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leftPCbehind209

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 23, 2010
88
0
As the debate continues re: which is better 6 vs 8 vs 12, I've read many times that more cores are better if your program utilizes the extra cores...

Is there a list that shows the # of cores typical Mac programs utilize?

1) If not, does anyone know how many Final Cut Studio 3, Photoshop, iMovie, mpeg streamclip, roxio titanium use?

2) Theoretically, if I'm done editing a movie in iMovie and am exporting via Quicktime (and iMovie only uses 1? core), does it mean that I should be able to render in Final Cut Pro (suppose it uses 4 cores?) at the same time, without performance loss

3) Extending #2 further, if I use Photoshop and some other programs concurrently too, and they are using an additional 4-6 cores, is that where the benefit of the 12 core comes into play?
 
Final Cut is single core, only the compressor is multithreaded AFAIK. Some things in Photoshop can take advantage of the extra cores but I would say the frequency is still the most important. iMovie is single-threaded from what I've read.

IMO the 6-core is the best deal due insane clock speed with decent amount of cores.
 
It is very complicated. Even in C4D, which is normally the poster-child for multi core, I've ran into some scenarios where you are stuck with it processing through things with just 1 core.
 
If you're a vfx/3d artist and know a little scripting, you could use compressor to render several instances of programs like Maya, Nuke, Shake, etc... Every core would be maxed out :)
 
There is no rule for Photoshop. While many artistic filters are single-threaded, there are some using up to four cores, while only few max out all 8 cores I have. Some examples:
Gaussian blur: 6-8 cores, but smart blur: 1
Shadow/Highlights: 4
Smart sharpen: 3-7, unsharp mask: 2
Hue/Saturation: 4
Lens Correction: 1

More core help sometimes, fast cores help all the time.
 
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