Mac Pro?

[faint545]

I recently go into a discussion about the Mac Pro. Taking a glance at the capabilities the Mac Pro has, is a bit astonishing to me, for a desktop. Being able to support two quad core Intel processors sounds powerful (which is just the beginning), but my buddy was suggesting that although having two quad core is a lot, most of the power wont be used mainly because "a computer is only as fast as it's slowest part." I'm not sure if I really understand or agree to that statement.. Would anyone like to comment on this?

[flanzig1]

How fast a PC or a MAC runs wouldn't be a factor as to how many CPU cores it has. It would be more of that of the various components are matched such as the motherboard to the CPU FSB and the same for ram. If a particular app can use multi-core CPUs, then yes the computer will do a task in shorter time. More ram can affect the amount of time a particular task done in. So, a blanket statement like that needs some qualifiers in it.

[faint545]

so, you're saying is that rather than having one component determine the speed of the PC, it's a collaboration of all components, right?.. what confused me was.. if a computer was to be as fast as it's slowest part, then that single part would be the defining factor in just how fast it is. so then any other part wouldn't be able to reach its full potential, even if what you are doing was in it's favor.

[drisley]

I use a Mac Pro daily, and while it is a very fast box, it still dogs when accessing the hard drive. Why? Because the hard drive cannot read or write data NEARLY as quickly as the processor can process it.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by faint545 so, you're saying is that rather than having one component determine the speed of the PC, it's a collaboration of all components, right?.. what confused me was.. if a computer was to be as fast as it's slowest part, then that single part would be the defining factor in just how fast it is. so then any other part wouldn't be able to reach its full potential, even if what you are doing was in it's favor.

Saying a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link is either brilliant, or absurdly simple.

That is to say it all "depends"... It depends on what you do, how you use the system. That's, in a sense, is the weakest link. If you have a powerful box, but only do email or write letters, it doesn't really matter. It's the same with the chain if you don't use the section of chain that has the weak link in it.

OK, my box, for example, has only a single dual core, even when I'm maxing out the CPUs, like rendering a movie, the hard drive light only blinks. I imagine (and hope) that a dual quad core can keep the hard drive(s) a lot busier than that.

That is a bottle neck I would love to have.

It all has to be taken into account: how fast individual components are and what you'll be using it for, not to mention if you even have software that can fully utilize 8 CPUs. Most of my software, again for example, handles only one. The only advantage I get is that I can run more "stuff" without slowing down (as much). You even have to factor in how well you can multi-task to utilize more than a couple of programs. And so on...

My fairly fast system is as only as fast as I can feed it, and I have a hard time (other than rendering movies, and the like) keeping mine "busy."

[tomster2300]

Say you had a 8800 GTX, an AMD 2500+ barton core, and 2 gigs of ram. Theoretically that graphics card and ram combination has the potential to play the latest and greatest games with consistent fps at high resolutions, right? Well, not on that setup, because the processor will become your bottleneck and hinder the power of the card and ram significantly. That's your "weakest link" in the chain, and it will pull down the performance of everything around it.

Windows doesn't utilize multiple cores well, so if you had the same setup, one running OSX / Leopard, one running Windows Vista, you may see better performance on one or the other because of the os's coding / better utilization of hardware. I don't know which one would be the winner, but I do know that Macs are preferred machines in graphic and video design.

[faint545]

I see. Thanks for the clarification!