It's what everyone seems to want to know. How well does an 8-core Mac Pro run Pro Tools LE?

Well color me surprised!

A student of mine brought in his brand spankin' new 8-core 2.66ghz G5 with 3 gigs of Ram and a new 003 to test out. The system did not have a separate recording drive so I did the test using the internal system (highly not recommended)! Don't expect to run your systems this way. A 2nd hard drive is always best for performance.

Test 1:
Create 32 Audio tracks and record to all of them at the same time.
results: Passed the 5 minute recording test (recording for 5 minutes on all tracks simultaneously)

Test 2:
Record 32 Audio tracks with 5 plug-ins on each track (7-Band EQ3, Compressor/limiter Dyn3, Maxim, TL Everyphase, and Izotope Ozone 3 on each track(x32)).
results: Passed the 5 minute recording test . . .

Test 3:
Record 32 Audio tracks with 5 plug-ins on each track, and run 16 mono reverbs on aux tracks(TL Space Native).
results: Passed the 5 minute recording test . . .

Test 4:
Record 32 Audio tracks with 5 plug-ins on each track, run 16 mono reverbs, and 30 virtual instruments on individual instrument tracks(10 Xpand!s, 10 Hybrids, and 10 Synchronics).
results: Passed the 5 minute recording test . . .

What???

Needless to say, as an HD user, I was quite impressed! Upon further inspection, I found that the HW Buffer size had been set to 1028 samples during the test. When changing the buffer size down to 128 samples, the system immediately stopped upon trying test 4 again. Needless to say though, one can get a pretty hefty mix happening on one of these new 8-core systems. I can't say that I would ever actually record onto 32 tracks at once with 5 plug-ins on each, but it made for a good test of what the system can do. I still prefer HD. The retail cost of this system as tested was near $8,500....