I need MAC-HEAD ADVICE!

danistypingdanistyping
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
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

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    bbwibbwi Posts: 812member
    How do you use your iMac?
  • Reply 2 of 11
    danistypingdanistyping Posts: 7member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bbwi View Post


    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.
  • Reply 3 of 11
    bbwibbwi Posts: 812member
    Rumors are rumors. If it were me I'd wait until Snow Leopard is actually released. It's hard to believe that Snow Leopard will make the Q1 '09 time frame since the last developer release wasn't feature complete. I might also wait for the next release of Logic as applications themselves need to be tuned to use multiple processors.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    The machine you bought is gonna handle everything you're throwing at it just as easily as a "new" quad core would.



    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
  • Reply 5 of 11
    danistypingdanistyping Posts: 7member
    thanks guys.....i'm probably being ridiculous wanting a quad core. i guess since i decided to go mac so late in the game i feel like i'm missing out on the latest technology and i want my moneys worth. I do love my computer, I'll probably wait two or three years and get whatever the future holds. cheers.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    Hey... the same "next great thing is just around the corner" stuff happens with Windows and Linux PC's as well. You could go buy a top-of-the-line HP and it would be out of date in a couple months.

    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....
  • Reply 7 of 11
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danistyping View Post


    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.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    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.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    danistypingdanistyping Posts: 7member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post


    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?
  • Reply 10 of 11
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danistyping View Post


    ... 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.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danistyping View Post


    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.
Sign In or Register to comment.