Dual processor support coming soon????

[crs117]

Intel is currently releasing their newest processor the p4 3.06 ghz processor. Whats specail about this??? Well its the first processor that boasts the much hyped hyper threading technology. Why is this important??? Well a single processor now runs like a dual processor. Well why does this mean that dual processor support must be coming soon. Well when hyperthreading is enabled the motherboard actually sees the single processor as 2 seperate processors. So if the hardware sees 2 processors then the software will have to work with dual processors.

As of right now if you have a dual processor motherbaord system and install the second processor, pt will crash upon opening. It will not even load, just a lockup.

Well knowing the power hungry users out there in a couple of weeks folks will be ordering the latest dells and gateways with the latest p4 technology, expecting top performance from Pt. Digi knows this, has been expecting this, and must have something up their sleeve to take care of the situation, otherwise a lot of folks are going to spend a lot of money on a pt setup only to be sorely disappointed.

Hyper threading can be turned off in the bios, but as far as i can tell many folks here dont want to change any critical settings like this in their bios.

Anyway, I am expecting digi to release a dual proc supported version of pt fairly soon. With the current tech race p4 3.06 ghz processors(with hyper threading) will be old news in a month and a half.

Christian

[crs117]

Well i'm an optimist, and well...not to release mp support would seem kinda foolish. I mean are they going to choose to not support the latest p4's???

I dont think they are not release mp support because they want to, but because there are some issues that they didnt foresee when developing for xp. At the very least, the next pc version of PT is going to almost have to support multiple processors, or else they will start to lose this market which in the past year they have spent so much money, time, and work gaining ground.

Christian

[QuikDraw]

You're truely an optimist Christian!

[img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Mike

[Phil O'Keefe]

Well, I hope you're right, but I doubt we'll see anything before spring. Here's my thoughts on the possible reasons why:

Digidesign has announced PT 6 for the Mac (OS X) and that's the #1 pressing priority for them at the moment since new Macs will not run anything but OS X as of 01/01/03. This ties in with your "losing market share" argument. The Macs have the upper hand as far as the number of PT systems installed out there. Digidesign can't afford to wait TOO long after the new year to support this new OS or those who buy a new Mac will not be able to use their Digidesign hardware with it.

OS X is a dual processing OS - it's built in. So is XP Pro, but Digidesign hasn't been able to (or willing to?) make that work yet. Still, dual CPU support in OS X is likely, and hopefully that means it may well come to a PC near you in the future. But again, I'd guess that the vast majority of Digidesign's development resources are currently being allocated to the Mac side of things, and then they'll shift back to PC's to get us "our version" of PT 6. Again, they said that should probably come out sometime in the spring - at least that was the last I heard.

We just got a new version not all that long ago, and then they had to do the Digi 002 version on top of that (same basic software, different drivers - no small task). And since a major upgrade has been announced, I'd say the chances are better that they'll add dual CPU support to that version instead of trying to rush an interm version out AND try to juggle everything else simultaneously.

Of course, I could be way off on all of this... [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[David Fisher]

Hmm, I know that Digi has limited resources, but at the same time- other professional companies can keep up with releasing Mac/Windows stuff at the same time, or damn close to.

Ever used Adobe software? Sure, most of it's run on Macs, but have you ever seen a major feature not be released on PC almost the minute it's released on Mac? With the cost of PT being from 700-13000 USD, vs Photoshop retailing around 500, I would think that we would be able to have the same parity like Adobe has. (Anyone else notice that Photoshop supports multiple processors on Mac and PC). Also that little gaming company ID software, with John Romereo at the head has produced some games like... Quake 3, that have DP support, work on PC/Mac/Linux... Obviously the sames sell alot more copies, but they are $50 dollars (what Digi normally wants for an upgrade). If Quake was 10,000 dollars- then I would definately expect DP support, but it's $50 and just a nice feature...

Ever used any High end 3d software? It's about the same cost as Digi stuff, and often has scripting support, render farm support, large open plugin bases, and multiple processor support.

I have been waiting for Dual processor support ever since I bought a DP mobo about 2 or 3 years ago. Now the board is outdated, having never been used for Dual Processors. I don't mean to bash Digi. They develop the hardware, as well as the software, but at the same time, we pay our hard worked money for the proprietary hardware and software, whereas there's other companies like MOTU that do the same thing, and are cheaper. Why do most of us use PT then? Because it's such a 'Standard'. If I do something in Cubase, what's the chance that a studio will have Cubase as their main system? Logic? Digital Performer? nope. So we pay a ton for it, and get less.

Ok, that's my trolling and flamebaiting for the week. See you next week [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] (I feel much better now)

[nukmusic]

so that's well Mac went to all dual processors......lol [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I think you can enable/disable the hyperthreading featuring in XP.

[el matador]

SORRY TO SAY, it wont work. The Dual processor like performance will only be noticed when running different processes. e.g. wavelab encoding at same time as playing a game or video playback. It wont make a difference on using protools alone. The plugins don't create new processes in the task manager.

Otherwise is does perform like a normal single 3ghz processor, which is still very good.

[crs117]

Originally posted by Phil O'Keefe:
Well, I hope you're right, but I doubt we'll see anything before spring. Here's my thoughts on the possible reasons why:

Digidesign has announced PT 6 for the Mac (OS X) and that's the #1 pressing priority for them at the moment since new Macs will not run anything but OS X as of 01/01/03. This ties in with your "losing market share" argument. The Macs have the upper hand as far as the number of PT systems installed out there. Digidesign can't afford to wait TOO long after the new year to support this new OS or those who buy a new Mac will not be able to use their Digidesign hardware with it.

OS X is a dual processing OS - it's built in. So is XP Pro, but Digidesign hasn't been able to (or willing to?) make that work yet. Still, dual CPU support in OS X is likely, and hopefully that means it may well come to a PC near you in the future. But again, I'd guess that the vast majority of Digidesign's development resources are currently being allocated to the Mac side of things, and then they'll shift back to PC's to get us "our version" of PT 6. Again, they said that should probably come out sometime in the spring - at least that was the last I heard.

We just got a new version not all that long ago, and then they had to do the Digi 002 version on top of that (same basic software, different drivers - no small task). And since a major upgrade has been announced, I'd say the chances are better that they'll add dual CPU support to that version instead of trying to rush an interm version out AND try to juggle everything else simultaneously.

Of course, I could be way off on all of this... [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Phil,

i dont know, but do you think that there is a single group of programmers. As of lately it seems as though there are seperate mac and pc programmers. I still know they're busy with m-box software though. I'm just thinking that digi is not gonna want to update their hardware docs to say that p4's up to 2.8 ghz are compatable. Looks kinda bad.

Christian

[Phil O'Keefe]

You guys are probably right - at least I hope you are...

And I'd agree that it does seem like there's two different development teams... one Mac, one PC. Which makes sense... but things still take time. MBox, ASIO, PT 6 Win, making plug ins HD compatable, etc. etc. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]