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List of Multi-Threading Apps?

S

shadowfayre

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 17, 2006
107
4
I am looking to purchase a new Mac Pro (probably the 2.26-8core model). I know there has been a lot of discussion on what does not utilize more than 4 core, but haven't seen a thread that list them in general. Example, PS4 apparently does not use any more than 4.

What I would like is to have a list of what applications WOULD use more than 4 cores (to compare the single vs dual processor). In addition, marked rather or not SL would have any influence (not sure if Grand Central Station has any influence or not on individual apps).

While this is relating to software, I believe it ties into the Mac Pro line so much that it should be in this forum (sorry if I am mistaken). IMO, I believe this would help users with similar concerns rather than going through each thread and seeing this app works better versus this app does not matter replies.

Thank you for your understanding (hopefully I don't get tarred and feather for this request) :)
 
Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits

When scrolling through photos in preview mode I can't catch the "un-rendered" photos no matter how fast I scroll with my new 8 core. This isn't the case on my original 4 core Mac Pro, G5 or MacBook Pro which require me to slow down sometimes and let the program catch up.
 
300D said:
Pretty much every app on the market.
Click to expand...

That is quite the opposite of what has been said in the forums, if I read them right. Reading through several hundred replies over the past several months (since the 09 models were released); people have been comparing these two units basically saying if you use <insert program name> then stay with the 2008 (quad only) unit as it will not utilize the 8-cores.
 
Flash SWT said:
Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits

When scrolling through photos in preview mode I can't catch the "un-rendered" photos no matter how fast I scroll with my new 8 core. This isn't the case on my original 4 core Mac Pro, G5 or MacBook Pro which require me to slow down sometimes and let the program catch up.
Click to expand...

I have never heard of this particular photo library or viewer; however, if that holds true to any other Photo library (iPhoto, Lightroom and Aperture), that would be great. Right now I have a lot of "stopping to wait" as I scroll through my list of thousands of photos (mostly 8-10MB each DSLR photos)
 
shadowfayre said:
That is quite the opposite of what has been said in the forums, if I read them right. Reading through several hundred replies over the past several months (since the 09 models were released); people have been comparing these two units basically saying if you use <insert program name> then stay with the 2008 (quad only) unit as it will not utilize the 8-cores.
Click to expand...

Thats the issue, people don't think ahead. 1 year from now will be very different just like 1 year ago was to now.

The way OSX works, even right now, is that it automatically spreads the CPU load onto as many cores as it can. Your main app, Safari, mail, itunes and whatever other apps you may be running will all be spread onto their own CPU for maximum performance. The more cores you have the, more operations will have access to their own processor and the faster everything will work.
 
300D said:
Thats the issue, people don't think ahead. 1 year from now will be very different just like 1 year ago was to now.

The way OSX works, even right now, is that it automatically spreads the CPU load onto as many cores as it can. Your main app, Safari, mail, itunes and whatever other apps you may be running will all be spread onto their own CPU for maximum performance. The more cores you have the, more operations will have access to their own processor and the faster everything will work.
Click to expand...

Here's what I think your saying: Most everyone uses more than one app and usually many apps at once. OS X can and will spread them out to use all cores if needed. Once your using enough apps, you can use more than four cores.

I agree with you on this. Using multiple single threaded apps can use many processors if your really using them. But..right now on my computer i have msn messanger, safari( around 30 tabs open), itunes, ical, quicktime, eyetv, handbrake(open not encoding), textedit, preview, and system preferences open and only am using 3-5% of a 2.8 8 core MP.

What I understand then OP asked is what apps by themselves will use more than 4 cores. Which I haven't seen that every app is able to do. Most I have after seen Safari use is ~50% of a core. EyeTv when encoding for me seems to only use between 300-400%, so 3-4 cores. Handbrake i have seen use in the high 700%, so 7-8 cores, though this seems to depend on the settings, i have turned on some settings that seem to limit it to 3-5 cores used. MSN messenger I saw hit 8.9% once total system usage.

So i guess what i am saying is you said "Pretty much every app on the market." which if u are answering the question I believe the op asked, you are saying that every app on the market can use more than 4 cores by itself, which I do not believe is true from the %'s i have seen. Why have msn messenger able to use 4+ cores when it doesnt even use one? seems like programing that would be wasting the programers time.
 
Spikeanator6982 said:
Handbrake i have seen use in the high 700%, so 7-8 cores, though this seems to depend on the settings, i have turned on some settings that seem to limit it to 3-5 cores used.
Click to expand...

Depending on the settings the hard drives can't keep up. So its not limiting the cores its limited by how fast it can read the data and write it to disk.
 
shadowfayre said:
I have never heard of this particular photo library or viewer
Click to expand...

Photo Mechanic is THE choice of working photojournalists on deadline. It is the absolute fastest program for sorting through photos and adding captions on deadline. Just tonight I sorted through 250 photos from a baseball game, made 10 selections, added captions to them and FTP'ed them in 15 minutes.

trainguy77 said:
Depending on the settings the hard drives can't keep up. So its not limiting the cores its limited by how fast it can read the data and write it to disk.
Click to expand...

This is why I have Handbrake read the source file from one disk and write the output to a physically different hard drive. I'm not sure how much it helps but I gotta believe it does a little.
 
trainguy77 said:
Depending on the settings the hard drives can't keep up. So its not limiting the cores its limited by how fast it can read the data and write it to disk.
Click to expand...

Why would adding extra settings.. make the harddrive not be able to keep up?

the ones that seems to slow it down are..using detelecine, deinterlace, denoise, deblock, and if you use turbo first pass under 2-pass encoding, the first pass only uses 4-6 cores then the second goes up to 7-8 cores?
 
What I understand then OP asked is what apps by themselves will use more than 4 cores. Which I haven't seen that every app is able to do. Most I have after seen Safari use is ~50% of a core. EyeTv when encoding for me seems to only use between 300-400%, so 3-4 cores. Handbrake i have seen use in the high 700%, so 7-8 cores, though this seems to depend on the settings, i have turned on some settings that seem to limit it to 3-5 cores used. MSN messenger I saw hit 8.9% once total system usage.

So i guess what i am saying is you said "Pretty much every app on the market." which if u are answering the question I believe the op asked, you are saying that every app on the market can use more than 4 cores by itself, which I do not believe is true from the %'s i have seen. Why have msn messenger able to use 4+ cores when it doesnt even use one? seems like programing that would be wasting the programers time.
Click to expand...

To answer the question, I am looking for a list of applications that solely use multi-threading. Although good to know that OSX does handle each application process differently. It is not uncommon to have 6+ applications running at once; especially when I am designing and developing at the same time. Thanks guys for your replies.
 
Maxwell Render is by far the most ludicrously well threaded app I have ever seen. It's nearly linear. 8-core 2.93 2009's are benching 70-100% faster than 8-core 3.2 2008's.
 
macuserx86 said:
Aperture sure doesn't feel multi-threaded
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Yeah, it depends what you're doing with it. Aperture doesn't often saturate the CPUs so you won't be seeing 100% across all cores too often. I see it hit 60% across all cores for several seconds at a time - occasionally. It is kind of a performance dog tho I'll agree. :)

Here are some Aperture samples:
 

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