8 Cores?

bdg wrote on 12/12/2008, 8:57 PM
Just built a new pc to replace my Core 2.
Windows XP Pro tells me it's an 8 core and even shows me all 8 cores working flat out when I render in Vue Inf. Vegas 8 uses between 20 and 60% of all 8.
Couple of questions:
1) Whats up? I thought I bought a 4 core (Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Processor)

2) Is there something goofy in my pc setup?

3) Should I care?

4) I have 6G RAM. XP only uses 3. Is there any way to use the extra 3?

TIA

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 12/12/2008, 9:15 PM
1) The new Core 7 processors have brought back the Hyper-Threading concept when a single core appears a two. Since you have 4 cores, they appear as 8. Hyper-Threading improves parallelization of computations performed on PC microprocessors via simultaneous multithreading.
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthreading

2) Not all all, enjoy the new power in you Core 7 machine.

3) Absolutely you should care! You now have bragging rights.

4) No, Windows XP can only address 4GB of RAM, but can only really use just over 3GB. Also, 32-bit applications can only use a maximum of 2GB of that anyway. In order to take advantage of your 6 GB, you need to install the 64-bit version of Vista. You can also then run the 64-bit Vegas v8.1, which will take advantage of all of your new machine's memory and horsepower.
Earl_J wrote on 12/12/2008, 9:19 PM
Hello Bill,
most excellent...
My guess:
1 - perhaps you have two Quad Core processors (2X4=8 of those bad boys!)...
2 - probably not...
3 - not really, enjoy the speed and functionality of the speed...
4 - XP is a 32-bit limited OS - only 4GB maximum... to get up to the next level, you'll have to use a 64-bit OS, which means Vista ... Vegas 8.1 will use 64-bit rendering - for even more speed! which also ups the max RAM limit to 8 or 16 GB, I believe. . . but certainly all 6 GB of the RAM in your machine...

Until that time. . . Earl J.
Earl_J wrote on 12/12/2008, 9:22 PM
Hello John...
hyperthreading - so old school, it's new again... (LOL)

Most excellent...

Until that time. . . Earl J.
Yoyodyne wrote on 12/13/2008, 12:30 AM
Hmmmm

Something must be wrong...

You should probably send this machine to me for long term testing...
ritsmer wrote on 12/13/2008, 1:51 AM
Please search for the thread Rendertest.
Do the test and post the results.
Could be interesting to see how your monster compares while still running good olde stable XP.
John_Cline wrote on 12/13/2008, 2:41 AM
Rendertest is here:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=526098
bdg wrote on 12/13/2008, 9:35 AM
Thanks for all the input Guys. I feel much better now!

Rendertest:
1m 43s
Using Vegas8.0c and XP Pro (32bit)
video777 wrote on 12/13/2008, 10:48 AM
Congratulations on what appears to be a very nice system. As was mentioned by several others - upgrade to 64-bit to really take advantage of all that power.

P.S. I want one. :-)
bdg wrote on 12/14/2008, 5:47 PM
Ahh I hadn't figured out I could double up by running several copies of Vegas.
Thanks!

The main reason I have stayed away from Vista is that I believe you can only instal it once.
I do not feel inclined to give MS money for an operating system every time I build a new PC or format my hard drive.
Blow that for a game of soldiers!

I sure wish Vegas ran on Linux...
Seth wrote on 12/15/2008, 12:49 PM
I sure wish Vegas ran on Linux...

It does, just not the latest version. See for yourself.

-Seth

p.s. Careful what you wish for, you might get lambasted by certain forum members.
bdg wrote on 12/15/2008, 5:01 PM
Hey that's neat, I have Vegas 5. (somewhere at the bottom of a pile of cd's :)
Major problem though is all my projects were created or updated to either Veags7 or 8.

Hey they can lambast away, the last operating system of MS' that I liked was W2K.
DOS was real good, I liked that too.

Linux is THE wave of the future, no question.
John_Cline wrote on 12/15/2008, 10:25 PM
"Linux is THE wave of the future, no question"

People have been saying that for years and it still hasn't happened. Except at the very high end, there is no useful production software for Linux. I'm sure as heck not going to dumb back down to Vegas 5 just so I can run it under Linux.
DataMeister wrote on 12/16/2008, 10:30 AM
Vista can be reinstalled if needed. I have done twice. Once after SP1 and then again after I upgraded to a new motherboard / CPU. I had to call Microsoft though to get cleared with the new motherboard. Not really much different from XPs genuine advantage stuff.
johnmeyer wrote on 12/16/2008, 12:00 PM
Ah yes, the future of Unix on the desktop. I remember a well-known (in the early 1980s) analyst named Portia Isaacson who founded Future Computing, a research and consulting firm. In 1983, she predicted that Unix would supplant DOS on the desktop within a few years. Also, a few years prior to that, around the time the first IBM PC was introduced in 1981, Fortune Systems introduced a desktop UNIX PC that was supposed to blow everything off the map. It was based on the Motorola chip of that era, and mostly because of the UNIX overhead, which is trivial by today's standards but was a bear back then, the thing was slow as molasses. I actually used one for a short while. It was a gorgeous hunk of iron for its day, but not usable.

Anyway, UNIX has found a great market in servers, but the open source apps, while probably very good, just don't have the finish and depth of the commercial apps available for Windows and Mac, and until/unless that happens, I think John's prediction is exactly correct.


bdg wrote on 12/16/2008, 12:54 PM
That's good news that Vista can be reinstalled, it removes my main reason not to buy it.
Thanks for the info.
jabloomf1230 wrote on 12/16/2008, 1:30 PM
Linux is 20 years ahead of it's time. Unfortunately, it's time was 1980.
srode wrote on 12/16/2008, 4:55 PM
Or theres XP64 - still available and not a resource hog like Vista - that's what I'm using and have 8GB of DDR1100 RAM - using 8.1 and uping the ram utilization by Vegas to 6+Gb increased my CPU utilization to upper 90's bumping 100 regularly as compared to 8.0c - reduced my normal render time by 30% .