No, the faster GPU won’t necessarily do anything for you here. Compositing the main windows is a split operation between the CPUs and the GPU. In nearly all cases, audio processing itself is not ever GPU accelerated as it is not a parallel task, it is largely sequential and GPU audio toolkits are neither common nor simple to use. Most “GPU accelerated” plugins simply use the OS’s native graphics toolkits to offload the ui redrawing to the GPU whenever possible, removing the bulk of work in those threads from the CPU’s workload. The CPU still manages gathering and sending information to and from the GPU, system interaction such as control value modification and dispatch, and other interaction-based UI processing, in addition to moving the requisite data to the realtime threads which are doing the audio processing.
VCV on Macs is notoriously slow, from what I understand (and realize I don’t use it at all, so I’m speaking from the result of my discussions with those who do) because it does not even properly offload all of the drawing to the GPU, but rather does quite a bit of that on the CPU too. It may also not properly utilize the threading components of the OS as well on a Mac, but that’s speculation. Overall, though, it’s just because it doesn’t have the benefit of the usual optimizations on the Mac that it has on Windows, not because the Mac or your hardware is particularly pokey.
Bad software can make even an amazing computer grind to a halt.
Softsynths with considerable complexity are similar - it really depends on how you’re using them. All of their realtime workload (again, save for perhaps some very exotic examples) do the real work on the CPU in threads. Some DAWs assign one thread per track, some don’t. Depending on how many of these synths, and how they are distributed across your tracks works out, you may be overloading only one or two of your cores, or you may be simply asking too much of the system, flat out. A faster GPU will do absolutely nothing for you there. And if the plugins use even a little CPU for redraws or UI work and are not 100% accelerated, any graphics redraws will hit your audio performance too, which is noticeable if you’ve pegged your system. Check the utilization of each of your cores and see if it’s evenly distributed when running your audio system at full load. Just one overloaded core can drag the whole system down, if it’s also the core the main graphics threads run on, and the system cannot always distribute the workload evenly due to the linear, serial nature of audio processing.
The main solution to your problem is manifold - first, more evenly distribute your processing demand across your CPUs, either by splitting some of it across tracks or by freezing what you can. Second, make sure you’ve taken as much advantage of your cores as possible by not running ANYTHING else on your system during these periods of heavy use, not email clients, or messages, or anything that’ll steal background CPU time. Third, see if you can replace some of your heavier and less optimized plugins with lighter weight versions where you can. And definitely check to see if you’re forcing your system into swap for some reason. The CPU gets very involved when you start swapping and that can ruin realtime processing. Also, if you’re using an audio card that has third party drivers, make sure it’s from a brand reputable at low latency and high performance like RME or MOTU (MOTU got good in the last few years, before that they were only meh on performance). A lot of other brands that have their own drivers, especially older ones with older versions of MacOS, can be less optimized.
