M1 Native Performance

coys997

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@t85 I think that MW has fundamental performance issue. I actually has rather better performance running TOS (another Java based trading platform) on Mac than Windows/Linux. Cursor is snappy, doesn't lag like MW. DOM/tape rendering is snappy. No perceivable lag. Now, the execution is a different story on TOS but that's not related to graphic performance.

Whatever MW uses for graphic rendering, it's probably hindered by the underlying native binding but it may be an inefficient use of the JavaFx or whatever Java graphic library it's using due to MW's architecture/design. I'm purely speculating based on my decades of software development experiences. Most performance issue stem from the architecture and design rather than the platform library.
In any case it’s still pretty wild how rough Mac runs MW even on high spec’d systems. I have an m1 8gb mini, an mbp with 6-core i7 and 32gb ram, and a system I’m going to test on linux/windows with 8-core i7 and 16gb ram en route. I’m curious how they all perform against each other.
 

igor.s

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I think the MW performance has a big dependency on the GPU since this is a graphics intense platform. Being said that, the actual CPU type is less critical. It is more critical the harmony of GPU/JavaFx. If the JavaFx does not use the dedicated GPU than the performance would suffer. If you run an activity monitor and check the CPU load when the MW runs during the market active hours, say the US market opening, that would give you a clue.
My old Dell XPS 15 laptop with NVIDIA/Linux Mint performs well running MW and TOS.
 

coys997

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Makes sense. I was sure to get a system with discrete graphics as I had a feeling anything integrated might not cut it, particularly with the 43" 4k monitor I use.
 

coys997

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Updating with initial experience ETH with Linux..

What a breath of fresh air. Charts are smooth and without lag. No cursor lag. DOM is noticeably smoother even in ETH. The whole experience feels better immediately vs Mac. And this is with a restored version of my backup from my mac, so exact same parameters.

PC specs for the curious:11th gen i7-11800H, Nvidia T1200 gpu, 16gb RAM. Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon.
 

igor.s

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Updating with initial experience ETH with Linux..

What a breath of fresh air. Charts are smooth and without lag. No cursor lag. DOM is noticeably smoother even in ETH. The whole experience feels better immediately vs Mac. And this is with a restored version of my backup from my mac, so exact same parameters.

PC specs for the curious:11th gen i7-11800H, Nvidia T1200 gpu, 16gb RAM. Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon.
great!
 

Johnedoe

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Thank u so mush for ur clarification it helps alot ,the reason i want to switch to mac is that all my life i used windows start from the 98 to 10 and i suffered a lot bcs of this system, lot of viruses,malwares,bugs,u download smtng and weird pop ups came along with it frm nowhere tht disturb u everytime u turn on the lap,life battery die fastly,even browsing laged if u open many youtube tabs and get hot etc..., but when ive read about the M1 ship i said well this is it, i wanna use this strong fast mac for trading as scalper with my simple strategy i even dont use monitors i prefer only laptop nd doing well with that and for browsing and netflix,ofc the trading skills is what matter no matter wht system u use or machine but windows made me suffer as i mentioned thts why apple left intel ships nd there is a member here he said tht i7 10gn is weak compared to M1 thts why i want to switch to feel cnfortable nd live a better experience from a very long windows user
I have been running MW on my 2015 MacBook Air for 4 years..... Been working just fine.
I have only 4 Meg of ram but I don't have anything else open ... I have a secondary machine for general browsing ... News etc.
 

Wxll

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So far using a M1max with MW 6.6.9-arm64 version been testing around with order flow etc... Coming from a long streak of NT6,7,8 usages for many years using bootcamp on Mac works totally fine no different from any M$dows machine.
Now on the Apple Mx line and no longer going to mess around with M$. So Glad I can use MW on a Mac :). and so far haven't seen any performance issue's. And since MW is natively compiled for the arm64 and no rosetta or virtualisation is used, theoretically should be no reason why it should not perform.
Often software deliver a performance measuring tool, could be a useful idea for MW to add such benchmark indication item somewhere on the about window so we can truly compare in numbers and not like compare trade setups that are already different in the basis.. :)
Nevertheless I am grateful for the reviews in this thread to see how people experiencing this.

When starting MW I see a balanced spread over around 5 cores of 10% load.. after starting up load drops to 5% idle. Running 6 charts nothing fancy keeps the load to 5~6%. those are a bit the numbers I see so far. When the markets are open I'll try a couple of VI and TPO charts see how that impacts the load. Most lag at this moment is loading data from IB what is in its nature not ideal... Still looking into a good data feed with/without a broker behind it.
my 5cnts
 
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claud

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I have both. One night I installed MW on a windows laptop I had laying around just out of curiosity. It was like a whole new experienc…it was SOO MUCH BETTER in windows that I went out the same week and bought a dedicated windows desktop with two 4K monitors. Even the windows laptop on 4k monitors blows the performance on MW on Mac away…and I tried everything…parallels…VMware, etc…and MW just runes way better on a real windows machine.

I have M1 Mac, as well as a $13,000 Mac Pro desktop…and even the $1300 windows laptop runs MW way better…

…keep in mind I’ve been a heavy exclusive Mac user for over a decade…always hated working on windows machines...but now every time I try a new MotiveWave update on my Mac to see if it has improved….it’s just an AWFUL…TERRIBLE experience compared to running MW on windows.

slow…laggy…feels so unresponsive. If you are going to use MW on Mac…just make sure you NEVER experience it on windows…otherwise when you go back to trying to use it on the Mac, you will be disappointed.

I‘m sure I sound like I’m trolling…but I can assure you…I am being dead serious. It’s extremely disappointing to be honest. I like MotiveWave, but once I experienced the difference of how it runs on windows vs Mac…I have a hard time seriously considering MW to be a “Mac & Windows” machine.

As @lightwave said….JavaFX probably isnt using the Apple Metal SDK, so until that gets resolved…MW is just a laggy draggy experience on Mac.

If your trading style is a slower style or doesn’t require quickly dragging charts around, then it may not be a big deal. For me, it was a big enough deal to make me go spend over $2500 on a dedicated windows setup. But again, even a $600 windows laptop runs MW better than my $13k Xeon Mac, as well as my $2k M1 Mac.

EDIT: I should mention that I use a lot of the order flow tools that do a lot of heavy graphical calculations…so if you don’t then none of this may be a big deal and things may be just fine if you’re using a more simplified toolset.
I am so fed up with the frekng dependence on Windoz... I have to use that posh all my life in my Engineering work... MacOS has been far better for 2 decades+ but the idiots cannot dedicate the budget to make darn soft work at real speed. NASA has soft that runs like a dream on MacOS but Apple never made ANY effort to contribute its inmense cash bank to give us Engineering soft....
I wonder what Jobs would've done instead of this useless CEO and board of clowns running the company.
 

Shtick Hustler

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I have 2 laptops - both are 6 year old, Dell and Macbook Pro. When I look at the activity monitor I see that Dell with Linux installed offers less load on the CPU and memory, also it is more snappier subjectively. Mac is a good hardware, but it seems the OS is getting heavier and heavier. So I use Dell/Linux for day trading and the Mac for anything else. Never been a fan of MS Windows. :)

cheers

It ain't the Mac that's the issue.

I recently tested an audio DAW on my humble M1 Macbook with 8GB of RAM against an AMD threadripper with 32GB RAM and 4x the cores of the M1. On paper, the AMD machine is 4x faster. In real life tests on the Reaper DAW, the M1 just smoked the AMD when rendering. Also, the UI was much smoother, quicker in the Mac version (but that could be a Windoze issue :unsure: ).

The shared memory architecture (between CPU and GPU) on Apple Silicon is what gives these chips their juice--it's a major step forward in chip architecture (downside is that it makes adding RAM MUCH more expensive :confused: )
 
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