1 x Six Core or 2 x Quad Core?

[FluJunkie]

It is amazing these forums are great and scary at the same time.

I am an Apple guy, but and appreciate their products. I have never bought into the marketing of the next thing. Meaning not wanting to bump up to be fashionable. I was getting a little worried on the 6K I just spent as I sit here waiting till next week on the 3.33....

This thread has helped me fell good to know it will be well worth the investment for the next 3-4 years...

Feeling a lot better, thanks everyone... should be here next week!!!

Thank you

Grats on the new machine. I love mine to death.

My only problem is I'm having a "If you give a mouse a cookie..." problem with my 23 inch Dell Ultrasharp display.

 

[MattDSLR]

All kinds of real world for you.

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere.html

And now I am done. Obviously a professional troll as all comments are single line negative BS. And there are a tons of them.

LOL
Ram does matter
I wonder what programs do you use that ram is not important to you
you know that 95% of people using macs can even utilize max performance of those computers
It's proofed over and over that have rendering on CS5 as well Lightroom adjustments of 100+ images at once
That computers with large amount of ram and and 8 plus cores outperforms 4 and 6 core computers during those tasks

but for single core changes MHz does matter

so if you adjust 1 photo at once your computer will be faster by
But you know better
Just wonder what programs do you use, so you notice so much faster response than a multiprocessor systems

Like it is mention by allots of people that review computers MHz does matter for your day to day aps

why don't you check with apple to find out what will be better for the future

and they will tell you

Every boys computer for a reason and for most 2.8 or 2.66 4 core is more then enough

They will do all your edits and compressions it may take them a 1/10 of the second longer than a 12 core computer but you will not be able to notice that, so to buy 12 or 8 core to use it on Aperture or final cut may be overkill, but if you use Adobe products that those computers will make sense

I had a 6 core I got rid of it as it was just a bit faster then my imac. My issue was RAM and I got what gets me more ram

so here

Ram and cores matters for me and maybe I should of got 12 core but for now 8 will do as well 6 will be fine for you and 4 will be fine for others

 

[300D]

or at least explain your reasoning?

Apple's operating system. Its designed to work with multiple cores. It doesn't matter how the app is written, the OS will do everything it can to utilize every core available. Thats why all this "TurboBoost" hype is pure nonsense, there is never an idle core when using OSX!

Even on my G5, it has a "nap" ability to shut off an unused core, but with OSX there is never a moment when one of the CPUs is less than 5% even at a complete doing-nothing idle.

 

[mjsmke]

Apple's operating system. Its designed to work with multiple cores. It doesn't matter how the app is written, the OS will do everything it can to utilize every core available. Thats why all this "TurboBoost" hype is pure nonsense, there is never an idle core when using OSX!

Even on my G5, it has a "nap" ability to shut off an unused core, but with OSX there is never a moment when one of the CPUs is less than 5% even at a complete doing-nothing idle.

There are plenty of single core processes Macs do in daily tasks.

Also, fewer faster cores can still be better than more slower cores in multi threaded tasks. 6x 3.33 = more than 8x 2.4. Unless your refering to the 2.93 12 core.

 

[DeeEss]

I had a 6 core I got rid of it as it was just a bit faster then my imac. My issue was RAM and I got what gets me more ram

32GB is plenty of RAM for most. 64GB in future, when 16GB sticks are a reasonable price will be more than enough and is a healthy upgrade path.

Comparing a 6 core Mac Pro to an iMac is just ridiculous. I'm guessing you had the stock 3GB RAM and stock single drive or a bad drive at that, and i'll admit that the 6 core's potential is wasted with 3GB of RAM and a singles 1tb Drive. Having worked with a 6 core that does very well in a professional photographic environment I can't see how you would compare it to an iMac which I've had many of over the last decade working along side G4's G5's and Mac Pro's.

My workflow is demanding. I work with 60 megapixel files that use 346MB Tifs. A day's shoot has anywhere between 1500 and 3000 shots plus some motion from a 5D and my six core handles it effortlessly. While I only export an edit of these shots the number is still high and they are really big files. Working tif and psd files in Photoshop are 4-20GB. No problems there either. While I could use 32GB of RAM, 24GB is working fine so far...IF it could be faster, then the difference will not be huge and as it's fine now I'm better off investing that money in gear that is going to have more of an impact in my work.

If you've not already read this, it's worth a read.This site is really very informative:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere-Photoshop-CoresSlower.html

6 and even 4 cores are faster than the 12 and 8 for photoshop - Geekbench score etc are useless when it comes to real world performance and you need to research what is right for you.

As for buying for the future I couldn't care less. My business doesn't live in the future, it needs to be efficient and optimized for now. I'll upgrade in 3-4 years time, not wait for my machine to be working effectively in 3-4 years. The 2.93 12 core seemed like a viable alternative but at much inflated cost and by all reports, in the real world not faster anyway and in some cases slower for my uses.

 

[Transporteur]

Apple's operating system. Its designed to work with multiple cores. It doesn't matter how the app is written, the OS will do everything it can to utilize every core available. Thats why all this "TurboBoost" hype is pure nonsense, there is never an idle core when using OSX!

Sorry, but that is just nonsense. The OS can't make a single threaded application multithreaded. That is just not possible.

Just take unrar or whatever single threaded application. Maximum CPU load is 100%, whereas it could be 1600 on my system. Clearly single threaded and therefore faster on a system with higher clock speed, which includes TurboBoost!

 

[DeeEss]

Apple's operating system. Its designed to work with multiple cores. It doesn't matter how the app is written, the OS will do everything it can to utilize every core available. Thats why all this "TurboBoost" hype is pure nonsense, there is never an idle core when using OSX!

Even on my G5, it has a "nap" ability to shut off an unused core, but with OSX there is never a moment when one of the CPUs is less than 5% even at a complete doing-nothing idle.

The only sense where this is true is if you are running other programs in the background. It can assign other cores away. But the a program can only work how it was written and will not make the task any faster than.

 

[JavaTheHut]

The only sense where this is true is if you are running other programs in the background. It can assign other cores away. But the a program can only work how it was written and will not make the task any faster than.

Just curious - Where does Grand Central Dispatch work into this? if at all?

Never mind I ran into this article http://macperformanceguide.com/SnowLeopard-Intro.html

 

[gglockner]

Sorry, but that is just nonsense. The OS can't make a single threaded application multithreaded. That is just not possible.

Just take unrar or whatever single threaded application. Maximum CPU load is 100%, whereas it could be 1600 on my system. Clearly single threaded and therefore faster on a system with higher clock speed, which includes TurboBoost!

This is absolutely correct. "300D" has little understanding how computers work. Mac OS X is a fine operating system but it cannot magically turn a single-threaded application into a multi-threaded one. And many processes do not lend themselves towards massive parallelization.

Anyone who has taken a couple of college-level classes in computer science understands this. Buying or using a high-end computer is nice, but it doesn't compensate for a lack of education.

 

[MattDSLR]

This is absolutely correct. "300D" has little understanding how computers work. Mac OS X is a fine operating system but it cannot magically turn a single-threaded application into a multi-threaded one. And many processes do not lend themselves towards massive parallelization.

Anyone who has taken a couple of college-level classes in computer science understands this. Buying or using a high-end computer is nice, but it doesn't compensate for a lack of education.

I also agree
You need software that takes advantage from multithreads and only 10% of it currently on the market can do that
But what OS can do it allows you to run multiple programs at once with out slowing down
An it is a true multitasking computer
Just imagine doing movie compression working on photos and burning DVD's while performing back up and browsing internet while doing Video conferencing
This is where we want to be and thats what lion will give us
Proper balancing of threads and cores

 

[RebootD]

Are you encoding HD footage 8hrs a day or more? Do you use any other applications that can pump all 8 cores/16 threads to 100%? Do you think you need more than 16GB of ram?

If not the Quad would be fine but the 6c will just add icing on top of the cake!

The only way, as I've read on barefeats, to outperform the 6c is to pay for 2x 2.93 Quads but then you are doubling the price.

 

[mjsmke]

Ive been really impressed with the multi tasking ability of my 2009 quad core.

Even while rendering some 3D animation with all cores/threads active i can still use safari and Photoshop without noticing any slowdowns.

 

[DeeEss]

Ive been really impressed with the multi tasking ability of my 2009 quad core.

Even while rendering some 3D animation with all cores/threads active i can still use safari and Photoshop without noticing any slowdowns.

Yeah that machine is kick-ass