Digital Workshop

Do current publications benefit from dual core or quad core CPU from Intel and AMD? Are Opus Publications optimized for these, or SSE4?

If not can we expect support for this in future release of Opus.

This is an interesting topic -- Dual/Quad core processors. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

CPU chip manufactures found that if they made a product which went faster than 3.1GHz, they'd get so HOT they'd burn up, even with additional fans, so to sell more products, they LOWERED the speed of their CPUs and put two together to make a "dual core" processor. Most software does not require or use a computer's second processor. I did a trial on some video editing software which would NOT show Transitions between scenes until the final product was rendered, SO they started recommending using a dual core computer which would render the preview transitions on the second processor in the background. It was a weak workaround solution. I didn't buy the software.

If you are doing extremely CPU intensive work like a massive spreadsheet with macro calculations, or final video rendering, it will consume all the power of the first processor, then theoretically you could open another application and begin another complex, CPU intensive project which would be handled by the second processor.

CPU intensive software may be programmed to check for and use additional processing power in a background mode. OPUS doesn't work that way (to my understanding). It's not until you Publish your project that OPUS requires the full power of your CPU. Even on large Publications, OPUS only takes a few minutes to Publish. It goes even quicker the second and all following Publishings, if I select the "Incremental Publishng" option under Settings. For this reason, I can't see any value to re-programming OPUS to look for and use additional CPU processors. You would only save a few nano seconds at best.

If you want to speed up a computer, here are a few ideas you might consider: 1) buy more RAM -- it's never been cheaper, and its extremely easy to insert into a desktop/tower computer. Having 2, 3 even 4 GB of RAM will reduce the amount of Virtual Memory which gets written to your C: drive; 2) add huge additional hard drives (internal and/or external). I keep most of my projects on external drives, which frees my C: drive. 3) Keep your C: drive over 50% free. 4) Defrag your hard drives at least once each month -- especially your C: drive.

Laptops are great for showing prospects and clients your final product, but you are asking for trouble to do all your day-to-day processing on a laptop. They overheat, you can't easily add memory or additional internal HD resources, the list goes on and on. I know many people who read this forum and use OPUS are trying to build large multi-media projects on their laptops. It seems as if these folks are the users who experience the greatest number of "problems." Move your project to a tower PC. You'll be surprised how things "magically" improve.

An interesting indeed. I'd agree with most of Fred's points.

However, I'm not sure about this burn out at 3.1GHz - as my quad system runs happily at 3.2 with no sign of overheat or instability.

As for the benefits of multi-core - unless a piece of software is especially designed for it, then the it will only really help in multitasking which is the reason I opted for a quad - as Virtual PC will basically use one core for the Virtual OS.

As Fred points out, anything that chews up processor cycles will benefit from both a faster CPU and more of them - including high-end video / graphics and other maths based processes. Opus, IMHO, is quite unique in that it allows you to used high end video / transitions (animations) and script complex calculations in a single project BUT whether a publication would need to handle all of this at once is debatable and past experience has shown that it was the speed of the CPU rather than multi-core that was the key factor. Another key aspect is the design of the publication - both in the quality of the scripting and the structure of the objects used. It's very easy to over wow a publication and try and have everything happen at once rather than storyboard a project and keep it organised and effective.

The system requirements for Opus publications is extremely low in today's high spec world and as someone who frequently has to produce publications that run on old W95 machines - I know that it is possible.

What Fred said about speed is quite right and the old adage about a computer is only as fast as it's slowest component is spot on. This is normally the hard drive - and the idea of keeping different aspects of your computing on different drives (not partitions) is sound. Also the faster the drive the better. If cost is not an issue, use Raptors (10,000RMM) for the OS and important (working) files with standard SATA desktop (7,200RPM) drives for storage and generic use. Avoid laptop drives (5,200RPM)! Also be aware that different hard drives suit different purposes - check out Tom's Hardware site for lots of details and lastly remember that although the fastest hard drives are a lot slower than modern interfaces - make sure that if you are not connecting your HD directly to the motherboard that the interface you choose is not bottlenecking the data transfer - for those with eSata I heartily recommend Skarkoon's docking station.

With regards to memory - more is good BUT not always better. There are some applications that unless configured correctly will get slower with too much memory. Additionally, unless you run a 64bit OS or Server OS then having more than 3GB is generally a fruitless exercise as Windows will not benefit.

The need for more (speed, CPUs, information) is all well and dandy - especially for those of us where time is money - but we like our tools have a limited capacity for processing. There is, somewhere, a topic about developing content for the DS which nicely highlights that even in today's fast moving world simple things like the Brain Training game can be hugely enjoyable and successful.

Just my tuppence worth.

Mack

Interesting topic regarding Intel and how they want developers to concentrate on multi-cores.

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/06/intel-recommends-developers-plan-for-massive-multi-core-processing/

Opus is already multi-threaded and will automatically take advantage of multiple cores/processors. It also includes a number of SSE optimizations (though not SSE4).

This is excellent news, always way ahead of the competition DW. If I remember correctly Adobe Director doesn't even take advantage of DirectX!