Does the 8 core have 16 threads or 8?

I'm a motion designer, I use Cinema 4D daily and I just recently put together an i7 PC strictly as a rendering node to use in conjunction with my main machine which is a quad 3GHz Mac Pro. The whole i7 machine cost just $1200 and it smokes the socks off my Quad 3GHz Mac Pro in every aspect (sad)... I bought the 2.26GHz version of the i7 and its completely stable overclocked at 3.7GHz on just air cooling. Now I know the i7 Nahelem is similar to the chips in the 8 core Mac Pro, but that the chip in the Mac Pro is a server edition of the Nahelem, correct? Anyhow, the i7 chip I bought is a 4 core chip, but to my surprise (which I didn't know when I bought it) is that the i7 actually has 2 threads per core, so the system sees the computer as having 8 logical processors, so when the machine renders in Cinema 4D, it actually renders like an 8 core machine, each frame is rendered in 8 parts simultaneously. Now my question is (since I don't have the new Mac Pro) is if the chip in the new Mac Pro has that same architecture, 2 threads per core, essentially giving the new Mac Pro a total of 16 threads? Does anyone know with any certainty wether this is the case or not? I'm going to be looking at moving my current Mac Pro as a render node and getting a new Mac Pro as my main work machine, but that would be really helpful to know beforehand.

Thanks in advance

Message was edited by: trackfive

Mac Pro 3GHz / 6GB RAM / X1900XT, MacBook Pro 2.5GHz / 4GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on May 29, 2009 8:23 AM

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6 replies

May 29, 2009 8:45 AM in response to trackfive

I think you can go straight to the horse's mouth, Intel, along with Wikipedia has a lot to say.

People have used eVGA Classified and Xeon W35xx to go beyond 5GHz, thanks to the quality of server chip.

Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz 8M L3 Cache 4.8GT/sec QPI Hyper-Threading Turbo Boost LGA1366 Processor


Not every program runs at its best with HT enabled, but some do better.

Even last year's 2.8GHz 8-core still selling for $2399 has a lot of power behind it.

As for $1200, that is cutting it close, depending on what you already have on hand, and such, but a good board, and add'l copper and fans or water, 4GHz is entirely doable with D0 steppping.

There are plenty of threads, here, this forum, and elsewhere reviewing and talking about Mac Pro Nehalem performance.

May 29, 2009 8:54 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks for chiming in on this. This is just the crossroad I'm at... should I just put together another PC as a node for dirt cheap or get a new Mac Pro as my main machine?

I guess I just need to know if the new 8 core Mac Pro will render a C4D frame as 16 threads or not.

As for the PC, I bought all the components new from Newegg, I got the Asus Rampage II Gene board and an NVIDIA 250... 1600MHz RAM and such.

May 29, 2009 2:34 PM in response to Ramses Moya

I'm reading through another one of those great articles up on AnandTech, this time comparing Lynnfield to the Bloomfield-Nehalem (Core i7).

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3570&p=8

The cost of Mac Pro 2009 is a rather lot to swallow. Which is why I still think the 2008 model, or wait for 2010. You can build an Xeon W35, or choose the 975 even, and come out with a great system but more in the $2400 market.

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Does the 8 core have 16 threads or 8?

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