OKi ! here you'll find a benchmark to download, look at firechild post.


http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-compu...w-mac-pros.html

You can also see attachement

Result:[/b][/u] I can run 16 tracks no prob. with 17 tracks is stable but It might stop the first time. from the18th and so on it runs out of processing power that's with the latency set at 256

My setup:

leo4allv3- vanilla9.2.2
mobo: badaxe2
cpu:Q6600(quad)
Fsb:1066HZ
Ram: 2GB 800MHZ DDR2
Audio: Rme Fireface 400

According to Firechild listing I run as well as a Macbook Pro: its a Core2duo and I have a quad.

How many can you run?

Post your result here with your rig so we can all compare Hackintosh Vs Mac. I hope many people will participate so we get interesting results.


Happy benchmarking

Ps: geekbench 64bit score: 5403

[color="#FF0000"][/color]

I can run 19-21 traks depending on well I just don´t know it just varies from time to time but 19 tracks seems to bee totally stable.

GA P35DS3R mobo
Q6600 cpu
8 gig memory
IDE 7300 rpm HD
Exsys EX-6450 Pci -> FW (Ti chipset)
Focusrite Saffire Pro 10 i/o

buffersize 256
I had to delete tracks until I was left with only 10 to get it working!
unmuting caused at the 4th track the first stop, but I also could run all tracks for a while!
deleting another 5 tracks makes my cpus not to get into red!

toshiba laptop
dual core 1.7 ghz fsb 522mhz
2 gb ram
usb soundcard mbox2
HDD 5700 rpm

Hi

I can´t Download the Test Track, The link say Page not found.

Thanks

It would also be interesting to see if you can increase the track count with a higher latency setting. Say 23ms (1024) as opposed to 6ms (256). Low latency isn't really necessary when mixing and a higher latency setting will not use as much CPU power.

@penarol, the link is not functioning, but do a google search gearslutz_logic_benchmark or smth.

@bonk13, yes a comparisson between 256 and 1024 would be cool! will do and edit my first post!

Nice to see some interest :

ok, for those having trouble downloding it, see attached file.




Actually I tried at different latency but it seems to make litlle or no difference. 256 seem to be the optimal latency setting for my system... The Rme seems to get on really well with my rig.



Not bad ! We have similar specs.... still at least 2 extra track comparing to me. I wonder did you tweak anything on osx ?


Regarding my original post:I did make sure all program were close to ensure no processing power was waisted. It did allow me to have an extra track during testing.

No I did no tweaks, maby 8 gigs for some reason makes a difference but I doubt it. First time I run this test (found it over on a Scandinavian Logic forum a couple of weeks ago) it run 21 tracks pretty stable, cores on red but still working. From then it´s been varying like I say above here, beats me why though? People with real macs such as G5s and Imacs could run somewhere round 12 - 17 tracks or so hehe. Some guys with real mac pros say the can double the track count though and even more (40- 60) depending on specs on their macs. There´s another guy there also (secretly like me) running a hack getting the same performance as I do.This is a pretty heavy test and compared to a real 2*4 core 2-3 ( or what ever) Ghz 24 (or more) Gig memory Mac Pro a quad core hacks performance is pretty outstanding thinking about how little you pay for it.I´ve run my Mac mini as a Logic node and I can add round 11 tracks to those 19-21 I get on my qaudcore hack. Funny though cause it seemed to be somewhat upside down cause for some reason I ended up having to run moast of the tracks on the Mini (Logic node). I don´t know maby I messed up in some way but I believe I ended up with 11 tracks remaining on the quad and 20 or so shipped over to be processed on the node! But in short words if you add nodes to your system it seems you can trust you get the same amount of tracks extra that they can handle themselves so this is really promising for sure.Oh I forgot to say it works best if you mute tracks by rightclicking on the tracks in the arrange and select mute unmute from the menu. Probably you can get a few more tracks if you also delete tracks in the arrange and channelstrips in the mixer that you can´t run anyway, I believe I read somewhere that this might take of some of the load from the cpu.Seems there´s no difference between 256 - 1024 the guys over there tested that to.

I managed to run 22 tracks for a period longer than 2 minutes today(in the same conditions).... but since then its between 17-19 tracks....

By looking at the meters It looks as if the core manager did a constant good job my rig would handle 22 tracks every single time. It seems that it s the bad core usage balance that cause logic to stop.... not all cpu power is used.

Maybe logic is not as efficient as ableton live at handling multicore.

Probably that´s the case but still we´d be able to run some pretty heavy projects. I´m guessing when it comes to audio tracks with channelstrips on every track like the presets that comes with Logic and rewired to a bunch of synts in Reason and a few VST and /or softsynts loaded I don´t think I´ll ever hit the roof for my needs.

I got 16 tracks at 128 buffer.

Man it´s so strange we get such a big difference between rigs that should get about the same trackcount. I don´t know maby it ´s still so that how much memory you have installed also counts in for some reason. It should´nt but what´s happening then, beats me?

Hi, this probably isn't a valid test on my part as I'm using Logic Express 8 but....

I got 14 tracks on the P4 3.0 gig
I got 35 tracks on the E6600 2.4 gig
I didn't try it on the Opteron

There is something funny with the tracks starting at 17. I deleted all the rest (18-74...) and copied and pasted the 17 to get the above numbers. Also when I was duplicating tracks Logic Express 8 complained that it didn't have the plugin "SpacesDsn" which probably explains my high numbers.

Did the same, erased track 17 on and now I was able to run upto 18 tracks but after a while it just stops. I will try to install Uphucks new iAtkos 2.0 release which is specially made for Intel CoreDuo setups.

Yeah I believe the combination of the other heavy plugins involved and Spacedesigner is an important part of this test. On my P4 3 Ghz running Logic Pro 8 I get 4 tracks in other words pretty ok for an old cpu like that. I also believe it´s important to realize that the track count for ordinary Wav/Audio tracks will be a completely different story. I don´t know about you guys but I can run over 20 tracks an a whole bunch of plugins in Logic Platinum 5.5.1 (legal version to) in PC mode on my P4. I´m expecting about the same when I run it in Mac mode and Logic Pro 8.

These tracks use the most CPU hungry plug-ins in Logic. What people do is create a couple of buses and share the plug-ins with different tracks. In other words you are not going to have 17 tracks using the convolution reverb. I think if anyone needs more plug-in power you can 1. create a logic node (as long as you only need plug-ins not instruments) 2. shell out the cash and get a real Mac Pro. I which I could do 2, but I've spent all my cash in other gear.

I'm a bit busy and my testing has been slim. As soon as Im done with what Im working on (not OSX related) I'll get back with music. I have JP-8080 I have barely used.

-Cheers

Yes I agree and hacks run good as nodes to but you´ll only get as many tracks out of them as they can run themselves, same with a real mac for that matter.

When I first got this I did a few benchmark tests of my own with Logic. I loaded up 6 tracks with 4 space designers and 1 scuplture, played notes on each and let it run. It went to around 40% I believe on the CPU meter.

Honestly though, I'm not feeling either one of those plugins(or just can't use 'em right). I just stick to good old platinumverb and averb. The ES2 still owns along with the all the other synths for that matter(ES1, ESP etc). I think the multimeter is my favorite new plugin.

Go Logic!

I could play 11 tracks with the G5 in my sig.

OK I just updated to iAtkos 2.0 and my system is running better than ever. I even got 167 in Xbench which previously i would get at most 162. Will test Logic later.

with edirol fw card

22 tracks on 1024 buffer
21 tracks on 256 buffer

with asus onboard card:

30 tracks on 256 buffer

27 tracks with 128 or 256 buffer (doesn´t matter) with saffire 26

Hi

27 Tracks before overload warning

Check My signature for the specs

Cheers

27 tracks hey that´s good is it cause you´re running leo 10.5.3? I´m still running Kalys 10.5.1. I have the same q6600 cpu and 8 gig memory but I get 19 - 20 tracks.

only 10.5.2 with logic 8.02

will try with 10.5.3 next week

So I guess it might be worth trying to uppgrade to 10.5.2 then. I mean 7-8 tracks more that´s like round 40% more than I can run and it just can´t be that an Asus mobo with a q6600 cpu is so much better than a Gigabyte with the same cpu on and 8 gig memory. This is more a test to se how much your cpu can take so mobos should´nt make any big difference. I´m also running Logic 8.02. Are using your onboard sound? I´m using a Saffire Pro 10 i/o FW card.
Any way thanks man I´ll have to take a look at the 10.5.2 looks promising for sure.

onboard sound ? I´m using a saffire 26 IO

Ok sorry but slow down with that eye smiley, I think I read somewhere people getting good scores with the onboard stuff that´s why I asked. I see you overklocked your cpu could be that´s it.

you´re right............I didn´t realize that it´s not in my specs.

maybe better benches with onboard sound (didn´t try) - but never would use it because of the sound quality.

27 tracks here as well. Logic 8.0.2, OS 10.5.3, Kalyway on an Asus P5K, Q6600, 4gb RAM. 512 and 1024 buffers.

I actually had to disable my onboard firewire to get my Siig pci fw400 card to work properly (TI chipset).

Not sure quite how to work this benchmark. In continual loop I got 35 tracks to play for a period of time. Didn't play with any of the buffers or other settings.

This was through the onboard sound of my P5K-E WIFI mobo. QX9650 quad core at 3.6GHz

I also have a MOTU 24i, with PCI 424 card, but its not hooked up right now (in the process of moving).

This benchmark isn't exactly the right measuring stick for me because I only use real audio, and I have found that I can run as many plugins and tracks as I ever could unreasonably expect to use. A better test would be how many tracks of fragmented audio can I play with how many plugins, while recording x number of additional tracks. In other words, a combination of CPU and disk performance.

In any case, my hack is working well with the MOTU and Logic, and I can record and process all my typical projects with plenty of CPU and disk performance to spare.

I have a max of 23 tracks playing on a q6600 @ 2.8ghz running at a 256 buffer on a shitty soundblaster card.

Two things i noticed though was that i had to disable the I/0 safety buffer in the audio prefs also in the activity monitor my most maxed out core is only about 75% where as in logic its touching the top. Tried with the logic script fix posted on here same results as without.

Leo4all v2 10.5.2 and logic 8.0.2

I spent a some time using this test in a q6600 (p35) + digi002, and well...at 256 samples, and logic 8.0.3 buffer setting in medium I can get about 25 tracks at the same time...but it stops after 1-2 minutes. The longest time without stopping were 8 minutes with 16 tracks. With the buffer set to "big" It never stopped playing, but I don't know if it's increasing latency too much.

On the other hand, I made the same test in a E6600 with AL883 in 10.4.11 and Logic 8.0.2, and at default settings (256 samples, medium buffer) It never stopped, so...it seems 10.5.3 still causes some problems in audio .

(spotlight was disabled in both computers)

With my own test for protools (almost 100% cpu usage) the longest time without stopping were 17 minutes.

I managed to install retail Leo and the Apple update to 10.5.3 on my old P4 3Ghz hack, incredible but it worked runs really OK. Had to test it on the old hack before moving over to the quad core. I´ll come back with new testresults when I´ve fired up my q6600 hack on retail Leo 10.5.3. People talk about getting pretty much better performance in 10.5.3 so it´s going to be interesting to see.

Tested with a Line6 Toneport UX8 @ 256 samples.
Same results as the others with similar specs.

Overclocking the CPU from 2.4GHz to 3GHz gave 3 more tracks.
Upgrading from 10.5.2 to 10.5.3 gave 1 more track.

/js

After I upgraded to retail Leo 10.5.3 I got 23-24 tracks so big performanceincrease well not exactly hopefully I have a more stable system though. Lost dual display though cause I had to go for natit for my video card, Nvinject couldn´t give me QE in Leo 10.5.3 and that´s needed to be able to install Logic. Maby I´ll se if I can change to Nvinject anyway now that I´ve got it installed.

I manged to get 38 tracks with default project settings on logic 8.2

my system is the following:

Ausus P5k Premium
8GB Kingston Memory @ 800mhz
Intel QX9650@ 3.6ghz (stock voltage, zelman cooler)
500GB 7k200rpm SATA drive

Retail DVD install, vanilla system with PC_EFI

That´s amazing you can get that amount of tracks out of you hack, got to be cause of the CPU
you´re using. Checked out what they charge over here for it and it showed the CPU alone costs more than what I paid for my complete hack and I have a hack based on the Q6600 CPU.

36 tracks here. q9300 @3.3 gig

looks like that logic 8.02 is designed for new intel cpus.

i tried to overclock my q6600 up to 3550 mhz (worked stable) but cant get more then 32 tracks.


some {censored} things i found out, and i hope this is a logic bug, not a hack mac problem.

lets begin:
on my macbook pro i can run 18 tracks (both meters of cpu are full loaded, in activity monitor i have 185% cpu use for logic, sounds ok and normal)

same tracks on my hackmac at 3.55 ghz give me only 160% cpu load in activity monitor (quite ok i think)
but now i put more tracks, so in logic the meters got higher and higher... 32 is maximum without stop. when i look now in actity monitor
i see only 245% cpu use from logic.

is that normal? i tested some cpu burn tools and i can fully load all cpus without problems around 370% one application.
but in logic my maximum is 280% ( i got this with my own tests by using some minimoogs ) but more is not possible.

i understand that quad core at same frequenz is not twice as fast then dual core... but at the end i have 2x2,2 ghz vs 4x3,55 ghz. i thought that this can be handle minimum twice performance which means minimum 36 tracks for me.

It would be interesting to hear which version of OSX you are running. 10.5.3 was a huge improvement for multicore Logic users. 8 core MacPro users that before 10.5.3 had a maximum of around 50 tracks now report up to 70 tracks. So it is not the CPU:s but something about 10.5.3 and Logic that makes a huge improvement. Prior 10.5.3 a Quad 2.66 macPro had the same benchmarkresults as a 2.8 Ghz duo iMac.
I am running Leo4all 10.5.2 myself on a q6600@3.01 Ghz and can only play 25 tracks, as many as a MacPro quad 2.66Ghz at the same OS. If I look at the activity monitor I can see that Logic is only capable to use up to 50 percent of each core which is a shame but I have some reports from 10.5.3 users that indicate that 10.5.3 gives Logic the power to use up to 80 percent of each core which is really good actually. In my case I have some standaloneapps running at the same time as Logic, like BFD2,Kontakt2 and EWQL PLAY engine, so for me the poor multicore usage from Logic prior 10.5.3 is a good feature... leaving CPU headroom for other apps... Of course I will update soon to 10.5.4 but I will wait to see if Eddie (leo4all) comes up with an EASY upgradeway from earlier Leo4all versions first.

I have just upgraded to 10.5.4 and it seems my performance has dropped. im getting huge CPU spikes in my projects pushing one core into red from about 20% utillisation into the red, on just one core at a time.
My benchmark score has fallen to 31 tracks from 38
Its got to be something with the update as nothiing else has changed. Its very frustrating.
The thing that makes it even stranger is that when I push the AUDIO counter in logic to nearly 100% on all four cores, my Activity monitor only shows 46% cpu usage. Why cant I use the other 54%??? Strange. I didnt do this test when I got 38 tracks playing so I have no idea if there was as much headroom on the CPU from Activity monitots point of view or not,

I have tried ditching PC_EFIv8 for the Chameleon boot loader, replaced all vanilla .kext back from the upgrade including AppleSMBIOS.kext and AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext

No ansers yet.

I might try putting the 10.5.3 kernel back

Well...after upgrading to 10.5.3 (using JaS Combo updater) I ran the benchmarktest again and I only managed to run 25 tracks ( maybe 2-3 more tracks than in 10.5.2 ) and the activity monitor only reported logic using 175% of the CPU before overload in Logic...( 400% is maximum with a quad CPU) showing that Logic has a looooong way to go before the term "multicore optimized" could be used...
It would be really interesting to hear some results from real Quad MacPro users. it is kind of strange that Logic is better optimized for 8 core than quad core computers...

YES !!!! After updating to 10.5.4 using the Apple delta update and installing modbin 9.4.0 kernel before restarting I can now play 31 tracks in Logic 8, a HUGE improvement compared to the 22 tracks with 10.5.2. The same great improvement in a similar test in Logic 7.

Hey FC this is BS, oh man first of all upgrading to 10.5.4 broke my 10.5.3 retail install but I managed to fix it. Still the same amount of tracks though so no succes story here . Seems the puter runs a little better though but it could be me just imagining things. I´ll take a look at the OC thing do´nt know nothing about it and I don´t know if I really need more cpu power since I´m basicly a wav guy but if I figure it out I´ll give it a shot.

I made sure to install the new mach_kernel and the right system.kext but it seems it made now diffrence in my case. Got my USb back though. Maby I should try the modbin kernel where did you get it.

Wow, what's with the crappy performance nowadays? My old Athlon X2 system can do a lot more with XP + Nuendo. And I use quality plugins, not the built in ones. How does Cubase or Nuendo compare to Logic on a quad core Leopard system?

Uhmm so you are able to run the Logic benchmark test mentioned in the first post on your Windows system with Cubase/Nuendo, congrats then....
I don't doubt I'm able to playback way over 100 audio tracks with logic8 or cubase for that matter.... That is just not as interesting as running tracks with a heavy reverb plugin :-P

However I run Cubase4 on my Hackintosh system and did a little test a while ago with the Albino3 synth. Just a 4 note chord over 1 bar, same buffer settings etc.. Cubase use VST and Logic8 AU so it's not exactly the same setup but as close as it gets I think.
I was able to do 10 more stero tracks within Cubase4 compared to Logic8. Or 40 more notes if you like.
I believe it was about 30 Albino3 steroe tracks with logic and 40 in Cubase....

Ah, I thought you were talking about tracks in general. Sorry.

I tried Logic 8 on my current setup and it was a lot hungrier than Nuendo in XP. I also thought the editing was clumsy (even though I was a Logic 4.8 user back in the day), so I probably won't bother with Logic again (no matter how great the plugins are).

i began with kalway 10.5.2 updated to kalway 10.5.3 and now
i am running 10.5.4 (directly downladed in system update) with new kernel.
for me gave that update no improvements to 10.5.3 in logic. (maybe i get lower result in 10.5.2 anyway)

i was asking some friends with 4 core mac pros (3 ghz) they can open only 25-35 tracks with latest update.

what i really dont understand is that issue between actitivy monitor and logic cpu show. same on mac pro too.

the next thing what i really want to know, is how its possible that we users here, have so big differences in our results.

can somebody tell if he/ she has the same issue like me in following thing:

when i do a big project, for example:
20 audio tracks + 10 synth (cpu usement max 100% in actitvy monitor)
then i view to automations on all tracks... and my grafik stocks. its not anymore in nice framerates.
same happens when i show some eqs / compressors (when they are in front to see)... the grafic begin to become really slow.

anyone can tell me the same issue?

Hmm, how do you select multiple tracks in Logic?