8 core

[ozarkshome]

New at the Apple Store:

Quad-core or 8-core, all Xeon
Every Mac Pro packs the power of two multi-core Intel Xeon processors. Choose two 3.0GHz quad-core “Clovertown” processors — the fastest quad-core Intel Xeon available — for groundbreaking, 8-core power.

Or configure a quad-core Mac Pro with a pair of dual-core “Woodcrest” processors at 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3.0GHz.

 

[Jez]

And I thought Lens Lust was bad enough....

Thank you Larry!

 

[Lowolf]

was wondering when they would finally offer this configuration. A number have done it themselves with superb performance just more ram needed will be one screaming machine

 

[fixed point]

I'm ready to buy a Mac Pro and I've been waiting for this update because I thought it would mean a price drop on the quad core configurations. No such luck :/

 

[Phil K]

Cool!!! Time to talk to the CFO.

 

[wbeem]

640K is all anyone will ever need.

 

[JohnR]

Nope, no price reduction unfortunately except for the monitors.

 

[argos]

I am also lookin for a macpro and I was told for this 8-core machine.
But I will be patient, I am sure that the 8core macpro lusting (for others...lol)will be my solution!!!

So, anyone wants to upgrade¿?

 

[StL_Don]

Another RATS for no price drop in the dual cores.
I've been thinking that would be all it would take to get me to give the Mac a try.

Don

 

[ozarkshome]

Glad to see them announce it. I played at configuring one, over $8k. Gonna have to wait a bit, at least until June and the release of Leopard I think. (darnit)

 

[JohnR]

8 core is overkill for anyone other than video professionals and developers.

I should add that I mean that you won't see the gain in speed for what it costs. Not all software is written for quads even.

 

[ozarkshome]

You are probably right John. It might make me a bit more anxious to do videos, waiting is not my strong suit.
:smile:

Might it also help with rendering time with Aperture and/or CS3? Or will we have to wait until Aperture 2.0 and a rewrite of CS3?

 

[JohnR]

Aperture loves a good video card and lots of ram. What do you have now?

As for video, I bet the quad mac pros are plenty fast enough. I fiddle around with Final Cut Express and have no problems with it. Seems to move fast enough for me.

 

[Tim Ernst]

John (or anyone) - how about the 8-core machines (vs. the same quad-core machine, both full of RAM) working on large tiff files, like 1gig in size and even larger, with CS3 - would you see any speed difference at all, or will it be CS4 before we see photoshop that can generate more speed for the really large files? I'm not talking about speed value for the money, but just raw speed...

 

[bozola]

I wonder if the 'feel' of the OS will seem faster on this.
I just played with my daughter's 400Mhz iMac with system 9.2.1.
I swear the finder is 'snappier'

 

[gadgetguy11]

I wonder if a 4 core, 4 month old, loaded Mac Pro can be upgraded to 8 core?

 

[ozarkshome]

I wonder if Aperture or CS3 Photoshop will take advantage of the 8 cores, and what specs would be best? Any advantage to additional video cards, etc.?

 

[fixed point]

Well, I broke down and ordered a quad core even though prices didn't drop.

In regards to some of the discussion about programs working well on 8 cores vs. 4 cores...

As far as I know, if a program is optimized to work well on multiple core machines, it will benefit from additional cores. When the program is written, the developer can identify parts of the code that can split off and run separately on a different "thread" than the rest of the program. So the four core machines can run 4 thread simultaneously and the 8 core machine can run 8. As long as the program is written to take advantage of multi-threading, it will benefit from having 8 cores vs 4 without the developer changing anything.

I only write numerical analysis/scientific apps though, so normal applications may be different.

 

[Beezle]

I wonder if a 4 core, 4 month old, loaded Mac Pro can be upgraded to 8 core?

I think the new machine is a new motherboard. Not sure though. Or if that motherboard will support the new quad processors.

 

[Beezle]

Well, I broke down and ordered a quad core even though prices didn't drop.

In regards to some of the discussion about programs working well on 8 cores vs. 4 cores...

As far as I know, if a program is optimized to work well on multiple core machines, it will benefit from additional cores. When the program is written, the developer can identify parts of the code that can split off and run separately on a different "thread" than the rest of the program. So the four core machines can run 4 thread simultaneously and the 8 core machine can run 8. As long as the program is written to take advantage of multi-threading, it will benefit from having 8 cores vs 4 without the developer changing anything.

I only write numerical analysis/scientific apps though, so normal applications may be different.

In my experience other things will cause most uses of so many threads to bottleneck at memory i/o or even more so disk i/o. Once the machine is keeping up with those there isn't much else you can do. Same goes for video. Video is basically single threaded in i/o of data to and from it.

Or at least that is my current thinking. I am considering the quad myself.

I personally work on things that would certainly use all 8 cores, but as I say above it doesn't actually speed up anything because of speed limits elsewhere.

Seems to me we will see specialized use of these extra cores appear first, and slowly over time more and more software will learn to make use of them. The bottleneck will remain memory and disk.