does not make sense to get a dual core Macbook, they won't last you very long as apps become more demanding, it just makes much more sense just to spend the extra 100$ on the i5. It'll make a significant difference in performance and only a small dent in battery life.

that's not my argument at all. I just wanted to showcase that a dual-core isn't bad or anything. 

 

people saying things like dual cores are horrible and you shouldn't buy one influence people's buying decisions. someone might see a used MacBook Pro that's significantly cheaper than even the base model Air, but might avoid it due to the dual-core. and if that person doesn't do demanding things a used dual-core model is actually a great option. 

 

I never said here that you should buy the dual-core 2020 Air. I just said that dual cores aren't as bad as Alex made them seem to be. 

[Blademaster91]

Sure you can have a well optimized OS, though IMO there is no reason to spend so much on a new dual core laptop with 8GB of ram. A weak dual core is still going to choke with multiple tabs in a browser or recording anything more than the browser.

Dell, and Asus, and Lenovo has very good build quality, more ports. Apple build quality? They have a record for hardware issues, and Apple still uses a fan that doesn't actively cool the CPU in the macbook air.

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

12 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Sure you can have a well optimized OS, though IMO there is no reason to spend so much on a new dual core laptop with 8GB of ram. A weak dual core is still going to choke with multiple tabs in a browser or recording anything more than the browser.

 

23 minutes ago, 7he404guy said:

I'd be interested to see how the quality holds up while actively browsing in firefox or editing in Krita, or with the youtube video still running in the background.  It's a question of 'where is the breaking point' because without knowing the limitations how can you decide if it's something you can use?

by request, here is me screen recording opening apps and doing a bunch of things.

keep in mind that this is a 3 year old dualcore 13" MacBook Pro with 8gb of ram and a 120gb ssd. the base model at the time I believe. I intentionally did some animations and stuff in the OS to show you that it doesn't really drop frames at all and keeps feeling smooth while screen recording. 

 

converted by handbrake to mp4 and 1280x800 to fit the size limit of the site, otherwise unedited. 

 

[applebook]

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Dual cores need to die in a fire.

It's 2020, dual cores were already outdated back in 2010. 

 

There's a place for duo core in 2020...for laptops under $300. 

[Zodiark1593]

For an office pc, a high clocked dual core is still more than sufficient. So long as tabs aren’t running in the background, having tons of Chrome tabs shouldn’t be a issue either. 
 

Though with modern quad cores getting down to sub 10-watts, cost is probably the bigger concern. 
 

22 minutes ago, applebook said:

 

There's a place for duo core in 2020...for laptops under $300. 

I’d totally buy a dual core laptop if it was low powered enough to be passively cooled. Tossing a laptop onto my bed without regard for the fan is quite great. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I’d totally buy a dual core laptop if it was low powered enough to be passively cooled. Tossing a laptop onto my bed without regard for the fan is quite great. 

Apple did make one, the 12" MacBook. but that was plagued with thermal throttling and overheating... also they don't make it anymore. 

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 hour ago, Twilight said:

where is the 2560x1600 screen? where is the build quality? even LMG admits that Apple builds laptops better than Razer.

is configurable up to 4k, and it's made out of aluminum (same stuff apple makes theirs out of).