Who needs all those cores anyway?

[Lone Deranger]

To everybody on these forums who keeps proclaiming that 24-cores is overkill and no software really makes use of all that power..... I silence you with green bars of power!

Witness MentalrayForMaya screaming on all 24 cores at 2.93Ghz through satellite rendering.

 

[dissolve]

Yikes. Would love to know the power draw with that kind of usage

 

[Lone Deranger]

Yikes. Would love to know the power draw with that kind of usage

I'd rather not think about it.

 

[apolloa]

I'd rather not think about it.

Ahg, you'll get you electric bill soon enough........

 

[chrono1081]

To everybody on these forums who keeps proclaiming that 24-cores is overkill and no software really makes use of all that power..... I silence you with green bars of power!

Witness MentalrayForMaya screaming on all 24 cores at 2.93Ghz through satellite rendering.

Ya Maya does a great job at eating up all my cores too!

 

[Inconsequential]

iWant that many threads p) to look at

 

[VirtualRain]

<silenced>

 

[bluesteel]

Witness MentalrayForMaya screaming on all 24 cores at 2.93Ghz through satellite rendering.

freaking awesome, love seeing this. thanks for taking the time to post but remember, Maya isn't yet written to make all those cores work together with 100% efficiency, its not optimized to do so. i've talked to autodesk tech support/engineers about this before via phone and email. here is a quote out of an email conversation i had with them this month:

"Maya will most likely work on a 12 core system, and would improve the performance of the the application on the machine. But understand that, at least for now, Maya 2011 IS NOT "optimized" to use 12 Cores. It may be some time before applications are fully optimized for a machine like that."

it obviously sees and uses all the cores, which is awesome, but it'll be nice when the software is updated and optimized to use them all efficiently. nonetheless, wow, its faster than a six core in rendering, and its nice to see all those cores working for MentalRay. i'm thinking of getting a 12-core for this very reason...i hate waiting for renders

now if there were only a better workstation graphics card that could harness the GPU power for complex modeling in Maya....hopefully the Quadro FX 4000 Fermi will get the job done....

how is your ATI 5870 doing with the modeling part of Maya, if that's the graphics card your using? what version of Maya are you running?

 

[lbeck]

very impressive .... but 99% of apps cant do that. Hopefully they will soon but the reality is 99% of users dont need 12 cores, or even 8 cores.

 

[bluesteel]

MP 3.33Ghz 6-Core | 24GB RAM | 120GB OWC SSD | 27" ACD |.

lbeck, your mac pro system is soooo perfect...the ultimate and optimum powerhouse is what you have with the display and all. its nice to have 12 real cores for certain types of applications, but you gotta have a bit of disposable income or either making a living from that kind of machine to justify the cost. well, i guess its only like $2500 more than your setup, but still, thats a lot of money.

love your setup dude....

 

[Transporteur]

Who needs all those cores anyway?

I've got no freaking idea.

This is my core usage, and yes it always (well 99.99%) like this. I figure that 4 cores would have been more than enough for my current work (Safari and iWork).

 

[Vylen]

Is this going to become some sort of weird comparison stand-off?

This is me currently just browsing the net with lots of apps open and in particular ones that do a lot of background stuff.

 

[lbeck]

lbeck, your mac pro system is soooo perfect...the ultimate and optimum powerhouse is what you have with the display and all. its nice to have 12 real cores for certain types of applications, but you gotta have a bit of disposable income or either making a living from that kind of machine to justify the cost. well, i guess its only like $2500 more than your setup, but still, thats a lot of money.

love your setup dude....

Thanks man! Its brand new to me, I figured it was the best way to go. I do make a living from my MP, I'm a multi media designer and use CS5 suite for 90% of my work. 12 core is nice but I've never needed more than 4. I loved teh high processing speed of the new six core so I ran with it.

 

[bluesteel]

Thanks man! Its brand new to me, I figured it was the best way to go. I do make a living from my MP, I'm a multi media designer and use CS5 suite for 90% of my work. 12 core is nice but I've never needed more than 4. I loved teh high processing speed of the new six core so I ran with it.

you made a fantastic choice for your needs

 

[alphaod]

To everybody on these forums who keeps proclaiming that 24-cores is overkill and no software really makes use of all that power..... I silence you with green bars of power!

Witness MentalrayForMaya screaming on all 24 cores at 2.93Ghz through satellite rendering.

Isn't using OpenGL for MentalRay going to be faster?

 

[Sun Baked]

With all that power, you should just attach the electric wires directly to your wallet and electrocute the bank cards.

 

[schulmaster]

very impressive .... but 99% of apps cant do that. Hopefully they will soon but the reality is 99% of users dont need 12 cores, or even 8 cores.

And the higher clock speed of the 6 core would definitely add benefit to a much larger number of applications

 

[Tali]

Final Cut is quite ok, at least in Log and Transfer.

mm there should be a picture here .) anyways: it uses all 6 cores at about 80% for log and transfer, it's quite quick.

 

[fensterbme]

There is a Reason to Have 12 Cores, But Most Don't Have a Reason

If you need to run applications that can actually make use of 12 cores by all means buy that machine...

But for lots of folks it's not only overkill it can actually be noticeably slower than other configurations. Having more CPU cores available only increases the processing 'potential' of a system. It's like being a manager and having 12 employees, if you don't have enough work for them to do they provide no benefit. Furthermore if you are that manager and what you need done can only be done by 4 or 6 employees the speed in which they can perform that work matters more than adding additional employees to the mix.

I'd tell folks generally you don't need 12 cores unless you specifically know WHY they personally need it.

Since a lot of applications can't make use of more than 4 CPU's for a LOT of people looking to buy a Mac Pro, the hex core 3.33Ghz. is the fastest machine they could buy, and spending more on the 8 or 12 core options will actually be slower for them.

I think it's wise to help generalize to the public that more processors and spending more money isn't always going to translate to being effectively quicker. Especially since Apple (and most of their Apple Store employees) would tell folks that 12 cores will be better for those real power users, when the reality is that's far from being true.

That all said, if someone needs the 12 core by all means buy it... there are definitely reasons to own that machine. But for me (and a lot of others) I'd tell folks the real screamer is the 3.33Ghz. model.