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I know this has been beaten to death, but... would an octo-core MP be useful to me?

BiikeMike

BiikeMike

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2005
1,019
1
I know this subject is a great debate, and even I have asked about it before, but its coming down to crunch time.

I will be running Final Cut Studio (Mainly FCP, DVD Studio, Soundtrack Pro, and occasionaly Shake) CS3, and Photoshop Lightroom. I will mainly only be using one at a time, with the exception of Lightroom and Photoshop, Photoshop and Image Ready, and FCP and Sountrack Pro.

I plan on having 3-4GB of RAM to start, and this computer will be my workhorse for years to come.

The big question is, shoudl I wait until they come out with this supposed 8 core processor? I understand it will be running at a lower clock speed, so for *my uses*, will a quad core 2.66 or even 3ghz be faster than the 8 core 2.33?

I just configured my Mac as I would get it now, and it came out to:


* Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
* 2GB (4 x 512MB)
* 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
* Two 16x SuperDrives
* Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module
* Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple wireless Mighty Mouse - U.S. English
* Mac OS X - U.S. English
* AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro/Power Mac (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll

What do you think?
 
We don't know when quad core chips will start to be used.
We don't know which programs will be able to exploit 8 cores, or how much it will help, or when programs will be revved for the new hardware,
We don't know how much work you will miss out in doing while you're waiting for the mythcal beast to arrive.
We don't know how much you value that work / time at,
We don't know how much the new machines will cost, or how buggy they will be on launch, or what the comparative performance will be against a 4 core machine or at what clock speed.

In short, other than a WAG, nobody can answer if it is worth it for you to wait.

If you need a machine now, buy it now
If you don't need a machine now, wait until you need it.
 
I didn't ask WHEN they were coming, I asked if the programs i'm going to be using, mostly one at a time, would benefit from multi-threaded use.
 
xfiftyfour said:
But we can't answer that if the equipment and programs aren't even out yet.
Click to expand...


I guess. But people keep saying that the more cores you have is not neccisarily better, its the speed of them. From what i've been reading, if and when the 8 cores come out they may only benefit people who seriously multi-task, or programs that are written to take advantage of them.

But the question is, if you do have a bajillion cores, do you also need a bajillion gigs of RAM to keep up with them?
 
A good question to ask would be: How well do these apps thread on the current 4-core systems? If they don't use up all 4 now, they won't use any more on an 8-core system.

How well do they thread? Anyone have benchmarks?
 
tuartboy said:
A good question to ask would be: How well do these apps thread on the current 4-core systems? If they don't use up all 4 now, they won't use any more on an 8-core system.

How well, do they thread? Anyone have benchmarks?
Click to expand...

Thanks, that makes more sense, and was what I was trying to say :)
 
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