Difference between 2 core and quad core?

[Omar Nabulsi]

Hi all,



As the industry moves toward editing footage in higher resolutions, I am considering upgrading my 2010 Macbook Pro 2.66 GHz Core i7 to a new Macbook Pro Retina with the same speed processor, except it will be a quad core, versus mine with has two cores.

My question is, does anyone know if this will really make a big difference? My understanding is that it only makes a difference if the app you are using is designed to take advantage of all four cores. Can anyone confirm?

Of course the newer Macbook have the advantage of SSD drives and 1GB of Video RAM vs mine which has 512, so I know those will contribute to speed, but I'm mostly focused right now on the difference between the quad core versus two core.

All help greatly appreciated. Thank you!



Omar

[Bill Koehler]

You are correct that apps written to take advantage of multiple cores will benefit the most from the presence of multiple cores.

Programs written to decode, encode, or edit video are routinely written that way. No reason you can't have each and every core encoding or decoding its very own GOP in parallel with the others. Many will even use the computers GPU if it is powerful enough. I would definitely upgrade from dual core to quad core.

[Al Bergstein]

Omar, if you just Google Mac Benchmarks, you will find a variety of benchmark setups that show that you won't gain much in performance. Part of the difference in your computer vs. today, is not very relavent. You don't "need" the Retina display, and in fact I bought the Macbook Pro without it because it has better expansion out of the box. I got a firewire 800 which for me, is much more useable than dual TB. I can plug in any of my drives and still have a TB port to attach to. I got the 1GB Video RAM, You can add SSD in the future, and my take is that I'd rather have all my apps on my main drive, than on a carry around.

If you are rendering a lot of video files, you will see faster rendering with Quad Cores, but will you really care?It just means going away longer. A few minutes for many shorter renders.

I opted for more expansion and less cost. i've not been disappointed.

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Al Bergstein

Omar, if you just Google Mac Benchmarks, you will find a variety of benchmark setups that show that you won't gain much in performance. Part of the difference in your computer vs. today, is not very relavent. You don't "need" the Retina display, and in fact I bought the Macbook Pro without it because it has better expansion out of the box. I got a firewire 800 which for me, is much more useable than dual TB. I can plug in any of my drives and still have a TB port to attach to. I got the 1GB Video RAM, You can add SSD in the future, and my take is that I'd rather have all my apps on my main drive, than on a carry around.

If you are rendering a lot of video files, you will see faster rendering with Quad Cores, but will you really care?It just means going away longer. A few minutes for many shorter renders.

I opted for more expansion and less cost. i've not been disappointed.

I'm on the other side of the fence. Until recently, I was using a PC with a quad core i7 CPU. For a variety of reasons, I'm now temporarily using a PC with a dual core i3 CPU. The difference in performance is huge, mostly when it comes to encoding and rendering, but also when trying to edit compressed AVCHD and MP4 files.

Rendering effects in my NLE also takes noticeably longer, as does doing mix-downs, exporting, etc.

While a quad core CPU won't make much of a difference running applications, it really does make a difference for those CPU intensive tasks I mentioned.