Can you really ever have too many processor cores? Nope. That’s Tommaso Alvisi’s opinion, anyway. This dedicated Mac fan has spent some time upgrading his stock quad-core Mac Pro to a crazy 8-core behemoth, all by his very lonesome.
Tommaso used a pair of Intel’s Quad Core E5320 Xeon processors, rated for just 80W of power consumption each (up from the Mac Pro’s stock processor’s 65W). They’ll run you about €350 apiece, but that’s a lot cheaper than comparable processors used by other sites.
If you’re looking to eke a little more computational niceness out of your Mac Pro, you can follow along at Tommaso’s site; though be warned, the process will most assuredly void your warranty. The results are pretty impressive though: ripping a 90-minute movie in HandBrake took about 5 minutes, and used less than 80% of the processor load.
Someday, we will all have insane amounts of processor power. And the world will be a better place.
