Has anyone tried to benchmark the latest crop of G4's or any other computers running FMP? Any link to a page would be great!

I really need to know if a Dual G4 will be significantly faster than a single, and or if OSX will run faster than OS9, etc.

thanks

Chris

I don't believe that FileMaker is a multi-threaded program. Which dual processor G4 are you getting? The dual 800s are great when running System 10.

Multiprocessor configurations are the next big thing. the problem is that many software developers have not built in multiprocessor support (with exception to Photoshop, Digital Performer). Something that will be more prominent in the future. The new Pentium4 and some of the PIII processors have something called Hyper Threading technology, which is a set of information pipelines that handles one data stream as if it were going through two processors. The potential is there, but it is not as good as Intel makes it out to be.

I would suggest using OS 10 or 9.1 because they run very stable. I have noticed some memory and crashing problems with 9.2.2

Ken

On my W2k system FM is running in 19 threads -- so it is multithreaded.

That doesn't necessarily guarantee, that it is written for 2 processors.

AFAIK PhotoShop and After Effects are using multiprocessors only in rendering, not in all operations.

FMP is not written for multi-processors...but it does get an advantage from them...just like any application...it just doesn't get that extra boost. I suspect you may see support for it in the next version...with OS X and the new Dual 1Ghz Macs...oh and that whole Apple owning FMP thingie.

The best deal we have found to speed up FM Server (running OS 8/9) is to use a ram disk implemented with Rambunctious and to use Peek-a-Boo to keep the finder in the foreground from taking most of the processor cycles. The speed boost is very significant (2:1+). Both pieces of software are inexpensive and from Clarkwood Software (www.clarkwoodsoftware.com).

-bd

OK, let's remember that in a networked deployment, most of the work is being done on the workstation, not on the server. Dramatic improvements can be seen by faster clock speed CPU's at the workstation, and by having at least 500 MB of free space on the workstation CPU's hard drive. Also, be sure the memory cache setting on FIleMaker Pro (Windows and OS X) is set to about 8192 MB. On OS 9, set application memory, via the Get Info box to between 20 to 24 MB of ram.

The very best way to enhance server speed (perhaps short of the RAM disk) is to use a very fast hard drive (UW SCSI).

Check the Server Best Practices White Paper on the FMI web site.

HTH

Old Advance Man