newmat vs boost

[TheCPUWizard]

First of all if the case is the GPU is busy doing 3-D rendering CPU will most likely be at 100% if there is a multicore CPU, than the cores will be busy with other threads, even if they are idle.

Depends alot on the motherboard...consider:

Compared to a quad-socket Xeon X7460 (24 cores) at 2.66 GHz, the dual-socket X5570 at 2.93 GHz with HT enabled (two fewer physical CPUs, but 16 virtual cores and 8 physical cores) came in just 3.2% behind at 25,000 (compared to X7460's 25,830). With HT disabled (comparing 8 physical cores to 24 cores) it came in slightly lower at 23,650, about 8.4% behind X7460.

if the machine is going to be dedicated to one application then that is ALOT of serious processing power.

and its not reasonable to assume that there is a 3D app running while doing complex heavy processing.

The exact point is that without knowing more about the specific use case, either end of the spectrum (or somewhere in the middle) is possible.

multicore CPUs will be alot worse in data-processing than a single core.

GPU's are really good at processing large ammount of data, it will be a rare case that in this situation a new GPU will lose against a new CPU.

Much depends on the data coupling, and how much can be broken into independant chunks...again we dont know...

There are also cards available that are for physics processing. In the end the best soluttion would be a new card just for doing data-processing, but i dont see that happening.

There is little doubt that a dedicated processor would be a good choice, but once again we know nothing about the actual situation to know if this would or would not be appropriate.

Every point you have raised could easily be true, but there definately not enough known to make an accross the board declaration as to any of the approaches (including the one I introduced) being the "best" choice for a specific (but unknown) condition.