Nerd-out!
8-cores a nerd
Moderator: General Moderators
- feyd
- Neighborhood Spidermoddy
- Posts: 31559
- Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:24 pm
- Location: Bothell, Washington, USA
8-cores a nerd
I just saw that Apple has made 8-core Mac Pro's available. I can see my pennies will be very thin this year. 
Nerd-out!
Nerd-out!
Last edited by feyd on Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- RobertGonzalez
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 14293
- Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2003 6:04 pm
- Location: Fremont, CA, USA
- Kieran Huggins
- DevNet Master
- Posts: 3635
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:14 pm
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Contact:
Re: 8-cores a nerd
Isn't that for like music composers & other hipsters?feyd wrote:I just saw that Apple has made 8-core Mac Pro's available. I can see my pennies will be very thin this year.
Nerd-out!
Ow wait... feyd
J/K, looking nice
- Buddha443556
- Forum Regular
- Posts: 873
- Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 1:51 pm
- Kieran Huggins
- DevNet Master
- Posts: 3635
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:14 pm
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Contact:
As with any computer purchase, buy the minimum amount of ram and upgrade yourself!
Depends on the app - you won't see a huge speed increase in Mail.app, but you would in video editing and compilation. I have an old dual-athlon system and one of the biggest pro's is that I can multi-task like a mofo (well, at least my computer can...).
Depends on the app - you won't see a huge speed increase in Mail.app, but you would in video editing and compilation. I have an old dual-athlon system and one of the biggest pro's is that I can multi-task like a mofo (well, at least my computer can...).
I believe that you wouldn't notice any difference, most applications were written for just one processor and therefore, it'd be just like running them with one processor - even if you have 4, 8 or 1000, it won't make any difference. Only in the future, when all applications will be written for these machines with mul processors, will you see the difference, and even then, 2 processors doesn't mean 2 times faster.
Yeah, reason I ask is because It's common that I run a CPU intensive bit of software, it will peg out 1 core while the other just sits at 0-2% usage. I know video editing software, rendering software etc is designed to use multi core, multi processor systems, but I don't think most folks would benefit.
I think having 2 cores is good, because then you can max one out without slowing down your box, but more than that and it may actually be slowing things down, depending on the speed of each core of course.
Think of it this way, if you have a 2000Mhz processor, and you max it out compressing a file or something, it's running at 2000Mhz. If you split that into 4 cores, and each core is running at 500Mhz, it will now take 4 times as long to compress that file, assuming your compression program isn't designed to use more than one core/processor.
Something to consider.
I think having 2 cores is good, because then you can max one out without slowing down your box, but more than that and it may actually be slowing things down, depending on the speed of each core of course.
Think of it this way, if you have a 2000Mhz processor, and you max it out compressing a file or something, it's running at 2000Mhz. If you split that into 4 cores, and each core is running at 500Mhz, it will now take 4 times as long to compress that file, assuming your compression program isn't designed to use more than one core/processor.
Something to consider.
- Chris Corbyn
- Breakbeat Nuttzer
- Posts: 13098
- Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
Do you have a reference to that architecture? I could have sworn "dual core" is the same as "dual cpu" except with advantages on the amount of power needed to run them. Therefore I'd say each core runs at the speed specified -- not divided.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I've just never seen such a mention of it. Most apps use just one core, so I doubt intel would reduce the speed of each core.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I've just never seen such a mention of it. Most apps use just one core, so I doubt intel would reduce the speed of each core.
I don't think that's what he meant. He meant that right now, the dual processors are slower than one processor. I'll explain what I mean. Right now, if you go to buy a PC, it would probably come with a 2.4GHz - 3.8GHz processor, but if you go and buy a PC with 2 processors, each would be about 1.3GHz - 2.0GHz. In real life, currently, the machines with mul processors run with slower processors. Maybe there exist machines with mul processors where each processor has a clock time of 3+GHz, but, if it exists, it'd cost 1000's of dollars - not practical.
I hope that was clear. If not, tell me and I'll try to explain better what I mean
I hope that was clear. If not, tell me and I'll try to explain better what I mean