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8 cores? are you kidding?

m1stake said:
I spent $1699+17" Studio Display in 2001 so I would be able to keep the same computer without having to upgrade. Contrast that to friends who bought iMacs who have had to upgrade every 2 or 3 years to keep doing basic things, which also get more processor intensive as the years go on.

$2800 and 8 years of heavy use vs $1500 every 2-3? The iMac user spends $4500, I'm $1700 ahead of him because I bought the more expensive machine up front.

Did I need the full power of the G4 then? No. Do I need it now to keep up with minimum spec? Yes.
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Yes, but the iMac user can sell his old iMac every 2-3 years for at least half of its original price... so he spends $2250 and is $550 ahead of you AND has a faster machine. :D

Sorry dude, I just had to. Of course you have less hassle keeping one machine longer and not buying/selling rather often. But it's not like your way is oh so great and iMac buyers have no idea what they are doing. Your way is great for you and that's fine, but there is a reason there are different models of computers, to each their own.
 
hugodrax said:
What are you a communist? I can afford a Mac Pro, I do not need to justify my purchase to you.

Learn a valuable skill set, invest your money wisely, live a life with positive cashflow,a net positive worth and you can get yourself a Mac Pro guilt free and without breaking a sweat.

Lets keep the forums a communist free zone :)
che-no-gr.gif
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I prefer if you could rephrase it as keeping this forum as a POLITICAL free zone.

Much appreciated
 
28monkeys said:
what is wrong is communism? U mean only democrazy can provide you with the latest technology, i can see apple stores all over China.
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He isn't referring to technology, he's referring to Communist governments' tendency to heavily regulate their citizens' lives. And China has adopted some democratic reforms, as well. And he's free to say what he likes (within the limits of the forum rules), which is also party of democracy. :)

Regarding having eight cores, I sometimes wish I had waited six months to buy my Mac Pro, but I'm not really concerned about it, four cores is all I need for now, and by the time I need more the current crop of machines will be like yesteryear's candy-colored iMacs.
 
When dealing with HD video one is surely grateful for 8 cores that can simultanously do the crunching.
Reencoding a 35gig BR Movie to 10 gig is a time cpu consuming task :eek:
 
Upcoming apps for 8-core

You can almost bank on Adobe's upcoming CS4 apps to take advantage of quad cores.
 
Is there anything out there (in terms of software) that can max out an 8-core, even a 4-core to its full potential?
 
kabunaru said:
Is there anything out there (in terms of software) that can max out an 8-core, even a 4-core to its full potential?
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Mac's are pretty popular in scientific research especially computational biology. If your program doesn't have a GUI, and not a lot of deep logical branching, it's fairly straight forward to use the MPI libraries for parallel computing. MPI scales very well; one of my colleagues has been running codes using more than 16,000 processors. I use my Mac Pro as a test bed for my research code and then move it to a much larger cluster. I can get above 80% usage on all 8 cores before I/O bandwidth throttles performance.

crackpip
 
kabunaru said:
Is there anything out there (in terms of software) that can max out an 8-core, even a 4-core to its full potential?
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Handbrake scales up to 6 at times but usually loads 4.
Under Vista 64 and latest nero recode you can load all 8 cores around 60-80% at all times recoding 1080p to 720p.
When batch recoding you can try MAX under OSX or dbpoweramp (registered) to load all 8 cores. The next release of x264 will probably scale even better.
 
Don't forget about the RAM!

To the OP...don't forget about the RAM.

Sure the vast majority of programs don't do a good job of using 8 cores but with up to 32GB of RAM, we can create a RAM disk that will let our applications fly.

My mother just got an 8MP camera at costco for under $200 and all of a sudden she's calling me about photos being 4MB+. She got a cheap 1GB SD card and can't understand what's taking so long to dump 200 pictures onto her HD and why when she opens a picture up it takes so long to edit it (and all she's doing is removing redeye, cropping and zooming).

For just $300-$400 you can dump 8GB of RAM into this beast, set up the RAM disk and do photo editing to your heart's content with not even a hiccup.
 
One of the major things that attracted me to the Mac Pro is not what processing power I need today, but what will I need in the next two to three years.

I have enough processing power under the hood to last me for quite a while. I would be very surprised if I need to upgrade in the next five years. I wouldn't be able to say the same thing if I bought an iMac.

I also like the fact I can upgrade or add quite a bit to this machine. I recently went from a Dell 20" WFP to a Dell 24" WFP. My second hard drive (a 1 TB) is down to around 200 GB free and will probably toss in another 1 TB drive in the next few months.
 
neverownedapc said:
it's kinda funny that an 8 core mac came out and the people with the money to spend on the "best", have come out of hiding and forked up the cash. can anyone outside of the pro video & audio editing world please explain why i would have the want for one of these? pc owners still haven't figured out you don't need more than one processor for the internet. and now we have 8? are they serious? what's pc's next move, 16?
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I wonder how many of the 8 Core Mac user are secretly just checking email and surfing the web.
 
dwl017 said:
I wonder how many of the 8 Core Mac user are secretly just checking email and surfing the web.
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Would you explain your use of "secretly" in relationship to the rest of your statement?:confused::confused:
 
chaosbunny said:
I really should stop reading these threads. Always make me want to sell my iMac for a Mac Pro to check email and surf the web faster! :D
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I realize it's a poor comparison, but coming from a Mini (5400RPM drive) just to the stock Mac Pro, there's a noticeable difference in overall system responsiveness.

As for the arguments regarding memory/HD bandwidth - of course it would be nice if our interconnect to our mass storage was at the full speed of the CPU. In fiscal reality, however, there will almost always be register-based operations that require multiple clock cycles to complete. So long as that is the case, then you will see a performance improvement from CPU speed alone.

Only when all possible calculations complete in a single clock cycle will the memory interface first, and the mass storage interface second, become absolute bottlenecks.

Either way, I can tie up the 4x2.66 Mac Pro (with Handbrake, but still). I'm not processing video or audio yet, but I genuinely look forward to getting Logic Pro up and running with a nice multichannel drum sampler. I should be able to load this thing down with tracks and effects with no issues. Something I couldn't say about my single-core 2.8G P4.


Mike
 
dwl017 said:
I wonder how many of the 8 Core Mac user are secretly just checking email and surfing the web.
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Probably 75%.
About 20% probably actually do "Professional work" and about 5% do "Actual Professional Work" with the Quadro FX 5600 card.
 
kabunaru said:
Probably 75%.
About 20% probably actually do "Professional work" and about 5% do "Actual Professional Work" with the Quadro FX 5600 card.
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I'm sure there is a multitude of reasons why the 75 percent will spend the extra money for a Mac Pro when they really don't "need" one.
 
Same reasons people buy expensive sports cars. It's fast when you need it to be, and it looks good. It's not like you'll be going 110mph all the time. It's just refreshing that when you actually need to use the power, it's there.
 
stiles said:
Same reasons people buy expensive sports cars. It's fast when you need it to be, and it looks good. It's not like you'll be going 110mph all the time. It's just refreshing that when you actually need to use the power, it's there.
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Like when you are passing a slower car on a 2 lane road and you see a "semi-" truck barreling toward you.

I have a gas guzzling truck. I use it to haul mostly myself around town, but when I need to haul some large item, then I have the truck bed to use and the power and suspension I need at that time.
 
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