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8-cores a nerd
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:04 am
by feyd
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!
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:07 am
by JayBird
Woooohoooo!
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:24 am
by RobertGonzalez
Damn, that is like geek-heaven right there.
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:44 am
by Kieran Huggins
...upgrade from two 2.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon to two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $2156].....limp again.
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:17 pm
by feyd
Kieran Huggins wrote:...upgrade from two 2.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon to two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [Add $2156].....limp again.
And worth every penny.

Re: 8-cores a nerd
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:22 pm
by thiscatis
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!
Isn't that for like music composers & other hipsters?
Ow wait... feyd

J/K, looking nice
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:36 pm
by feyd
Who says I don't compose music or edit videos?
I'm hip; down with it; jiggy. Tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka...
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:38 pm
by Buddha443556
The more Apple raises the bar the cheaper the other end of the consumer spectrum gets. Go Apple! Go Apple!
Liked the other title for this topic better in all it's non-PC glory.
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:25 pm
by feyd
Buddha443556 wrote:Liked the other title for this topic better in all it's non-PC glory.
Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, I was reminded it was a bit on the inappropriate side of things.
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 12:47 am
by Benjamin
Do a lot of the applications running on the Mac platform support multiprocessor systems? It seems pretty cool, but I feel that $1,200 for 4gb of ram is over the edge. I imagine the actual production costs for those chips are quite a bit less.
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 1:11 am
by Kieran Huggins
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...).
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:34 am
by Oren
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.
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:41 am
by Benjamin
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.
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:04 am
by Chris Corbyn
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.
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:24 am
by Oren
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
