[MW Forums]

Apple plans to release an Intel-native version of Logic Pro in February. more

[minderbinder]

Very cool. Can't wait to see real performance specs on these - when they say "faster than PPC" do they just mean the old laptops?
I'm curious how the Duo machines will stack up against the G5 towers. Logic is a processor hog, definitely an app where faster is always better. And emagic used to be a pretty hardcore windows developer, they should have some serious intel optimization chops.

[Flavum]

I hope that optimizations will also apply to quad PPC Macs as well. I don't believe that v7.1.1 takes advantage of quad processor Macs (although I'd love to be informed otherwise before I break out my credit card). It would make sense, as Intel desktops (towers) are still a ways into the future.

[lkrupp]

One question. What about Logic Express 7.1? Or is it to be assumed it will also be universal?

[minderbinder]

Logic will use all four processors on a quad, but not to 100%. So a quad outperforms a dual, but still has room for improvement. I agree, I hope the next version is better optimized for quad (although it's pretty lame to have to pay $49 just to use the processors you bought three months ago).
Logic 7.1.1 has already been released, 7.2 will be the universal version. I'd love to see a free 7.1.2 version with bugfixes and quad support, but sure doesn't look like it.
I'm REALLY curious about the next version of Soundtrack Pro - the first three versions are buggy as hell, and it will be an insult to users to make them pay for a version that's actually usable.

[minderbinder]

You guys should be careful in your blurb on the main page. You say that the intel version seems faster than the PPC version. Compared to what? I don't doubt that a macbook will beat a powerbook G4. But I'd be shocked if it's faster than a dual or quad tower.
Be careful with the vague statements, there's a lot of room for misinterpretation there.

[Grapho]

I agree. The G5 towers are still pretty competitive when they come to speed. Apple also has had a much longer time to optimize all applications to the G5/4 architecture. No surprise if even Tiger runs better on the G5 towers then on the Intel offering for a while. I am even debating on picking up a Quad this year or weighting for the Intel code to be optimized and new towers sporting the latest and greatest Intel has to offer.

[xStep]

The $49 is to crossgrade from the PPC version to the Intel version.

[minderbinder]

The crossgrade is also an upgrade for PPC users, it has a few new features, mostly compatibility stuff.
http://www.apple.com...crossgrade.html
Nothing there interests me, I hope I don't have to shell out for it just to get max performance on a quad.

[xStep]

minderbinder, thanks for that link. Just one more thing for my brother to be upset about. He ranted this morning how Apple should be focusing on fixing the bugs, rather than asking their user base to continually pay for upgrades that still contain the bugs and GarageBand stuff.

[crossan]

I have Logic Pro 7.1.1 running on a quad and can only get 200% of total available cpu as shown by Activity Monitor. Logic shows 2 processors peaking at 100% each. It seems that logic will stop processing at 200% not 400%. Obviously logic doesn't see the extra processors. Is this a core Audio limitation or a Logic limitation? I loaded the latest OS 10.4.5 but it made no diff. I'll have to hope 7.2 solves the problem.
Note, I had to load logic up with 15 SoundSculpt and multiple FX before this happened. Still, I paid for 4 processors!
Cheers,
David C.

[minderbinder]

It has been confirmed that 7.2 does NOT fix the quad issue, it still only shows 2 cpu meters and only gets up to about 200% usage.
This is pretty pathetic for a first party app. What is it going to take for Apple to finally fix this???

[crossan]

I've had success with logic node running on the same machine and can now peak at about 380% cpu utilisation. However there's a little bit of competition going for cpu so that when peaks occur the logic node can lose a process. This makes it difficult to saturate the cpu. But it will do me for now!
Apple make their flagship Quad and the flagship Logic and they don't work together properly.
Bad Apple.