- Apple's new MacBook Air (M4) appears to only use efficiency cores in Adobe Lightroom Classic
- All performance cores are inactive during testing
- It's unclear whether this is a bug or something Apple intended
It's no secret that Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Air provides fantastic performance for consumers thanks to its powerful M4 chip, starting at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699 - but there are reports that its performance while using a photo editing program is being throttled, though perhaps for a good reason.
Spotted by Vadim Yuryev (from a popular channel Max Tech on YouTube), the MacBook Air (M4) seems to only use all six of its efficiency cores instead of performance cores in Adobe Lightroom Classic (a photo editing program), as highlighted by Wccftech. This is a CPU-intensive application that (hypothetically) should require the use of performance cores to maximize productivity - but Yuryev implies that there's a positive aspect despite all four performance cores being inactive.
Setting aside performance cores for efficiency cores will ultimately extend battery life and lower temperatures, though potentially at the cost of slower processing. Yuryev doesn't explain whether or not this drastically impacts speeds while using the program but states that it will help battery life while under load.
It's not exactly clear whether this is a bug or something Apple intended with the M4 model - Yuryev compared the CPU usage of the M4 with the M3 using Lightroom Classic, and the latter successfully uses all eight of its CPU cores so it's more than likely not a bug with the program itself, but potentially an issue with how the new MacBook Air uses the CPU cores of the M4 chip..
While the MacBook Air (M4) may indeed perform well in Lightroom Classic without the use of performance cores, it doesn’t guarantee that other CPU-intense applications will have the same result when relying on efficiency cores. In other heavy workload tasks, I’d at least hope all performance cores are fully utilized.
If this is intended by Apple, it would be great if we got more performance options for specific programs
Power efficiency is great and all, but that goes out the window if the performance sacrifice is too significant because if CPU performance cores are inactive during intensive tasks, it could really impact how well some apps (including the growing number of Mac-compatible games) run on the brand-new laptop.
Again, this is a big ‘if’ as we don't know what's causing performance cores to stay asleep in Yuryev's Adobe Lightroom Classic CPU stats - but I'm hoping that if it's intentional, users get the option to change between using performance and efficiency cores within programs (bear in mind, you can already change your system's performance mode).
It’s certainly good for getting the most out of the new MacBook Air's battery life, and a large majority of this is down to the M-based chips and their Arm-based architecture (also evident with Snapdragon X Elite laptops).
Hopefully we’ll get more clarity about what’s going on here in due course, though it’s worth pointing out that during our time reviewing the new MacBook Air M4 in both 13-inch and 15-inch configurations, we didn’t notice any major impact to performance.
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