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Which programs use 6 core?
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This can be nearly as expensive as an entry level new Mac Pro. While you could buy cheaper PC cards, to do this properly you'd want to use something like a 680GTX Mac Edition ($600) or 7950 Mac Edition ($500). A old Mac Pro is probably $1000. So you're at $2000 before adding an SSD.
And people are questioning the success of the nMP
Success as a consumer machine does not mean success with its target market.
Why would he need those cards? For less then 200 the 660 would work just fine. Its day trading not photoshop utilizing cuda cores or anything. and you can get an older mac pro for under a $1000. A ssd for 250 gb is under $200. Thats way lower then any nMP model
p7zip (LZMA2), x264, Final Cut Pro X, Adobe software, Audio software and everything that uses Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) with more than 4 threads (GCD can use also less than 5 threads, if the programmer uses serial queues or if the task requires serial processing).
Yes, but the point of my snide remark above, is that there are just as many people buying it now to surf the web as there are professionals abandoning it. A Mac Pro sale is a sale, regardless of what it's used for.
EDIT: Do I think this is a great thing? No. Of course not, but the truth is, this computer seems poised to be very successful.
The Darwin kernel itself uses also many parallel threads. The speed of the OS is certainly higher on a 4+ core machine.
Hyperthreading is thread management in hardware. It does not increase the available computational power.
I'm going to do the same thing. The nMP is very appealing, but for about $3349 I can a maxed out 27" iMAC with a 1 TB SSD/PCi and upgraded CPU and GPU.
^^This...even 32bit apps scale nicely...of course you could argue that making it only utilize 1 or 2 threads with a higher GHz rating would be nicer I think spreading across cores is better in practice. But yeah I love the options in After Effects for selecting the amount of threads I want to use as well as GPU's....
I believe Handbrake can use Hyper Threading, but it isn't the same as doubling the number of cores; each hardware thread is still limited in the operations it can perform and when it gets to perform them, which can mean they just end up taking turns as normal anyway. There are ways to design around it, and high end software like Cinema4D may have the budget to make those kinds of changes. But Handbrake may not even be able to do it, as it will typically use complex video decoding/encoding instructions on the CPU, which may not be able to run two threads at a time (I'm not sure though).
That said, Hyper Threading is great for running multiple different apps, as there is more chance of them being to able to share cores more effectively
HandBrake (x264) can use the indirect parallelism, if your CPU supports AVX2. AVX2 integer instructions can double the data throughput, compared to SSE2 integer instructions.
Hello. Thanks for the link on multi-core cpus.
I am actually fine that there is NO speed increase with hyperthreading. What I am hoping for is, with more cores and hyperthreading, this helps lessen the stress on the cores with the workload distributed to the idle cores, lesser heat, hoping to prolong the lifespan of the cpus. Though I am not an electronic engineer so not saying this is true as I know microprocessors have no moving parts.Not really. It probably means some other Mac is failing at its job which is targeted at the consumer market. If Apple applies a better fix to that this bubble would disappear.
The Mac Pro is largely aimed at a target market where the included hardware adds significant value.
There is a class of folks who don't want to buy what Apple has targeted at their general market. The Mac Pro is a rather poor Mini or iMac alternative. At least new from Apple. Used ones have historically done OK as lower priced "box with slots" but that isn't a direct financial success for Apple. (keeps the resale value up somewhat but with machine lifetime OS upgrades for free now that actually can be a negative drain on Apple finances. )
Depends upon if doing local analysis or your system is primarily just a viewer onto some remote analytic computation services.
One program doing long term "what if" analaysis, which another is handling streams market data , while another is is some trading software along with 1-2 web browsers (**) on different sites could spread load over more than 4 processors. It doesn't have to be just one monster application. It can be several medium-large load ones.
if primarily just need a viewer onto computations done elsewhere then an BTO iMac will work. [ iMac , TB display , TB dock, two Display Port displays . If Apple fixes the quirk of not dangling DP display off TB display even shorter. ]
While the Applications play a role if you aren't doing much local computing with data ( the data is driving the computation load) then won't need much more than 4 cores. The workload drives the need not the application program. The application program that can go 4, 6, and 8 cores is critical component, but it isn't the primary workload driver. A capable application that is given a low amount of work to do isn't going to "light up" 8 cores.
** browser security is generally crappy and putting all your eggs into one basket is bad idea. There is constant stream of security fixes for web browsers.
My point was (based on a couple posts like the OP's) that there seems to be plenty of well-heeled folks out there who don't mind spending $3K on this computer for web surfing, email, iLife and iWork. Sure, it might cannibalize some sales from the Mini or iMac but that's probably fine with Apple given the margins on this thing. And, if this comes to pass, then this computer will be a financial success.
That is crack piple dream. If this was just a huge and significant market Apple would have never stopped making Mac Pros. They did. That is extremely likely because not enough folks were buying them.
These folks are incremental "gravy" revenues. They happen to buy Mac Pros even though Apple isn't targeting them. Is Apple going to turn away their money? No. Are they critical the fundamental success of the Mac Pro? Again likely not.
Cannibalization here this specific context nonsensical use of the term. If folks are in the "money to burn" market they probably weren't going to buy a Mini or iMac either. They would buy some bling bling gold plated system that was equally expensive. The system is being bought for show "Oh look I can make it 'rain' on the system vendor's pocketbook'.
The Mac mini is not in any way shape or form targeted at folks who want to blow a large wad of money on horsepower they don't need. Primarily because it doesn't blow alot of money.
The members of most targeted markets have very real budgets. There are a relative very small group of folks to wander budget free but they are actually in substantively different markets.
The cheaper Mac Pro that someone buys instead of an iMac /mini that is cannibalization.
The margin percentage across the Mac line up is about the same. It doesn't matter much which targeted markets buy as long as they do.
If look at the Apple product hall of shame 20th century Mac , Cube , etc. they are generally appeals to the bling, bling buyers. That approach isn't align with real great products. Great products add value by soving significant problems. Wanting to blow the discretion cash budget isn't a big problem. Blowing money is easy.
Well, it's pretty obvious that computing power is higher in a 6-core machine compared to a 4-core one. So yes, hyperthreading DOES make a difference with more cores as long as apps/OSs are optimized for it.
Probably mentioned but its worth mentioning certain times clock speed is better than core count...For example I would rather have a 4.4GHz 6-core than a 1.9GHz 12-core (assuming same CPU architecture)....for something like Handbrake high clock speed might prevale over core count (within reason), pretty extreme examples I gave but you can do the math with the new nMP's CPU's 12 core option being one processor and only being 2.7GHz while the 6-core is 3.5GHz. Again for day trading I doubt you'll even need the baseline 4-core 3.7GHz but just something more to bite on.
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