[Hidden-tech] Advice on used Mac buying

[Dan Richardson (t)]

OP is asking about a system for making movies. Video processing is one 
of the more CPU-intensive things one can throw at a system.

Final Cut Pro 7 is a pretty old version, though, so it doesn't 
completely make use of multiple cores. Does with some codecs, not with 
others. ProRes and anything Compressor do, for instance. So if he's 
going to stay with FCP7, I would opt for faster CPU over 4 cores, other 
things being equal. If he's at all considering jumping to the current 
Final Cut X, I'd make the opposite choice, go for the most cores you can 
get.

Dan

On 5/15/14 11:57 AM, hidden-discuss-request at lists.hidden-tech.net wrote:
>> I attended an interesting talk at Harvard last summer that showed that from
>> >2003 to 2012, personal computer speeds increased little, something like 10%
>> >if I recall right. It has to do with how multiple CPUs (dual and quad) work
>> >on most tasks that aren¹t CPU intensive like most tasks are in all but
>> >extreme statistics software and the like. I have found that keeping an older
>> >Mac well tuned makes it perform about as well as a newer one that, like all
>> >Macs and PCs, get slowed by various software and other conditions over time
>> >if they are not tuned. The solid state flash drives really do add speed, but
>> >they can be added to older Macs.
> Right.  At this point transistor size (which determines base processor cycle
> time) is about as small as can be.  For most things done on personal computer,
> having multiple cores or even 64-bit processors actually does little to
> increase perceived speed.  Multiple cores and/or 64-bit processors are much
> more useful in servers and/or computationally intensive processing.  The only
> 'home' users that would see much improvement with multiple cores or 64-bit
> processors would be gamers.
>