Whats the use of 4 core?

[EOS1971]

Hi,

If got the 2.2 quad core macbook pro. My first impression is the lack of the software and the cooling. The software like FCP is made for 1 core. The next FCP will be 2 core. What the use of quad core?

The cooling has a hard job with the potential power of the quad core. It makes quit a noise.

Is the 2011 macbook made for software with will be arrive in 2016?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

FCP X will run on multiple cores (2, 4, 6, 8, 12, ....), FCP 7 can run on two cores.
And there is other software out there taking advantage of multiple cores, like After Effects, Handbrake, ... and many more.

 

[eawmp1]

About multicore processing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_processor

In some ways, yes, getting a multicore processing machine is "future-proofing." In reality, most consumers today could do well for many years with duo-core machines. However, there is the consumer demand and "keeping up with the Jones's" that is also involved.

 

[daneoni]

FCP X will use GCD/64-bit

 

[Vantage Point]

some software can take advantage of many cores while some do not but the future will be multiple cores since there is a speed limit to a single core.

Anyway, I am extremely pleased with my 2010 MBP with only two cores and love how mine runs cool and I rarely need to hear fan noise. In a year or two when these cores require less power and therefore less heat (possibly Ivy Bridge CPU's) and more software can take advantage of this, then it will be time top upgrade. For most everyday tasks there is no difference. Most 95% plus the laptop is now a legitimate 'portable' desktop replacement with big hard drives up to 1 TB and even ability to use 16GB ram.

 

[w00t951]

First, as others have already stated, Final Cut X will support 4 cores and beyond.

If you are using Handbrake 64 for video encoding, you will notice a massive difference over a computer that has one core. Handbrake 64 uses all four cores and a total of 8 virtual cores.

If you play any modern games such as Bad Company 2 or Dead Space 2, you will see that these games take up all four cores.

In general, applications for four cores are arriving, but not at the rate that I would like. In another year, most Mac applications will take advantage of four cores, and many Windows applications will as well. In a way, your Mac will reach its full capacity in one year.

 

[dusk007]

The truth is if all you do is office work, browsing, watching movies and playing games. Kind of the mainstream stuff you barely ever need a quad core. The most demanding is gaming and considering the farily slow GPUs the CPU is paired with in notebooks a dual core Sandy Brdige is more than sufficient and it doesn't matter if a game does or doesn't support quad cores.

You can use a quad core if you do more than the mainstream stuff. Virtual Machines need resources, video encoding, rendering stuff, and basically all the heavy lifting software takes advantage of multiple cores.

 

[JasonH42]

Hi,

If got the 2.2 quad core macbook pro. My first impression is the lack of the software and the cooling. The software like FCP is made for 1 core. The next FCP will be 2 core. What the use of quad core?

Games

 

[sbrashear]

So does Aperture and Photoshop use all four cores as well, or just applications like FCP and After Effects? Is there a resource on what applications leverage 4 cores. Also, does four cores make a difference if numerous applications (that don't use four cores) are open simultaneously?

The reason I ask is I was wondering if there would be a significant performance upgrade between a 2010 2.66 i7 and a 2011 2.4 i7 (both with maxed out memory and 7200 hard drives). Or would I be better off putting a nice SSD in 2010 to get better performance? I find Aperture to be sluggish and since I'm using it on deadline, I could use the performance upgrade.

I apologize if I'm getting off topic on the subject.

 

[daneoni]

^
Adobe CS5 suite is 64-bit/multicore ready. I'm not sure about Aperture 3 though but given that it is a 64-bit app i'd guess yes.

 

[ZombieZakk]

Hi,

If got the 2.2 quad core macbook pro. My first impression is the lack of the software and the cooling. The software like FCP is made for 1 core. The next FCP will be 2 core. What the use of quad core?

The cooling has a hard job with the potential power of the quad core. It makes quit a noise.

Is the 2011 macbook made for software with will be arrive in 2016?

the problem is your referencing one program, there are some programs that use 1 core and others can run on many cores it depends how the software is written and what it can utilize.

 

[lankox]

What about multitasking? If you have several programs running and doing things at the same time, does a quad core help out in this scenario?

 

[daneoni]

^
Thats more likely to do with RAM but the CPU helps too. If you're running VMs for example, you can allocate more CPUs to them.

 

[brentsg]

Don't forget that turbo bumps the clock speed of 1 or 2 cores way up when you aren't utilizing all 4.

 

[EOS1971]

Hi,

If got the 2.2 quad core macbook pro. My first impression is the lack of the software and the cooling. The software like FCP is made for 1 core. The next FCP will be 2 core. What the use of quad core?

The cooling has a hard job with the potential power of the quad core. It makes quit a noise.

Is the 2011 macbook made for software with will be arrive in 2016?

What about multitasking? If you have several programs running and doing things at the same time, does a quad core help out in this scenario?

Yes, it works. But the cooling makes much noise.

 

[brentsg]

Yes, it works. But the cooling makes much noise.

You're probably using the discrete GPU more than you need to. That adds quite a bit to the cooling load.

 

[EOS1971]

You're probably using the discrete GPU more than you need to. That adds quite a bit to the cooling load.

How can I avoid this?

 

[brentsg]

How can I avoid this?

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus

 

[EOS1971]

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus

Thanks

 

[Rhyalus]

This is a really weird thread.

More threads = more computing power. Why would you want this? Hmmmm?

As someone mentioned, just because one application does not use multiple threads (not common anymore), you can still run multiple apps at the same time without sacrificing speed.

R

 

[squeakr]

More threads = more computing power.
R

Wrong. More threads = more time sharing the CPU. The CPU works on a time sharing system. Unless you have parallel processing there is no such thing as true multitasking,as the processor can only dedicate its time to one process at a time and this time sharing is designated by threading. Therefor more threads allows more time dedicated to the CPU. The more threads the CPU can handle and the faster it can switch between these threads (think of an old token ring network and how it works) the faster the processes complete. Threading is about speed and not power.

 

[thermodynamic]

Hi,

If got the 2.2 quad core macbook pro. My first impression is the lack of the software and the cooling. The software like FCP is made for 1 core. The next FCP will be 2 core. What the use of quad core?

The cooling has a hard job with the potential power of the quad core. It makes quit a noise.

Is the 2011 macbook made for software with will be arrive in 2016?

Number crunching.

3D rendering or fractal generation apps will eat up as many cores as you can give 'em.

Software already exists.

Even running multiple tasks that are made for one core - you can browse a couple of Flash-heavy web pages while running some massive disk-based utility in the background and the computer won't even bat an eyelid, because 4 cores are handling it all with a breeze.

But the main benefits are number crunching. I was ecstatic over the release of the quad core MBPs.

 

[Rhyalus]

Wrong. More threads = more time sharing the CPU. The CPU works on a time sharing system. Unless you have parallel processing there is no such thing as true multitasking,as the processor can only dedicate its time to one process at a time and this time sharing is designated by threading. Therefor more threads allows more time dedicated to the CPU. The more threads the CPU can handle and the faster it can switch between these threads (think of an old token ring network and how it works) the faster the processes complete. Threading is about speed and not power.

Semantics in this case, don't you think?

If I have a PC with two cores vs four cores, I can process more stuff, run more applications without waiting for cores to open up, etc.

I used the term "power" to represent that a CPU with more cores has more computing "strength / capability / performance" than a CPU with less cores. The speed of each core notwithstanding... with big differences in clock speed, the story is a bit hazier, but not much.

R

 

[squeakr]

Semantics in this case, don't you think?

R

No, I don't think so. I just want the correct information out there. A Cray supercomputer from the 70's will process circles around our systems and it wasn't a quad core (the RAM and data bus feeding the CPU has just as much of a part to play than the CPU, throw a mathematical co-processor in there and the picture changes even more. Stopping there and not going farther although there is more).

More threads <> more power. When things get dumbed down to the level that they lose the truth, people start to believe the non-truth. You may know the difference, but to the person that doesn't and is trying to learn more they will think it to be the truth and carry this thought forward (although I would hope it would stimulate them to have more interest and do further research and learn more, if not at least they got a basic truth).

 

[w00t951]

The most demanding is gaming and considering the farily slow GPUs the CPU is paired with in notebooks a dual core Sandy Brdige is more than sufficient and it doesn't matter if a game does or doesn't support quad cores.

False. In games such as Bad Company 2 and Crysis, in which the processor is under heavy load due to the game engine's use of things like physics, multi direction sound, game file loading, and general data processing, there is a massive difference between playing on a dual core and a quad core. Even in games like Black Ops that doesn't use advanced physics or destructible environments, a dual core bottlenecked performance while the quad core opened up performance.