thedomus wrote:
"and any core audio machine being built these days—short of the mini—has enough horsepower to handle most projects." - robgb
Thats not true, I would love it to be, and I would love my i7 MBP to do what my MacPro can but it's not there yet!
I frequently lay down several guitar tracks using modelling plugs (GR4, Amplitube, GTR) in projects plus additional orchestral tracks using Kontakt and Vienna Symphonic ...
plus... Omnisphere, Alchemy, Kore2 all processed and mixed using Waves, Izotope, Logic in built e.t.c..... this is all in one typical arrangement.
Plus I run Ableton Live in re-wire mode for some beats ...
...while all working to picture!
So that new i7 MBP I've just bought, it would be nice if it and Logic used all its power when I'm on the road, at my Mum's, by the beach e.t.c.
Indeed, I do the same kind of work and having more power to be able to produce our work is not something we should have to justify to anybody.
While I agree that benchmarking can sometimes be a silly, pointless exercise of nerdy obsession over stats, sometimes it really is very useful. If I hadn't done some proper tests - making a test project with a lot of tracks and plugs and running it on my MBP i7 and my old MBP Core 2 Duo, I might never have realized that there is a big problem with Logic not using the full power of the new MBPs at all. As it stands now, Logic is the only pro software I use that
doesn't make an attempt to use the HT capability of the mobile i7 in my new MBP, which means that it runs as if it were running on a plain-vanilla dual core machine. A project which pushes Logic's CPU into the red on the i7 is clearly not using all the available resources, because Activity Monitor (which displays 4 CPU bars, not 2 like in Logic), never goes anywhere further than 50% usage on all the 4 cores. So it was a very valid thing for me to discover that, despite the very large performance increase the new machines have when you look at the general benchmarks, my brand-spankin new machine can only barely outperform the old MBP Core 2 Duo I bought in 2006,
only when running Logic.
When you do your research about a new machine that comes out, with a vastly superior CPU design to the old machine from a previous generation you had before, it is pretty logical to presume that the big leaps in computing power should obviously apply to all of the software you use - especially the flagship music production software made by Apple themselves. But through doing some actual tests, it turns out that this is not currently the case. I even took it further to test other audio apps (Protools LE) and found that it
does benefit from the power of the new machine. Ie, I was able to make a Protools session that could run around 30 more reverbs on my MBP i7 vs my old MBP Core 2 Duo, which couldn't come anywhere near handling that amount of work.
So, this information is actually useful and productive.. because if someone were to ask me if they should upgrade to a new i5 or i7 MBP right now, for the sole purpose of getting more power to run more instruments/plugs/tracks or video in Logic, over a Core 2 Duo MBP they already own, I'd have to say no it's not a wise choice right now.
It really shouldn't be that hard to put oneself in other people's shoes and to imagine that it's possible other people need more CPU power for the work they do. For some people who work on music in a certain way for certain purposes then yes - every Mac or PC you can buy these days completely spoils you with what it can accomplish compared to only a few years ago. If you're one of those people, then you're lucky.. things have never been better, you can work unhindered and life's great. But for those of us who sometimes (or always) work on very big projects which regularly push our machines to the limit, d*mn straight we want to know what performance we can get from upgrading to a new machine. It's vital information to be able to spend our money wisely.