I need MAC-HEAD ADVICE!
Ok here's the deal!
I bought a Core2Duo iMac - 2.66ghz, 20", 4gb ram, 500gb HD.
I got it in October.
Now I hear they might have quadcore iMacs in January!??!?!?!
How reliable is this info? Should I sell the thing now and eat the cost and buy a quadcore in January, or will the speed increase not be that significant?
I need REASONABLE advice from you guys because I know you're informed on this stuff.
THANKS!
Dan
I bought a Core2Duo iMac - 2.66ghz, 20", 4gb ram, 500gb HD.
I got it in October.
Now I hear they might have quadcore iMacs in January!??!?!?!
How reliable is this info? Should I sell the thing now and eat the cost and buy a quadcore in January, or will the speed increase not be that significant?
I need REASONABLE advice from you guys because I know you're informed on this stuff.
THANKS!
Dan
Comments
How do you use your iMac?
I do record audio with Logic Pro since I'm a professional musician, but while I'm recording I'm usually only running instant messenger, skype and MAYBE firefox in the background....I know I might not NEED 4 cores, but I feel like snow leopard is geared toward that....what do you think? I do watch some HD movies and tv shows on quicktime as well.
Now, technically, the benchmarks would probably be better on the (unreleased) new quadcores, but you wouldn't notice it day-to-day with what you proposed. Now... if you get into VIDEO editing... well... by the time you get there, the 80-core chips will be "almost" available
The only difference is, those ugly machines are upgradeable... you can get a new processor or GPU without replacing the entire machine... of course, there's always the Mac Pro....
I do record audio with Logic Pro since I'm a professional musician, but while I'm recording I'm usually only running instant messenger, skype and MAYBE firefox in the background....I know I might not NEED 4 cores, but I feel like snow leopard is geared toward that....what do you think? I do watch some HD movies and tv shows on quicktime as well.
Those cores you currently have aren't being truly utilized until OS X 10.6. When that happens you'll still enjoy your investment today instead of panicking and wanting to sell it just to have the latest iMac.
More to the point, until your 3rd Party applications are Multi-core optimized with OpenCL and GrandCentral you will have to wait to truly exploit the latent power in your system, or all other Apple multi-core systems already in use.
Those cores you currently have aren't being truly utilized until OS X 10.6. When that happens you'll still enjoy your investment today instead of panicking and wanting to sell it just to have the latest iMac.
What? You don't have to wait for 10.6 to "truly utilize" 2 cores or 4 cores in a Mac.
What? You don't have to wait for 10.6 to "truly utilize" 2 cores or 4 cores in a Mac.
explain. I was under the impression that programs and/or an OS could optimize the use of multiple cores by telling the program how to do so. If programs haven't been programmed to utilize the cores, nor has the OS, how can you fully utilize the cores? Won't snow leopard be more efficient in this regard, and four cores will eventually be much faster?
... If programs haven't been programmed to utilize the cores, nor has the OS, how can you fully utilize the cores? ..
Nonsense. Launch the Terminal and type "top." You will see a list of numerous tasks running simultaneously. Your applications will be represented by one of more of these tasks. The OS can automatically distribute tasks among the available cores. Without a doubt, an application that is optimized for multiple cores will have an advantage over a similar application that is not. However, every application will benefit from the availability of multiple cores.
explain. I was under the impression that programs and/or an OS could optimize the use of multiple cores by telling the program how to do so. If programs haven't been programmed to utilize the cores, nor has the OS, how can you fully utilize the cores? Won't snow leopard be more efficient in this regard, and four cores will eventually be much faster?
Programs create anywhere from one thread to many threads, which the OS then assigns to whatever processor cores are available. Every modern OS does this, OS X, Linux, Windows, etc. The number of threads a program creates depends on how it was written, but an OS can't make a single threaded program run on more than one core, for example.
Snow Leopard will have a new scheduler (the part of the that assigns threads to cores), but OS X currently has no problem (that I'm aware of) using at least 8 cores, and I'm sure it could handle many more if such a Mac existed. There's always room for improvement in these things, but don't expect something dramatic.