Mac Pro 8

[ZFact]

Hi.. just got a new mac pro 8 and I am running windows on it.. partitioned drive!

 

I am seeing 16 cores in the task manager on the mac side but only 8 cores on the windows side.

 

I am using vray to render and I only see 8 buckets instead of 16.. any ideas what is up? I have installed all updates for windows 7.

 

Thanks

Z

[AJLynn]

Hmmmm. Well, I guess the first important question is, which 8 "cores"? It sounds like you have a dual-quad with HT, so if one CPU is being seen by Windows with HT on, that's quite slow. If it's two CPUs without HT, that's much better but not ideal. First try running CPU-Z in Windows, it should give you your CPU stats. If that's not illuminating, try running Cinebench's multithreaded render test on both Mac and Windows. If you have one CPU with HT working, the Mac version will be twice as fast as Windows. If it's two CPUs without HT, the Mac version will be 10-20% faster. Once you know which problem it is, it will be easier to figure out what to do about it.

[ZFact]

Hmmmm. Well, I guess the first important question is, which 8 "cores"? It sounds like you have a dual-quad with HT, so if one CPU is being seen by Windows with HT on, that's quite slow. If it's two CPUs without HT, that's much better but not ideal. First try running CPU-Z in Windows, it should give you your CPU stats. If that's not illuminating, try running Cinebench's multithreaded render test on both Mac and Windows. If you have one CPU with HT working, the Mac version will be twice as fast as Windows. If it's two CPUs without HT, the Mac version will be 10-20% faster. Once you know which problem it is, it will be easier to figure out what to do about it.

 

Thanks

 

It's 2cpus working with no HT

[AJLynn]

Oh wait a minute. Are you running Windows in Bootcamp or in a virtualizer/emulator like Parallels or VMWare?

[AJLynn]

Yeah, I thought of that one, but Windows defaults to all available cores and the Mac running Boot Camp defaults to showing it all the cores (even the ones that aren't really cores) which is why I guessed emulation. BTW, Boot Camp is not an emulator, it's a boot loader. The disadvantages Alex cites are all disadvantages of Parallels, VMWare and Virtual Box, but not Boot Camp.