The Joy of Dual Core

[rumplestiltskin]

I have a dual-CPU 2.0GHz PowerMac G5. The benefits of dual-CPU (and now dual-core) are obvious once you start using such a beastie but only if the OS supports it well and especially if your apps are multi-threaded. Obviously, OSX and most native apps do and are just that. Mac users have experienced this since OSX became available for dual-CPU machines. Now with the dual-core / dual-processor "Quad" G5, it's almost scary.

No, this isn't an ad for Apple; it's just a "welcome to the club" congratulations to the rest of y'all.

Ciao!

[edDV]

I have a dual-CPU 2.0GHz PowerMac G5. The benefits of dual-CPU (and now dual-core) are obvious once you start using such a beastie but only if the OS supports it well and especially if your apps are multi-threaded. Obviously, OSX and most native apps do and are just that. Mac users have experienced this since OSX became available for dual-CPU machines. Now with the dual-core / dual-processor "Quad" G5, it's almost scary.

No, this isn't an ad for Apple; it's just a "welcome to the club" congratulations to the rest of y'all.

Ciao!

Don't be so smug

Multi-CPU multi-thread environments predate Apple by maybe 15-25 years even on Intel by 10+years. Power PC ran out of gas years ago leaving multi-CPU the only power refuge. Intel/AMD have hit the heat dissipation limits. But you are right that silicon is cheap. Ramp up those CPU printers!

[ron spencer]

with my ADVC100 and lowly PIII 866 I never get dropped frames either...go figure

[rumplestiltskin]

I have a dual-CPU 2.0GHz PowerMac G5. The benefits of dual-CPU (and now dual-core) are obvious once you start using such a beastie but only if the OS supports it well and especially if your apps are multi-threaded. Obviously, OSX and most native apps do and are just that. Mac users have experienced this since OSX became available for dual-CPU machines. Now with the dual-core / dual-processor "Quad" G5, it's almost scary.

No, this isn't an ad for Apple; it's just a "welcome to the club" congratulations to the rest of y'all.

Ciao!

Don't be so smug

Multi-CPU multi-thread environments predate Apple by maybe 15-25 years even on Intel by 10+years. Power PC ran out of gas years ago leaving multi-CPU the only power refuge. Intel/AMD have hit the heat dissipation limits. But you are right that silicon is cheap. Ramp up those CPU printers!

A-ha! So Intel is moving to dual-core because of heat whereas PowerPC did it because of..."running out of gas"?? Hmmm. My G5 won't like to be told that while it's doing video encoding on three different apps (concurrently) and burning two dvds (concurrently) - one internally and one via firewire - and surfing the web and running Entourage and Excel and Word and Azureus and file sharing and print sharing. My Shuttle XPC (a fine machine in its own right) chokes on burning a disc when you try to do anything else. Make no mistake about it; Intel is doing multi-core for the same reasons Apple did it.

Have a nice day.

[Denvers Dawgs]

What I use (editing is with TMPGEnc DVD Author, and dvdshrink) mainly for editing dvds, and some Mpeg(tivo files) That is all. Other high powere use programs that I use are photoshop, and that is basically it. If I were to be editing with TMPGEnc, will woring with Photoshop, and also, burning a dvd all at once, would P4 HT be fine for that. I have never done all these at once with my current PC, due to the fact I don't want to create dvd coasters,

My usual usage is mainly editing and possible web/email at one time.

So if I were just to say burn a dvd. Then when finished use photoshop and web, should I just get the P4 to add speed to editing/ & other programs?

[edDV]

My G5 won't like to be told that while it's doing video encoding on three different apps (concurrently) and burning two dvds (concurrently) - one internally and one via firewire - and surfing the web and running Entourage and Excel and Word and Azureus and file sharing and print sharing.

Wow that's one kick ass machine. No reason to ever buy anything more

[edDV]

So if I were just to say burn a dvd. Then when finished use photoshop and web, should I just get the P4 to add speed to editing/ & other programs?

Photshop memory and disk requiremets scale with image size, number of open layers, masks and undos. Calculate enough memory to keep at least 4-8 uncompressed full images active if you are doing serious work. If all you're doing is say 5 Megapixel home photos or HDTV size stills, that translates into about 20MB per uncompressed image or ~160MB for 8 layers so no problem.

If you are working with magazine resolutions at 4000x2000 to 8000x4000 then you may need one or two GB of memory and a RAID to quickly load images. Average users find 500MB-1GB more than adequate memory for Photshop or editing. If you will be doing both at once 1GB to 2 GB of memory is needed.

If you will be loading massive Photshop images at the same time you are capturing video, then you should run separate disk systems. Pros used to run a RAID just for Photoshop scratch files but that is no longer needed. For most people, Photoshop can share the OS drive and a separate drive and disk controller is used for video capture and encoding. Two video drives will work even better for video effects processing and encoding. DVD "burning" takes very little resource as opposed to MPeg encoding.

Now for the processor. Serious processor loading happens when Photshop or editing apply filters or when video is encoding. Each of these processes will peg whatever processor you have to 100% and you will have to wait. The faster your CPU, the less time you will have to wait.

Hardware encoders, video card hardware scalers&decoders and Hyperthreading type function calls all take load off the CPU. Those will all be needed to deal with HDTV MPeg4 in realtime.

http://www.ati.com/products/pdf/H264_Whitepaper.pdf