newbie Dual Proc question

[bladderskate]

O.K. so the new G4s have dual processors (DP), 800mHz or 1Gb. I take it this means, in the case of the 800, two G4 processors at 400mHz each. I'm a musician and have read that a certain sequencing program now supports DP. Great, but then that got me thinking :

Using the G4 800 w/DP as example, if a program must "support" DP then does it stand to reason that a program which hasn't necessarily been designed for DP only uses one of them every time (and therefore it's like having a 400mHz proc)? Can someone explain this, me no understand.

thx

 

[dualburn001]

If you have an 800DP its not 2 400mhz chips, it's 2 800mhz chips running at 1.6 ghz. Some programs will take advatnage of the dual proccesing but some won't. The ones that wont take advanatge they won't even need the speed anyway.

Dualburn001

 

[3rdpath]

duals for music

actually the dual 800 has two 800 processors.

as far a music software goes, most of the major audio/midi programs now support dual p's. digital performer for example rocks with the dualies. they've gotten over 100 audio tracks going with both a compressor and EQ plug-in on every channel. that's massive. if you're going to do any recording in your mac then go for nothing less than a dual p- the difference is huge.

btw, your audio track count is governed by the speed and access time of your hard drive. ( ultra-wides w/ cheetahs are the way too go-the folks at digital performer have assured me that drives faster than 10,000rpms won't make any difference ) the dual processors will govern the amount of plug-ins you can use-and most of the other functions.

hope this helps.

 

[bladderskate]

Thank you dualburn001 and 3rdpath, very helpful. I'm on my way, coming over to the Mac side for goood. Don't know if either of you are old enough to get this, but Windows can "kiss my grits."

That aside, it looks like for dual proc the 1gig is the way to go, has the L3 cash. I don't even see anything about a dual 800 on the Apple Store site but places like macmall sell them.

3rdpath, what are "ultra-wides w/cheetahs?"

thanks again,
blad

 

[mac_airport]

cheetahs

here is a link to available cheetah drives:

https://buytape.seagate.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=17