GOT CORES? How many is Too many?

I've read about 32, 64 and even 100 cores.
 
Sonar's Perforance Module supports up to 32 cores according to the Help file.
 
Anyone got 32?

My current machine is five years old in a couple of months, and I'm still perfectly happy with it. Along the way, I've gone from 4gb memory to 8gb, swapped the dual core processor for a quad core, and got an SSD for the C drive. That more or less maxes out what the motherboard will support. I'm not even going to think about a new machine until I run into an actual performance issue on a real-life project. The geek part of my brain would love to have a 32 core machine just for the sheer WOW of it, but when I think about the money involved, that's a whole lot of bass trapping and microphones and what have you.

Are we talking digital or analog cores?

I think it makes a HUGE difference.

Steam cores are good for that Motown sound.

Or keeping you warm in the woods whilst you make organic music.

Mebee we can get a film crew out there with the digital lenses, to document the whole shebang?

The Coors?  Irish band right? Combine pop music and Irish folk into a melange of soothing melodies.  Could be the beer as well, but never liked it too much, a little watery for my tastes.

But seriously, Sonar runs pretty well on my dual core laptop as my secondary system - it was a "desktop replacement" spec laptop at the time of purchase so it's got dual hard drives, dedicated video (none of that shared stuff going on here) and 4 GB of RAM.  

But I do wonder whats the point of diminishing returns with current technology and current DAW needs - when are you just tossing money away just to get very little benefit anymore.  I'm sure all needs are individual and no one answer fits all, but currently, most bang for the buck I guess.

If you have more cores than I do then you have to many!

It depends on what you're doing. Remember the windows limitations. 32 bit-64 bit, ram limits, and most of all motherboard and system design. Redundant computers can emulate multiple cores on a single machine. That's basically what you're trying to acheive. A processor for each task, each track?, each function, each buss? Your computer will only use what it needs in terms of hardware. You can instruct it to do more to the original task but then you are creating a virtual image of the original task. Do you have 32 original tasks for your DAW to perform that require a processor and bussing system with no scheduling through a central hardware structure? It's really quite a big question.

I'm currently expecting to get a whole new machine in maybe 2-3 years, by which time people will (hopefully) be making stuff specifically for 8-16 core machines. Right now, the market is too small-to-non-existent for anyone to make commercial apps that require that kind of juice.

My computer has about 24 cores right now. I think I have to clean the puter out though. All those apple cores are starting to smell and affecting the performance of my puter.

John


There's your problem right there. You put Apple cores in it. You should have use peach cores that way you would be PC.

 
"Apple core!"
 
"Who's your friend?" 

spl...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Of course I only have one core... the ACME thuper tholid thtate tamper rethithtant nuclear fushun modulator reactor core, that is!... So thtand back compadres. There's bound to be an earth shattering boom when I fire this thing up!

At least Sonar seems to make use of all the cores[8 virtual on the yellow performance meter for me],I just read a horrendous scenario on GS,where in Pro Tools a guy had to allocate only 2 out of 8[mac Pro 8 real cores-2 processors]or the program and the computer would constantly crash!

Others then chimed in saying it was a common problem!

I would be very peeved,after spending the insane money for those 2, A brands, and find it's a common problem!

Once people/Daw builders get hold of 2x E5 2600 series Sandy Bridge Xeon CPU's that will be 16 real cores,32 virtual,and Intel said at the release it looks like its not going to stop there!

That,in the not too distant future 100 cores may not be out of the question.[no exclamation on that one]  

Here's the Help file screen shot:
 

 
This picture has to be for illustrative purposes only. My 4 core 8 thread shows 8 lines that never reach 50% so for a 32 core to have several cores reaching near 100% means their project must have at least a 1000 tracks of audio loaded to the gills with vst's and who knows what else.
 
And the low disk activity means its a pretty hefty sized disk.
 
The computer probably melted down after this screen shot was taken.