Quad core PCs?

[Captain_Arrrg]

... They tell me they want to do what I do on the Mac but they don't want to pay a little extra for a Mac....

Man, I wish I was comfortable enough to consider $2000 a little extra.

Then when something goes wrong (unless Apple has a panacea for mechanical failure, it will happen) you're going to pay through the nose to get the Apple certified guy to put the Apple certified part in your machine
-----------

Back on topic- If you end up going multi-core with XP, you can find an intensive program you're running in your task manager, right click it and select "set affinity" and move it to your second core. (Most programs don't utilize multi-core CPUs and just use the first one, this way you can use your second [or third or fourth] core as a dedicated "hard work" core.)

 

[kevinmoore73]

you're going to pay through the nose to get the Apple certified guy to put the Apple certified part in your machine

You could do that if you wanted to, or you could get the part and put it in yourself. Let's not make up problems that don't exist, okay?

I'm not directing this at you: Of all of the forums I've ever been a part of, the computer advice offered here is some of the the worst I've ever seen.

Oh wait, maybe I am talking to you. This little tidbit here is absolutely asinine:

If you end up going multi-core with XP, you can find an intensive program you're running in your task manager, right click it and select "set affinity" and move it to your second core. (Most programs don't utilize multi-core CPUs and just use the first one, this way you can use your second [or third or fourth] core as a dedicated "hard work" core.)

Or, you could let the operating system *do its job* and leave this alone. Most programs *DO NOT* use only the first core. They run on whichever core the OS puts them on. If you have your task manager configured for "One Graph per CPU" you can plainly see demanding tasks get shifted between the cores you have available. As other tasks are run, they are also shifted and balanced between available CPUs.

 

[andrewd]

More fuel for the fire; some features from next year's verison of OS X:

Multicore

“Grand Central,” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, brings unrivaled support for multicore systems to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

OpenCL

Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[nonfatmatt]

Yeah, when faced with a larger purchase decision I always ignore the people I know with experience and listen to random strangers on the Internet.

Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Considering I'm a recording engineer at a studio.

 

[nonfatmatt]

I dunno I guess the lesson of the day is do what works for you. I personally record on Linux with Ardour and JACK (yes Virginia, you can do 24 tracks of audio at 1.9ms with plugins and only crack 20% cpu usage on a single core) but for all my studio stuff I use Pro Tools, because clients like to hear a name brand. All of this stuff is only a tool though, so whatever enables you to create the best music is what you should probably go with.

The Q6600 is a nice CPU though, you can get a lot of oomph out of it, lots of tracks and plugins/instruments. And if you buy an Intel board with an older chipset it's quite easy to put OS X on it to try it out (not my cup of tea, interface is too slow).

 

[warnergt]

Man, I wish I was comfortable enough to consider $2000 a little extra.

You an get a quad-core Mac Pro for $2149 with a student discount. Are you telling us you can get a quad-core Windows PC for $149? The Mac Pro is a kick-ass machine that is built like a brick s---house. It has a 1600 MHz front side bus, uses 800 MHz memory and has a 2.8 GHz quad-core processor. Look for those features when performing price comparisons.

A Mac will run Mac OS X and Windows. There is nothing it doesn't do.

And, on the Mac, you can get top notch, state of the art software that will actually use all of your cores. Logic Pro is just $449 with student discount. This is software that used to sell for $1000. Depending on what he wants to do, he may even be able to get away with Logic Express for $199 (or less).

If $2149 is too much to spend for the solid production machine he is looking for, he can get a very capable iMac for a lot less. He will only get two cores but at least they will both get used. Using two cores out of two is better than using one core out of four.

 

[22pauld22]

i was reading in sos the other month that the latest ableton uses as many cores as you can throw at it .. I haven't seen too much rubbish in sos so I'd say thats true .. they still say one of the biggest bottle necks are your drives so you might want to try putting your disks in a raid array ? I've never had two matching disks so I've never tried it on a music workstation but all those servers out there can't be wrong ???

another sos article I read when dual core first came out said that no matter what you progs you were running you would see quite a difference with dual core

I know i shouldn't believe everything I read but I've been in IT for about 20 years now and it makes pretty reasonable sense to me

hope it all works out great

 

[MtManiac]

Most programs *DO NOT* use only the first core. They run on whichever core the OS puts them on. If you have your task manager configured for "One Graph per CPU" you can plainly see demanding tasks get shifted between the cores you have available. As other tasks are run, they are also shifted and balanced between available CPUs.

You're right, it is the OS that manages that moreso than the app, but applications can be written so that they run parallel threads (instructions), and most current 32-bit apps are not compiled this way. Windows' pedigree is 100% 32-bit, until very recently with XP's beta 64-bit version and the new Vista. Any Unix-based OS will do a much better job of handling threads and managing shared memory. Solaris, Ubuntu, Leopard, etc.

Not saying Windows/Vista won't do a good job, just that it will still get it's a$$ kicked in any kind of heavy duty multimedia application, especially with 64-bit hardware and memory allocations above 2 GB.

I do not own a Mac - I too have had a hard time justifying the comparison between a $500 PC with off the shelf components and a $1500+ iMac with similar hardware specs, despite the hours I have spent formatting hard drives , troubleshooting registry problems, reinstalling after virus attacks, going through expensive virus protection packages year after year trying to find one that doesn't consume all of my system resources or get tied permanently to my registry, defragmenting my hard drives, troubleshooting why new hardware or software doesn't just install and work like it is supposed to, and tracking down and killing spyware.

I think I'm almost there though.

 

[rrr_o_bbb]

...
Look for those features when performing price comparisons.
...
A Mac will run Mac OS X and Windows. There is nothing it doesn't do.

Also look how it costs $500 to go from 2Gb RAM to 4Gb RAM, and $1500 to go to 8Gb.

And of course a Mac will run Windows, the Mac platform is now a PC with OSX providing drivers for a small subset of hardware.

Not knocking the mac here, OSX is one of the slickest operating systems ever created. I'm in the camp that says if you don't mind paying a lot more and are prone to getting yourself into headache situations with Windows, by all means get a mac. But don't suggest that there is not a difference in price, or that it performs better, or that everyone who uses windows suffers.

 

[illidian]

Also look how it costs $500 to go from 2Gb RAM to 4Gb RAM, and $1500 to go to 8Gb.

So then buy after-market RAM and install it yourself?

Installing RAM is easier than making whatever you had for breakfast.

 

[Yvon]

Also look how it costs $500 to go from 2Gb RAM to 4Gb RAM, and $1500 to go to 8Gb.

And of course a Mac will run Windows, the Mac platform is now a PC with OSX providing drivers for a small subset of hardware.

Not knocking the mac here, OSX is one of the slickest operating systems ever created. I'm in the camp that says if you don't mind paying a lot more and are prone to getting yourself into headache situations with Windows, by all means get a mac. But don't suggest that there is not a difference in price, or that it performs better, or that everyone who uses windows suffers.

I paid 49$ for 2 gig...
You just need to buy it somewhere else.