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  #1  
Old 01-12-2011, 11:01 AM
Hive Guy Hive Guy is offline
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Default Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

I'm fairly new to the high powered Mac thing running native (been on HD with G4's for a while).

I'm confused because it doesn't seem to make much difference at all how many cores I select for the RTAS engine. 2 cores give me the same, maybe even better performance than 8 cores. Above 8 cores (16 show up), performance actually goes down (both according to the system useage meter and amount of performance before I get glitching).

I'm not sure if there's some kind of optimization I'm missing, or if this is normal behaviour, but I definitely feel that I'm not getting the performance I would expect from this machine.

Any ideas?

MacPro 8-core 2.26 / 6 GB / 10.6.4 / PT 9.0.1 / Lynx Aurora 16 - AES 16e
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  #2  
Old 01-12-2011, 11:09 AM
digidesigner digidesigner is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

How are you testing this btw?
I'm on HD and therefore not pushing my CPU that much, but when toying around with settings I did find a similar thing, running a same session and choosing less cores resulted in lower CPU usage in system CPU monitor section when compared to choosing more cores. At the same time PT internal CPU monitor showed less stress on system with more cores. Go figure. Generally it s considered to be a good way to choose as many cores as you have minus one. So in your case it should be 15.
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  #3  
Old 01-12-2011, 11:21 AM
Hive Guy Hive Guy is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

In my case, as I increase cores, the Mac system meter shows increasing stress, but much more than the PT meter.

And the strange thing is, that anything over 8 cores gives diminishing performance, both on the PT meters and in actual amount of processing available before glitching occurs. 15 threads gives worse performance than 8.

There is also a big discrepancy between the Mac meter and the PT meter. On the session I'm working on right now, if I select 2 threads, the Mac meter shows 7%, but the PT meter shows about 40%, peaking up to 50%+.

Also, the PT useage meter seems to show almost no change as I decrease cores all the way down to one or two.
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  #4  
Old 01-12-2011, 12:26 PM
Emerah Emerah is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hive Guy View Post

if I select 2 threads, the Mac meter shows 7%, but the PT meter shows about 40%, peaking up to 50%+.
the Mac meter shows 7% of all the processing power available to the computer. the 40% you see in PT meter is in reference to only the 2 cores you made available.

of course you should expect awesome performance with the machine you have. I know how annoying it is. may be if you share more details about the session you are running, plugins and so, more users will jump in to help?!
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  #5  
Old 01-12-2011, 01:24 PM
Hive Guy Hive Guy is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

Quote:
Originally Posted by Emerah View Post
the Mac meter shows 7% of all the processing power available to the computer. the 40% you see in PT meter is in reference to only the 2 cores you made available.
That's good to know. If that's the case, I would expect to see the percentage on the PT meter drop as I add cores/threads, but it doesn't. It actually goes up. So does the Mac meter.

Plugs:

Running a QT Video (scoring session)

1x Stylus RMX (3 slots)
1x Hybrid
1x Vacuum
1x Xpand 2
1x Structure (1 slot)
Decapitator (stereo x 3)
Tremolator
Filterfreak
TL Space (stereo X4)
Filterbank (x5)
AIR lo-fi (x3)
L2007
Compressorbank (x2)
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  #6  
Old 01-12-2011, 03:11 PM
slater05 slater05 is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hive Guy View Post
That's good to know. If that's the case, I would expect to see the percentage on the PT meter drop as I add cores/threads, but it doesn't. It actually goes up. So does the Mac meter.

Plugs:

Running a QT Video (scoring session)

1x Stylus RMX (3 slots)
1x Hybrid
1x Vacuum
1x Xpand 2
1x Structure (1 slot)
Decapitator (stereo x 3)
Tremolator
Filterfreak
TL Space (stereo X4)
Filterbank (x5)
AIR lo-fi (x3)
L2007
Compressorbank (x2)
I'm not expert but I was under the impression that Pro Tools was only able to utilize a few processors, so leaving most of them for the rest of the computer is the best way to go.
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15" MBP 10.7.2
Pro Tools 10.0
Apogee Duet
M-Audio BX5A's
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  #7  
Old 01-13-2011, 07:27 AM
Fidelis Fidelis is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

I have the same computer as you. 2.66 mac pro. Did lots of test and on my system (pt hd3) I find that using 7 cores (pt reads 14) is the best. 1 core for the system and the rest for Protools. Hope that helps
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Mac Book M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, OSX 23.6, PT Studio 2023.9.0
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  #8  
Old 01-13-2011, 11:21 AM
Hive Guy Hive Guy is offline
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Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

Sure, I set 7 or 8 threads which gives better performance than 15 or 16 (which makes it appear to me that PT9 is not using hyperthreading at all, or if it is, it's not using it properly). I just don't understand why I don't seem to be getting better performance from 8 threads than from 2... I mean I'd expect to see large performance gains if the RTAS is moved from 2 threads to 8, but I don't.
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  #9  
Old 05-10-2011, 11:05 PM
Zarabozo's Avatar
Zarabozo Zarabozo is offline
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Posts: 545
Default Re: Mac Octo 2.26: Almost no difference between 2 Cores and 8 Cores

Have you guys tried disabling multithreading from BIOS? Or is that something jailed/locked on Macs?

You might find interesting what I found in this tread. I'm on Windows, but for me disabling multithreading actually gave me better performance on ProTools.

HTH

Francisco
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