[herbsman]

knowing that most applications aren't optimized for multiple cores, which computer would be faster in today's real-world? a mac pro with 8 cores running at 2.66 or a mac pro with 4 cores running at 3.0.

on paper, i'm assuming that the octo mac pro would be more powerful in raw performance because it's has the double the amount of cores. if an application only utilizes 1 core, wouldn't the quad 3.0 be a faster machine than octo 2.66 by clockspeed alone? i even remember reading an article about this subject somewhere off the net.

[iMacfan]

AFAIK, Ultimately it is the combination of many factors, including cache, memory bandwidth, how many threads the application uses etc... Probably the best thing to do is to look at the options and how they deal with the most demanding task you need when you are ready to buy. Theory rarely matches reality precisely.

David

[tooki]

In fact, for most applications, the increase in number of cores does not provide a linear improvement in performance. For the average user, two cores improves performance significantly (but not double), but beyond two, the improvement is small, as is visible with the everyday application performance of the quad-CPU machines. Eight CPUs is likely to be entirely wasted on the average application.

Only highly CPU-intensive apps that are carefully and thoroughly multi-threaded can truly make a 4- or 8-CPU machine flex its muscles.

tooki

[Tuoder]

The current major advantage of having a shedload of cores is multitasking. I am willing to bet, however that alot of apps are going to become very multithreaded pretty soon.

[seanc]

Are 8 core Mac Pros coming out?

[Todd Madson]

Face it - where multiple processors/cores were once the domain of the specialized,
it is going to be standard on every computer in the future, the more expensive ones
the larger cores/bigger front side buses and caches.

But unless software and operating systems are written to take advantage of the
additional cores you'll have a lot of wasted capability in some ways.

But I'd count on this capability being used to its fullest going forward - it's just
now seemingly coming into wide commercial acceptance.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by seanc 

Are 8 core Mac Pros coming out?

You don't keep up on the news do you?

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2176

[Catfish_Man]

In general, any particular facet of performance will have diminishing returns as you increase it. Going from 2GHz to 4GHz without cutting memory latency in half will result in more cycles idling waiting for data, for example, so you won't get the full 2x improvement. More cores are harder to adapt to than faster clocks though, which is why the focus has been on clock frequency and IPC for so long; now that that's run out, people are having to turn to TLP (thread-level parallelism).

[seanc]

Yes I read the article where Anandtech put 8 cores in a Mac Pro, but I missed the 1 day old Apple Insider rumour.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by seanc 

but I missed the 1 day old Apple Insider rumour.

My point was we've known for months now that Intel is producing a 4-core Xeon codenamed Clovertown ( Intel shows off its quad core | CNET News.com ) and that they are releasing it sometime in November (December?). It stands to reason it's going to be in the Mac Pro soon after that. The AppleInsider article just adds more credit to that rumor.

[seanc]

Ok ok. I read 'octo' wrong. I took octo for October meaning that a new Mac Pro was coming out this month whereas I thought and still think they're most likely coming out at MWSF in January.