Hey Vienna,
I'm currently trying to figure something out on my Nehalem Mac Pro with 8-cores. Intel introduced the hyperthreading technology with these computers which brings the level of virtual cores up to 16, doubling the amount from 8. And In VE Pro's preferences, I have the option for using all 16 threads. I however find that I use less CPU with putting that thread count down to 1, 2, or 3 since I'm using 13 instances of VE Pro on my orchestral template.
But here's the weird part, VE Pro is by far the biggest CPU user on my computer, yet when I look at my iStat application, it only shows every other core (of the 16 cores/virtual cores) being used to its full potential. It looks as if most of the regular cores are being used to about 40-70% while the virtual cores are sitting at 10%. The link below goes to a picture of what I'm talking about.
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=243214&d=1280812451
Now I'm not sure if this is just a OSX issue, or what. But I know that in some other software, like rendering, when actually enter rendering, it full utilizes all 16 cores/virtual cores.
So how does VE Pro handle hyper-threading? Is there any way to enhance the performance?
Thanks,
ea