[Darryl Ramm]

Ah no. You seem to be confusing timeline cache with memory accessible to Pro Tools. As a 32 bit Program Pro Tools 10 and it's plugins can only access 4GB, knock off some for OS specific overhead and you are down to 3GB or so. Pro Tools 11 and it's AAX-64 plugins are 64 bit, a whole different game, and one that was so needed by folks with large sessions.

6 core to 8 cores is one thing but 24 cores across two chips may be a very different scaling regime and there is no way I would just assume any workload kept scaling that far, and I would be cautious about/looking for negative scalability--even if Pro Tools 10 can recognize more cores--if you get it to do so that is just the start of working out if it is helping or hurting your particular workload.

Oh hang on you said dual 8 core? You mean you went from a single 6 core to 2x4=8 or 2x8=16 cores?

It just does not make sense to me that you need this much compute power and are not running out of memory. and you are running memory intensive VIs like Kompkete in that mix as well? And you may be seeing negative scaling where trying to add so many cores just slows things down, you won't know that unless you do careful scaling tests (and that is a different issue/effect than just how an individual plugin scales or does not across cores). Any you might want to be doing things like disabling hyperthreading. At these core/thread counts processor cache contention may be a significant issue--with these SMP/SIMD architectures where memory latency so dominates performance, so you probably want to be careful with simplistic claim that you are "adding raw horsepower". If you want to be a test pilot it is probably best to approach things like that with tests that map out the scaling you are achieving (or not).

And again what exact plugins are you running, how many instances?

But if I was going to do all that work I might be more inclined to at least try it on Pro Tools HD 11. At least there Avid folks are more likely to be able to/interested in helping users push back the bleeding edge of scaling limits.

You have actually checked that the plugins you are using require a purchased upgrade from RTAS to AAX-64? and that would cost $5k?

Darryl