Just wondering if anyone else out there is using a quad 2.5ghz G5 and having any luck with it?
In normal 3D building tasks, i.e importing, opening, swapping from solid to line-view or even simply revolving a multi piece complicated part my machine runs very slowly and when I watch CPU use in activity monitor I never see more than 25% processor capacity being used.

When rendering it runs higher (around 70-80%) but still no where near 100%

I did a test render with my 24" 3.06ghz dual core intel IMAC VS my G5 2.5ghs Quad-core on a fly-by animation and the IMAC destroyed the G5 quad by about 15 frames over a 100 frame test.

the IMAC was running both cores at 100% and the G5 was pulsing between 40% and 90% shared across the four cores.

Its very frustrating, I know the G5 is getting a little dated now but it's still supposedly a fast computer on paper and it's a bit embarrassing having it put to shame by a lowly IMAC.

How much advantage would there be in upgrading to an 8-core intel MacPro? would it be worth my while and would the MacPro out perform the IMAC by a large margin?

I have heard CU and Shark will still only use one core so theres not much point right?

Thanks in advance.

Shark / the Spatial ASICS kernel is not multithreaded, so it will only use one processor at a time. Run Shark on an 8 core MacPro, and you will never see it using more than 12.5% of available cpu cycles. Of course the the Finder, Safari, Mail etc can all be running and using cycles, but Shark will max out its single core. The same problem holds true for your 4 core G5.

At the moment (until Spatial finds a way to multi-thread the kernel) the biggest determinants of speed for everything other than rotating a model around on screen are going to be CPU MHz, available RAM. Hard drive speed becomes an issue if you are working on a large file that will not fit into RAM and the OS starts to use virtual memory. The quality of a graphics card only effect OpenGL related tasks - screen drawing.

http://www.spatial.com/news/spa...d-insiders™-summit

Looks like they are working on it, but don't hold your breath. Is any solids package multithreaded ?

>>using a quad 2.5ghz G5 and having any luck with it?

FYI, we will stop supporting G5 for Shark for V7. Spatial is no longer providing PPC libraries for its ACIS product which serves as our core kernel.

Regards

Tim