In reply to a post by candlerb:

For Macs: also have Activity Monitor open in the dock, while you're running the speedtest. Seeing the CPU jump to 100% proves that it's the laptop/browser/OS combination which is the bottleneck, not the service from the ISP.

On Windows the same for Task Manager on the Performance tab. The CPU should not spike either unless some third party software has broken the path, usually third party misguided security software.

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Interesting, I have not found that on any Windows PCs and Macs I have come across, I think it may just be your particular MacBook...

As a test, I have MacOS Ventura running on an HP Zbook 14U which has an 8th Gen i5 and 16Gb ram so quite old.

When downloading via HTTP it did ramp up the CPU load as seen using Intel power gadget and temps increased from 45'c at idle to 65'c which wasn't enough to hear the fans at this point before the ISO had completed.

This was using Brave so CPU usage could be browser dependent.

On an M1 or M2 based system I don't think it would be noticeable at all and impact is much less using Safari e.g. temps do not go above 60'c.

Edited by smouty (Mon 20-Mar-23 13:44:59)

In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by Grimers:

Interesting, I have not found that on any Windows PCs and Macs I have come across, I think it may just be your particular MacBook...

As a test, I have MacOS Ventura running on an HP Zbook 14U which has an 8th Gen i5 and 16Gb ram so quite old.

When downloading via HTTP it did ramp up the CPU load as seen using Intel power gadget and temps increased from 45'c at idle to 65'c which wasn't enough to hear the fans at this point before the ISO had completed.

This was using Brave so CPU usage could be browser dependent.

On an M1 or M2 based system I don't think it would be noticeable at all and impact is much less using Safari e.g. temps do not go above 60'c.

Rarely go much above 43'c on an M1 MBP - whether its browser or app. speed tests. So not even breaking a sweat on efficiency cores. Theres barely a ripple on Activity Monitor on any Ookla based tests.

OpenSpeedTest via browser using a slightly more perceptible amount of CPU around 10% (sytem+user)

It is crazy just how good the M1/M2 Macs are for the price.
Here is my result now I have 900/900 at home.
This was done using Brave which is now native Arm based.

Swish Speedtest

I have a M2 Mac. However, I could get 900 down on a 2013 Trashcan MacPro. When Zen was not messing things up. 100+ up on an "standard" 900/100 line.

Nice to know that it's symmetrically good.

900 Mbps symmetric is just a 1 Gbps connection, as used in corporate buildings for over a decade. A Pentium M laptop (ThinkPad T40) could easily saturate a 1 Gbps connection. I would have thought a Raspberry Pi could do the same. Nothing special there about your M1/M2 processor.

I wasn't specifically talking about using Gbit which I've been using in my house for at least a decade

I'm sure an old gen laptop could do it at the time but I think it would struggle to do it on Win10/11 in a browser test with all the bloat.

A lightweight linux install maybe but you're are right that there is nothing special about it and any modern OS on a fairly recent CPU should handle this easily but it is not the case.

In reply to a post by smouty:

I'm sure an old gen laptop could do it at the time but I think it would struggle to do it on Win10/11 in a browser test with all the bloat.

I have a core2duo laptop with 4GB RAM and Win10, and it can handle it?? Most of the "bloat" is third party security software, usually erasing that makes a big difference. Or, if corporate machine, third party poorly written disk encryption. Yes if 2GB or less of RAM, Win10 is going to struggle, page to disk and not be able to run an up to date browser.

I sadly don't have an internet connection fast enough to try.