Quad-Core or 8-Core

[ender78]

I'm having the same basic conundrum right now - quad or 8 core? I'll likely be saving up for a few months first, but it's still something I'm uncertain about. I'm leaning towards the 8 core, base mode largely because of the greater RAM expandability.

What I plan to do with it: photo editing (5D mark II RAW processing, 30 meg files), some video work (again the 5DII, 1080p) and multitrack audio recording. I don't really ever plan on doing 3D rendering or CAD/CAM - I'd like to, as making a CNC router for my guitar making seems like it would be interesting and fun, but I simply do not have the time or enough desire to free up the time and money required to get it going. So while I guess a (single, slightly faster) Quad core would be fine in terms of processing power for the next 6 years at least (don't plan many earlier upgrades), I'm not sure the RAM wouldn't become a bottleneck.

Thoughts?

I'm in the exact same boat as you. I also own the 5d Mark II. I about to order the 2.26 Octad with 8GB RAM [I will purchase an extra 4-6 GB from OWC]. Aperture and Final Cut apparently take great advantage of multiple cores. I find the $1500 or so upgrade from 2.26 to 2.66 too much to bear as this gear is just for hobby use and generates no income.

 

[rylin]

Wouldn't the 8 core 2,26 GHz be fine for that?

It depends!
Depending on how much you've altered the original image, applying a bunch of different presets could take time.

The reason I'd want a good MP when dealing with RAW is that I don't want to wait even one second when jumping from one second to the next, and I'd go as far as saying I'd want it to be instantaneous.

For this, the added CPU should help.
Also, keep in mind he wants to do a bit of video editing as well, which is definitely a case where every cycle helps.

The 8 core is mainly for the guaranteed increased RAM -- ideal would still be the quad with loads of RAM and a fast disk subsystem.

 

[rylin]

I'm in the exact same boat as you. I also own the 5d Mark II. I about to order the 2.26 Octad with 8GB RAM [I will purchase an extra 4-6 GB from OWC]. Aperture and Final Cut apparently take great advantage of multiple cores. I find the $1500 or so upgrade from 2.26 to 2.66 too much to bear as this gear is just for hobby use and generates no income.

Keep in mind Nehalem is both SMP and SMT (several processors/cores with several threads per core), so the quad should do nicely, IF it can handle enough RAM.

That's really what it boils down to.
If the quad had 8 memory slots it would be a pretty decent buy, but for now it's a "eh... lets have someone else be the guinnea pig" situation.

 

[ncc1701d]

You will, however, need a single bootable volume on standby in order to do any BIOS Firmware updates that Apple does (roughly 1 a year).

Are you referring to RAID 0 for that as well? I was thinking Raid 0 with drobo back up.

 

[Tesselator]

Get a Mac Mini, an iMac, or a Hachintosh and wait till Apple comes to their senses. Here's why:

1998 Apple Releases a 1 core G3 266MHz (AV) $2500 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2000 Apple Releases a 2 core G4 450MHz $2500 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2002 Apple Releases a 2 core G4 1.00GHz $2500 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2004 Apple Releases a 2 core G5 2.00 GHz $2500 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2006 Apple Releases a 4 core 2.66 GHz $2500 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2008 Apple Releases a 8 core 2.8 GHz $2800 ... Speed increase from previous = more than 2X
2009 Apple releases a 8 core 2.66 GHz (w/HT) $4700 ... Speed difference = between 0.9X ~ 1.68X ​

And it's like that or something similar for all of their MPs too.

 

[LightSpeed1]

This Info was very helpful to me.