Pro Tools only recognizing 4 out of 16 processors *HELP*

[Noahboi808]

So I've been running PT9 on my macbook pro that only has 4 processors. I just bought an iMac with 2.7GHz I5 16Gb of Ram. I did a time machine backup of my macbook pro, then did a migration assistant onto the iMac. I open up ProTools and still only see 4 processors available, when I should be seeing 16?. I read some things in the forum saying to do a clean uninstall of ProTools and reinstall, but I've done that several times, and nothing has worked! I'm so confused as to what is the problem??

Any help greatly appreciated! :)

thanks

[albee1952]

Why do you think a quad processor should show 16 cores in Pro Tools? A hyperthreaded cpu like the i7 will show 8 cores(for a quad), but the i5 is not hyperthreaded and should only show 4 cores under any circumstance. Or are you confusing the question and you meant GB of RAM, since you have 16 installed? If you really have 16GB installed but the system only sees 4GB, then you certainly have a RAM problem

[Noahboi808]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Why do you think a quad processor should show 16 cores in Pro Tools? A hyperthreaded cpu like the i7 will show 8 cores(for a quad), but the i5 is not hyperthreaded and should only show 4 cores under any circumstance. Or are you confusing the question and you meant GB of RAM, since you have 16 installed? If you really have 16GB installed but the system only sees 4GB, then you certainly have a RAM problem

In the playback engine, where I select how many processors I want to use, only allows me to select up to 4. Adding ram to the computer allows you to select more than 4 right? My system shows 16gb of ram installed. So confused!

[Noahboi808]

Do you think I should return my new iMac, and get a new one with i7?

[rivetheadsound]

Ram and CPU cores are completely different. The ram helps but the CPU cores are where the beef is. They do go hand in hand though. When you start playing with 16+ gigs of ram and you want more than 4 cores...you should not be using an iMac...you should be on a big pro tower.

[nst7]

On the Imac, the I5 processors do not do hyperthreading, so 4 cores are really 4 cores.

Only the I7's on the Imacs do hyperthreading. So you will see 8 cores in that case.

This is specific to the Imacs. On the Macbook Pros and Mac Mini's, the I5's do hyperthreading as well.


All of this is completely separate from RAM. Putting more ram in does not give you more cores, real or virtual.

I'm not sure what the other guy meant about getting a Mac Pro if you are using 16gigs of ram.

This Imac or the I7 Imac should be plenty powerful. Obviously the I7's will be more powerful.

However, it's good that you have 16 gigs of ram and you will see benefits depending on what you do.

Certain Virtual Instruments like Kontakt, Omnishpere and a few others, allow you to access ram outside of Protools, so it will come in handy there.

And if you move to Protools 10 with the Complete Toolkit, it will do disc cache, making your system more efficient. More ram helps with that as well.