@HDnut
2.93 octad base price: $5,900
2.66 octad base price: $4,700
2.93 quad base price: $3,000
2.66 quad base price: $2,500
The 2.93 quad is only $500 more then the 2.66 quad. And the 2.93 pitches the difference where it will really counts the most - most of the time. Even an application that scales 100% across all available cores like Lightwave3D (which probably scales better than any other app there is!), I still end up spending most of my time doing tasks that benefit more from clocks than cores.
Load the app,
load the resources,
fiddle with the interface,
create the models,
edit the textures in PS,
apply and adjust the textures,
setup the lighting,
create the animation curves,
check the animation in OpenGL previews,
save everything, etc.
And many of these are tasks I must do repeatedly - again and again - every time I sit down to the machine.
Let's say I spend a month editing the project which is fairly common. Let's say it's a 3 minute commercial grade animation at 30FPS and the frames take 1min. to render on the 2.93 quad - that's 5,400 minutes or 90 hours or 3.75 days. If you have the 2.93 octad you can divide all those times in half. If you have the 2.66 octad you spend like 70% of those times. 70% of 3.75 days is 2.63 days. So basically you will save one day a month if you get the 2.66 octad instead of the 2.93 quad. But everything else you did that month went by faster and with less frustration on the 2.93 quad. With the 2.93 octad you get the best of both but the cost... oh my. You save now two days a month and additionally everything was edited quickly and with less frustration.
I did this everyday for 9 years (and taught the same) so this is pretty common sense to me. Pro Video editing too.
You have to ask yourself:
Is the one day a month going to be worth $1,700? (if no then the 2.93 quad is better than the 2.66 octad)
Is the two days a month going to be worth $2,900? (if no then the 2.93 quad is better than the 2.93 octad)
Is almost 10% faster editing (extra pep!) in your everyday work worth $500? (if yes then the 2.93 quad is better than the 2.66 quad)
@Mac Husky
Yeah, definitely! What Snow Leopard does for octads so will it do for quads - whatever that is. I guess not all that much though. Apple is still dealing with the same hardware limits - limits imposed by the physical architecture. I guess most application performance (however we measure that!?!) won't be increased by more than about 10%. But 10% to all intel based Mac Pros. 10% more than whatever they were before Snow Leopard. The rendering and stuff will not be (can not be) improved by the OS significantly enough to measure. Unless of course there's some magical Apple pixie-dust I don't know about yet.
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