Dual core and dual processingmachines

Chewie

Chewie

New member
Recently I've become really interested in dual core and dual processor machines. However I'm wondering how useful this will be with the software I use. Right now I use Sound Forge, Acid Pro and Adobe Audition (Cool Edit). Do these programs take advantage of dual machines and if not, what software does?
 
Chewie said:
Recently I've become really interested in dual core and dual processor machines. However I'm wondering how useful this will be with the software I use. Right now I use Sound Forge, Acid Pro and Adobe Audition (Cool Edit). Do these programs take advantage of dual machines and if not, what software does?
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Nope...

Uhmmm unless you have a Mac Uhmmm lets see here Windows Based...

Photoshop. :D

Not worth the investment man unless your planning on running a server or some shit.
 
bigwillz24 said:
Nope...

Uhmmm unless you have a Mac Uhmmm lets see here Windows Based...

Photoshop. :D

Not worth the investment man unless your planning on running a server or some shit.
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Sonar also takes advantage of dual processors. And it is worth the investment; considering the massive push to dual core by AMD and Intel, everyone will begin making their apps dual processor capable. Unless they choose not to evolve with the technology.
 
bigwillz24 said:
I stand corrected but I still dont see the need in a "home audio" based computer emphasis on home :p ...
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XP Pro takes advantage of dual processors which means it can handle multiple programs or processes running together (even in the background) more efficiently.

Dual Processor/Core systems have univeral benefits to any app if the OS supports it. In the case of a DAW, this means one processor could manage USB traffic (the USB protocol is more CPU dependant) while the other runs your DAW app.
 
CEP doens't take much advantage of dual cpu's, only some effects do. Sonar and Nuendo take full advantage of dual cpu machines. Don't know about the others.

Mac's...aren't that some kind of computers that need dual cpu just to keep up with the rest of the world????
 
Polaris20 said:
Sonar also takes advantage of dual processors. And it is worth the investment; considering the massive push to dual core by AMD and Intel, everyone will begin making their apps dual processor capable. Unless they choose not to evolve with the technology.
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Did not know Sonar was dual capable, thanks for the info. What version did that start with? I have Sonar 3 PE.
 
Opteron

Well I'm thinking of selling a kidney and building a dual processing machine comprising two Opteron dual core processors. Hopfully a gig of RAM, and whatever SATA drive I can afford after this.
Any comments of the fesability of this given the current software out there. Especially Adobe Audition and Acid Pro in my case.
 
I've been running dual processors in my DAW for the last five years - never had any problems using the full potential of both CPUs.

Pretty much any multitrack software will benefit from multiple processors - this is because each instance of each plug-in runs on its own thread - so the load from effects processing - which is where processing power is primarily used in audio - naturally gets balanced between multiple processors. I believe this is the case whether or not the core multitrack software is itself multithreaded.

Windows XP Pro, 2000 pro, and NT all support multiple processors. If you run more than one program at a time, it will naturally take advantage of all your processors. In some cases, cpu intensive programs - say some kind of video encoder - will be written with a single thread, and won't be able to take advantage of multiple processors. These days, most of the good quality, CPU intensive software is multi-threaded.

So basically, dual core is great. Even better is dual dual-cores.
 
AMD just said they'll be coming out with dual-cores by the end of the month. I don't when they'll get to retail, but I imagine May or June.
 
I converted to Mac and dual 4 days ago. Wow what a change.
My current project holds tons of stereo audio tracks, 80+ realtime plugins (some of them really demanding) and a multitude of software instruments from Logic Pro. When all this is running, my processor workload bar stretches up to 30%. I was running a lousy PC earlier this week. It hung after 5 plugins.
I really can´t say enough good words about this platform. Go dual. Either way.
 
it's not fair to compare a 2nd rate PC to a top of the line mac. A good dual cpu PC can give the same performance. With dual-cores coming out, PCs will have a clear upperhand. Of course, dual core for Mac isn't far away either.
 
Upperhand? :rolleyes:
Take a peak at the test of plugins a tad down on this page
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
Tiger OS for Mac is around the bend and it will utilize the 64-bit Mac´s to the fullest. The race continues ;)
If Logic Pro was available on PC I might have stayed on that platform. But to get it I had to go Mac. No regrets, allthough my two PC´s is still doing their job.
 
Emusic said:
Upperhand? :rolleyes:
Take a peak at the test of plugins a tad down on this page
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
Tiger OS for Mac is around the bend and it will utilize the 64-bit Mac´s to the fullest. The race continues ;)
If Logic Pro was available on PC I might have stayed on that platform. But to get it I had to go Mac. No regrets, allthough my two PC´s is still doing their job.
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Uh, please don't tell me you believe benchmarks from Apple. :rolleyes:

Don't you think they would be a little biased? They have been caught "fudging" bnchmarks before.
 
Lol. My own benchmarks even surpasses those. Just go try a Mac with Logic and you´ll se what I mean. I´m outta this one. Later :rolleyes:
 
Lol. My own benchmarks even surpasses those. Just go try a Mac with Logic and you´ll se what I mean. I´m outta this one. Later
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you can't benchmark a top of the line mac against a crap PC.

I have a dual 2.2 GHz opteron setup w/ 1gb ram. Do you want to do some comparative plugin benchmarking between our two DAWs? Say with RVerb or some other cpu intensive plugin that's available on both platforms.

It wouldn't be super accurate cause the plugins may be optimized differently for the different platforms, but it would give a ballpark comparison.

Tiger OS for Mac is around the bend and it will utilize the 64-bit Mac´s to the fullest.
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64 bit windows was just released. It's available through oems
 
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