Mac Pro :: Having More Cores / Higher Clock Speed?
Apr 20, 2010
Are there any producers or audio engineers out there who have an opinion on which of the new Mac Pros would be best for a DAW using Pro Tools LE? I'm not able to find much information on whether having more cores or a higher clock speed is beneficial.
SMCFanControl lets me set a higher minimum fan speed on my MacBook Pro (I like to keep it at about 3600rpm instead of 2000rpm minimum). Is there a way to do this with the MacBook Air? SMCFanControl doesn't seem to detect the MacBook Air properly. Essentially I want it to run at around 3600rpm and increase to 6200rpm as needed. It should never be running lower than 3600rpm.
Is there something to report current CPU clock speed? (e.g. on laptops, the CPU multiplier and therefore frequency fluctates with load depending on power profile)... does anything report on this low level activity?On Windows, CPU-z is the tool I would use. Anything similar for OS X?
I am trying to get my wireless speakers (Veho Mimi) and my 3.5mm output to work together. I have tried to aggregate the outputs but it says unable to match clock speed.
I Have been agonizing over which Mac Pro would optimize the performance of my Digital Audio Workstations, Pro Tools in particular. Honestly, I have been back and forth with deliberating that now I am burnt out,
I hear Mixed Reviews on the New Nehalem 2.26 GHz Mac Pro Octo. I have also come to believe that 8 Cores Benefit Video More Than Audio, the diagnosis being that 8 Cores Is Overkill for audio. Is Pro Tools A Multi-Threaded App. And What Mac Pro Would Be Best For Audio?
My Macbook is brand new! (Barely 4 months old) Just recently my laptop will flash a black screen. It starts from the bottom and quickly flashes up the screen higher and higher each flash! i have read on some other pages it is a bad inverter on the inner core of the Macbook. Other than that I do not know what to do!
People that use lightroom, can you look at your CPU usage for all 4/8 cores and tell me what the usage is when your importing/searching/doing whatever and if there is any point in me getting 8 instead of 4 cores (Save myself �300 and get 8gb ram vs 4Gb!)
System will be on 300Gb Velociraptor and data on a 1TB Samsung F1, so lets say IO won't be that bottlenecked.
I used to have an Apple application that sat in the menu bar. It gave you the option to select how many processors/cores you wanted to utilize. You could turn off the others.
Does anyone know what's it called and where to find it?
Which, if any, of the video editors make use of all eight cores of the Mac Pro? I haven't tried the pro apps yet, but CPU utilization for iMovieHD was only about 200% on the one project I have done on my new 2.8 Octo. It seems like this would be widely-known information, but I was unable to find it on Apple's site, and my extensive search of this forum was unavailing.
Are the incremental steps in processor options worth it? are they significant enough to notice performance increases? especially heavy files in photoshop
Also is the 8800 GT worth getting over the 2600 XT. and can one have two 8800's (or is that too much power draw). I am assuming you can have one of each (1x 8800 + 1x 2600) so you can run 3 spanning 30's. Any drawbacks in have spanning screens with different spec cards?
The Sandy Bridge version of MacbookPro's isn't likely to use the quad core version but instead a dual core version with hyper-threading much like the existing lineup offers.According to current Sandy Bridge listings:
[URL]Sandy_B...ile_processors the quad core Sandy Bridge mobile CPU is 45W TDP while the current i7 processor used in MBPs today is only 35W.
Due to size constraints and Apple's push to have 8+ hours of battery life they will be incapable of continuing to offering 8 or more battery hours if the switch to Sandy Bridge 45W quad cores is chosen.
The current 35W offering of Sandy Bridge is only a dual core with hyper-threading. There's still expected to be some improvement in performance as early benchmarks by Anandtech are showing a 10-30% performance boost per core on the desktop variants.
MBP 13" and regular Macbooks should see the switch to Sandy Bridge dual cores due the the integrated IntelHD 200 graphics(which appears to be on par with an ATI 5450) eliminating the need for a discreet Nvidia 320M in lower end models.
When I export a QT video in Final Cut Pro, I look at iStat and my CPU usage is total around 25%, with that usage being spread evenly through the cores. Is there a way to get it to take absolute full advantage of the processors, or is it doing its best job?
I'm looking at replacing my ancient G5 tower with a new Mac Pro, and looking at the options, obviously I have to decide between the single CPU quad-core or the 2 CPU "eight-core" solution.
Perhaps my Google skills are fail today, but I can't find anything there or on Microsoft's site about whether the Windows 7 Home editions retain the just-one-processor (with however many cores) rule. Anyone know if I'll be able to access all eight cores on my Mac Pro with Win 7 Home Premium?
I am in the market for a Mac Pro for all my FCP editing. I found a guy who can get me a great deal on a brand new 8 core 2.8GHz Mac Pro, but it is the older version before the "Nehalem" chips.
This computer will be right around the same price as purchasing a brand new quad core 2.93GHz Nehalem Mac Pro.
So what I need to figure out is, what is more important, more cores, or faster newer processor?
I have seen some images posted of the cores being monitored to show their usage but I don't know what people use to see this activity. Are there any free apps that you can install on the Mac Pro to monitor usage of the cores?
Just got a Mac Pro with a single 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Xeon (Nehalem) and it's all working fine, but I'm wondering why this 4-core machine shows 8 cores in Activity Monitor - 8 columns in both the floating CPU windows.
I'm sure the answer's obvious, but it's late in the evening and I did search around the forum threads a little bit before posting.
Just got my i7 iMac the other day. Not all apps use all cores (as expected), but I'm interested to understand this one. Export MPEG2 (TS stream) from EyeTv to AppleTv format (I think it uses quicktime but can't tell).
Check out the pic. Now there are 4 real cores, but OSX is showing the 8 virtual cores. Anyway, given there are 4 cores, what does it imply to have around 50% total utilisation? Two threads? Four threads?
I notice that BOINC (einstein@home) only gets up to total utilisation when its running 8 threads. Does this mean that EyeTv (quicktime) is asking for number of cores and then creating that many threads? EyeTv is only showing one line time in Activity Monitor at around 400%.
Can these utilisation graphs actually be trusted when the 8 cores are virtual?
Sorry for the title but I couldn't think of anything better. Hopefully I'll be able to explain my problem. I have a MPR 2.53 ghz, 4 gig ram, I'm using Safari 4.04. I am using the WIFI at a guesthouse in Thailand (but I had the same issue in China, Vietnam ...). I ran a speed test and it said download 7mb/sec and upload about 1mb/sec. I have an "app" that says bandwidth in 1.3kb/sec out 1.0kbs. I thought maybe it was Safari so I downloaded and installed Firefox. firefox gives me similar speeds. When I downloaded Firefox though I had a download speed of over 1mb/sec. But as soon as it finished downloading the speed went back to around 1kb/sec. I have rebooted my MBP many times. I did some Google searches but didn't find anything helpful.
I am interested in adding a webcam to my desktop Imac (power pc)- Isight is no longer available- an option that I found is the Ecamm Image- but apparently it is USB and not firewire and it will only run with high speed usb- how do I know which type is on my computer? I checked system profiler but quite frankly wasn't sure of the designations.. does anyone have any experience with this camera, by the way? is USB 2.0 by definition "High Speed"?
I have a WDS local network at my house. I use a Airport Extreme in my main part of the house and a Airport Express for my back part of the house i.e. the backyard. Now every two weeks or so my internet speed through my Airport Express slows down about half the speed but when I am connected trough the Airport Extreme my speed is normal. I know this because I test my connection very often. Now when I want the Airport Express to get back up to speed I have to unplug, and plug it back in. Then after awhile it starts to slow down again in a time period of two weeks or so.
I have a MPR 2.53 ghz, 4 gig ram, I'm using Safari 4.04. I am using the WIFI at a guesthouse in Thailand (but I had the same issue in China, Vietnam ...).
I ran a speed test and it said download 7mb/sec and upload about 1mb/sec. I have an "app" that says bandwidth in 1.3kb/sec out 1.0kbs. I thought maybe it was Safari so I downloaded and installed Firefox. firefox gives me similar speeds. When I downloaded Firefox though I had a download speed of over 1mb/sec. But as soon as it finished downloading the speed went back to around 1kb/sec. I have rebooted my MBP many times. I did some Google searches but didn't find anything helpful.