8 core MacPro--real world experience now

[Frodo]

I am just saying that in a Game , the 3D hardware of the video cards is unlaoding the CPU for the video 3D demanding tasks .
For the rest of the softwares , we do not use th 3D video card hardware at all I suppose .....So it is totally different ....

In my recolection , 2D video hardware is different as 3D video hardware .

In our daw ( DP ) we use only 2D video hardware I think ....[/qu

I hope Apple will publish audio benchmarks with their new Logic "8"


Aramis

Yes, it is different-- but it's all we have at the moment. It's up to us to filter through the info for whatever data is applicable and to discard the rest.

And when/if Apple does release 'Logic 8' benchmarks (as will a hoard of Logic users besides), it will bring us closer to the answers we all seek. Even further, it will perhaps be quite revealing to see the results of "the best Apple has to offer". No doubt, Apple will tweak and optimize the next version of Logic for the best CPU they have, and such test results will be quite revealing coming from the software company who also delivers the hardware.

Apple is demonstrating Final Cut Pro 2 next month, so perhaps a new Logic Pro is not far away.

[acro]

Do you suppose you could run two or three instances of Digital Performer? Since one instance can't use all that processing power, maybe two or three can. Publishing their ports internally may not be so easy, though. Maybe Rewire or Jack Tools, or SoundFlower. You could rename each instance of DP to something like "Digital Performer .1" "Digital Performer .2"

This is an interesting proposition --

1) Somehow I don't think renaming DP would work, as the different instantiations would still share the same preference files.

2) However there's an opportunity to try running different hosts -- DP and Logic and AULab, for example -- on the same machine.

Come to think of it, Logic seems to have too many idiosyncracies to extract reason out of any outcome, so maybe just DP and AULab via SoundFlower would be a better test.

Only if I had a MacPro to do the test myself!

[Gabe S.]

I've considered running Kontakt2 in standalone mode and seeing how the computer responds to that setup but honestly, at the moment, I don't feel any pinch that makes it necessary to try that...and it's always a pain to be saving multiple apps in a single computer for one song....if I can do what I need to all inside DP, then I'll go that direction and not worry that I'm not slamming the computer as hard as I can. If I run out of power, then I'll consider other ways to work in the box, but that doesn;t seem likely at the moment.

And I'll mention this again.....the Altiverb test may not have had any direct real-world signifcance, but it did demonstrate one thing------it IS possible for DP to recognize all the power in the 8 cores. Whether it can actually use it in an intelligent way is another story.......

By the way, I'm running into a problem where I can't drag a MIDI clipping onto the tracks window on the 8core.....it crashes dp 100% of the time. Even with a simple session with only one MIDI track, it crashes every time. I'm at the NAB show right now and MOTU has a booth here....I talked to one of the tech guys, but he had not heard of this issue.

And my multiple-MIDI-devices-showing-up-in-dp's-device-list issue is back. When I go to select a MIDI device in dp, I see two listings of every device created in Audio MIDI setup......the solution is to make the setup again.....argh...what a pain.....I think I need to make a backup of a healthy AudioMidi Setup and see if that can help as a workaround....and my hard drives continue to mysteriously go invisible.....ah the price of progess.....

The Digi guys are getting closer with their new sampler.....an interesting note about their sampler.....it's only RTAS.....meaning, even if you have a massive PT HD rig, you'll still be running this sampler as a native plugin....hmmmmm.....They were saying it has 512 note polyphony and "works with Giga patches"...when I asked if that was 512 stereo or mono notes, the person did not know. They said there's a public beta of it.

Apple's booth is huuuuuuuuge and it's buzzing....Final Cut Studio 2 has everyone running around giddy... The new versions really do look nice...so many awesome things in that bundle....Adobe is also buzzing with CS3.....there's lots of excitement at this show....lots of new stuff to see.

Now I see why Apple put out these 8cores and started shipping them so fast.....they wanted to have them at this show to show off all the cool new stuff!

Cheers.
-gabe

[dix]

Apple's booth is huuuuuuuuge and it's buzzing....Final Cut Studio 2 has everyone running around giddy... The new versions really do look nice...so many awesome things in that bundle....Adobe is also buzzing with CS3.....there's lots of excitement at this show....lots of new stuff to see.

I doubt MOTU will give you any insight as to how exactly DP is/will parse the workload to the 8 processors, but I'd be interested in how FCS2 is coded in this regard. One would think it would take full advantage of this new architecture.