8 or 4 cores are brilliant for running complex scripts in the background or just apps that need loads of power and can be threaded fairly easily. Some examples:
- Running an action in Photoshop while working in another app, like Coda etc. The OS will spread itself well over all cores, Photoshop will use at least two and that way you'll usually have 1 or 2 only doing OS type things, meaning Coda is nice and snappy.
- Logic Pro. Logic uses all cores pretty well due to the nature of audio plugins.
- Final Cut, or 3D apps. These really, really punish even the fastest computers and tend to use multiple cores well due to the nature of processing.
- Servers. Servers by their very nature have to do lots of very small tasks for each request from a user. Multiple users = makes great use of lots of cores.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRobbo
Also what is the point of 16GB of RAM in a Mac Pro?
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If you're working with large datasets like in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) then you need as much RAM as you can get. I have a friend who does this and he seems to think that 8GB isn't really enough... 16GB is required.
I find 4GB pretty good for what I do, but buying 8GB doesn't seem crazy at all. I only have 1.5GB free at the moment and don't have many apps open.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lachie
dont forget about Moores law. generally he's spot on, and if thats the case things like 512 bit CPUs are only about 5 years away. although some how that seems rediculous, its plausable.
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Doesn't Moore's Law relate to transistor count, not bit width? The practical uses for 128, 256 and 215 bit CPUs are very limited. It's taken ages to go from 32 to 64 bit for that very reason (64 bit isn't that useful, except for the amount of memory it can address).
I think we will see more cores though. 8 or 16 core single CPUs for laptops probably aren't that far off.
6th September 2008, 06:33 PM
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