Should I get 2x2.26 or Quad 2.93 Mac Pro?

[Greenhoe]

Today we are finally starting to see the GeekBench scores and it apppears that the quad 2.93 is going to be faster then the 2.26 8 core MP. For someone that mainly just does photoshop and dreamweaver and some gaming do you think I would be better off with getting the Quad 2.93 or the 2.26 8 core MP?

[VirtualRain]

Today we are finally starting to see the GeekBench scores and it apppears that the quad 2.93 is going to be faster then the 2.26 8 core MP. For someone that mainly just does photoshop and dreamweaver and some gaming do you think I would be better off with getting the Quad 2.93 or the 2.26 8 core MP?

Absolutely! Unless you use massively parallel multi-threaded applications or lots of VM machines all doing stuff at the same time, you will NEVER leverage the power of an octo-core.

Whereas EVERY application benefits from increased clock speed!

Keep in mind that even the entry level quad machine can process 8 threads in parallel... something an octo core could only do before.

More benchmarks will confirm it, but for most people, a higher clocked quad-core will do them much better than a lower clocked octo-core.

[Greenhoe]

Absolutely! Unless you use massively parallel multi-threaded applications or lots of VM machines all doing stuff at the same time, you will NEVER leverage the power of an octo-core.

Whereas EVERY application benefits from increased clock speed!

Keep in mind that even the entry level quad machine can process 8 threads in parallel... something an octo core could only do before.

More benchmarks will confirm it, but for most people, a higher clocked quad-core will do them much better than a lower clocked octo-core.

The more I think about it I think the Quad core is the best option although I'm just worried about only being able to upgrade to 8GB for Ram, which I would like the option to upgrade to more later in the future.

Also if I was to get a 2.26 octo would I be able to upgrade the processors later on down the road? Are you able to upgrade the old Mac Pro processors to a higher clock speed processor?

[twig16]

Unless you are a professional GeekBench tester, Geekbench scores don;t mean anything.

Relax,
count to ten

Wait 2-3 weeks for reputable benchmarks,

keep an eye on sites like barefeats.com or diglloyd

This machine will last for 5+ years as a workhorse, so please don;t rush into a purchase based on initial, non-relevant posts on some forum.

BTW, here is what diglloyd says in response to your question

"What about the 4-core vs the 8-core model when you need more than 8GB memory?

The crippled 4-core model has only 4 slots—going beyond 8GB therefore requires 4GB modules at 8X the cost per GB of 2GB modules.

You can get an 8-core model with 8X2GB for about $3600 or a 4-core model with 4X4GB for about $5000 (and that’s assuming the 4-core model even works with 4GB modules). Sometimes decisions are easy: if you need more than 8GB of memory, the 8-core model is far less expensive than the 4-core model! So shun the 4-core model. It’s a lousy investment if your needs ever change."

If you use photoshop, you will eventually benefit from more than 8GB of RAM.

[AppleWorking]

I'm also interested in this as I'm in a similar situation with similar needs, although I have one more scenario for all of you... If a quad would be better suited to someone who doesn't use a lot of multi threaded apps, which quad is more worth it at this moment? I mean, how much faster do you think the 2.93 quad will be over the 2.66 quad? It would cost me another $450 just for this speed bump. Do you think it would be worth it?

[Salavat23]

The quad is a waste IMO.

You're better off going with a workstation/desktop from Dell or HP that offers a Core i7 rig for a cheaper price. You're limited to 8GB of RAM, and I don't call that a workstation at all.

Only the octo is worth it, even though it may not perform as well as the quad. Why? Because it can handle more RAM. In a few years, having more RAM will be much more important that having a higher clock speed.

[mason.kramer]

Today we are finally starting to see the GeekBench scores and it apppears that the quad 2.93 is going to be faster then the 2.26 8 core MP. For someone that mainly just does photoshop and dreamweaver and some gaming do you think I would be better off with getting the Quad 2.93 or the 2.26 8 core MP?

Quad

Edit: if you want to confine your search to Apple products

[davewolfs]

A quad would be faster probably.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/compare,826.html?prod[2179]=on&prod[2180]=on&prod[2271]=on


Or your existing 3Ghz machine.

[VirtualRain]

It's a philosophical debate at some level...

Like most purchase decisions, there is a diminishing returns curve to consider and where you need/want to be on that curve and how often.

Buy a quad core now and get the next latest Mac Pro in 2 years or buy an octo-core and stuff more RAM in it in 2 years to try and buy yourself some more time... it's really a personal investment decision.

I laugh at the person who referred to the quad core as "crippled"... :confused: That person has lost perspective.

Again, I think the only ones who can really justify the cost of an octo core are the ones who's business and living depends on it. If every minute it takes a video to encode or a scene to render costs you money, then you can justify the obscene cost of the octo-core.

In my opinion, the quad core is the perfect Mac Pro for the enthusiast or recreational PC user who wants state of the art computing technology in a kick-ass package. Not everyone in here works for Pixar or Disney.

[Greenhoe]

Is it possible that later on in a year from now if I had the 2.26 octo that I could upgrade to a higher clock speed processor such as the 2.66 or 2.93?

[-hh]

It's a philosophical debate at some level...

Buy a quad core now and get the next latest Mac Pro in 2 years or buy an octo-core and stuff more RAM in it in 2 years to try and buy yourself some more time... it's really a personal investment decision.

Fair enough

I laugh at the person who referred to the quad core as "crippled"... :confused: That person has lost perspective.

Except that you just admitted that the Quad only has a 2 year lifespan before needing to upgrade...?

And in terms of perspective, when my Mac was brand new, while it came with a mere 512MB ... it nevertheless had 8 RAM slots and an 8GB ceiling.

And here we are, FOUR Moore's Law cycles later...and yet today's Quad Mac Pro ... still has only an 8GB ceiling.


In my opinion, the quad core is the perfect Mac Pro for the enthusiast or recreational PC user who wants state of the art computing technology in a kick-ass package. Not everyone in here works for Pixar or Disney.

If its RAM could be expanded to 16GB, I'd be willing to agree.


-hh

[PowerPaw]

For your applications, do you think you are really going to notice the difference between the quad and octo cores you are thinking about anyway, they are both plenty fast???

Which would you rather have, a V4 2.9 litre or a V8 2.2 litre :D

[amoergosum]

Interesting thread....I have to make the same decision (want to use PS CS4 & FCP).

[superpalmtree]

I have an order in for the Dual 2.26 --

I'm just about ready to cancel and order the Quad. Is it worth $500 to upgrade to the 2.93? Anyone else going up to that or staying with the 2.66?

[Zandalus]

If i've to make rendering with maya is better octo 2.26 or quad 2.93?
Maya gain advantage from more core?

[mason.kramer]

If i've to make rendering with maya is better octo 2.26 or quad 2.93?
Maya gain advantage from more core?

Why do we have to answer this question 500 times?

find our yourself. (hint, close your eyes and randomly click on any topic on the first page of this forum, and then read it)

[Zandalus]

Why do we have to answer this question 500 times?

find our yourself. (hint, close your eyes and randomly click on any topic on the first page of this forum, and then read it)

I read other topics and what I can read is this: quad 2.92 is better for single thread application and octo 2.26 is better for multi-thread application.
My question was different! I asked if MAYA during rendering has some advantage with more core.

[QCassidy352]

the other thing to remember is that Snow Leopard will make better use of more cores, and as time goes on, 3rd party applications will as well. So just because a higher-clocked quad beats a lower-clocked octo in photoshop today doesn't mean it will three years from now when you still have the same mac pro but Adobe is on CS 6.

[superpalmtree]

His question was fair and unique due to the new Mac Pro being released.

Instead of wasting time being rude -- why not answer his question or at least ignore his question?

Why do we have to answer this question 500 times?

find our yourself. (hint, close your eyes and randomly click on any topic on the first page of this forum, and then read it)

[BigSky20]

Today we are finally starting to see the GeekBench scores and it apppears that the quad 2.93 is going to be faster then the 2.26 8 core MP. For someone that mainly just does photoshop and dreamweaver and some gaming do you think I would be better off with getting the Quad 2.93 or the 2.26 8 core MP?

.......or 2008 2.8 - 8 core with the ability to add 32 GB of RAM and can upgrade the video card......seems like a better deal.

[mchalebk]

How long do you plan to keep the computer? It is my belief that in a few years most apps will be able to take advantage of multiple cores. If you plan to keep the computer for more than a couple years, you will probably be glad you have the extra cores.

[robinp]

Why do we have to answer this question 500 times?

find our yourself. (hint, close your eyes and randomly click on any topic on the first page of this forum, and then read it)

this isn't as simple as it might have seemed. There appears to be a problem with mental ray and hyperthreading...

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7245202&posted=1#post7245202

[-hh]

the other thing to remember is that Snow Leopard will make better use of more cores, and as time goes on, 3rd party applications will as well. So just because a higher-clocked quad beats a lower-clocked octo in photoshop today doesn't mean it will three years from now when you still have the same mac pro but Adobe is on CS 6.

This is indeed the "Read the Tea Leaves" question...

...although it arguably could be as soon as Photoshop CS5, as Adobe is IIRC currently porting to 64 bit and other OS X stuff....and in sniffing around, it does seem that CS4 "Stonehenge" already had some GPGPU enhancements already in 2008...see link (http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=6203).

The bad news - good news is that since historically Photoshop has been on an 18-24 month release cycle, this would put the release of OS X based Photoshop CS5 to the March-September 2010 time frame.

That's "good" from the aspect that CS5 still has roughly a year from today for OS X's Snow Leopard, Grand Central, OpenCL, and whatever GPGPU technologies ... to be incorporated by Adobe's development team.

But its also "bad" if one is hoping for some more near term "which new Mac Pro?" decision guidance for anyone considering a near term (eg, 2009) purchase, which then puts us 400 days downstream into the old "don't buy - upgrades soon!" merry-go-round.

What would be tremendously helpful ...and not all that unreasonable to ask for... would be a non-committal comment from Adobe on how they think that their Betas seem to be forming up on the basic question. Obviously, it can't be any sort of firm promise, but merely a take on their observations so far.

Maybe after the NDA for the Mac Pros drop...my personal guess would be that late March (24th?) date that's been floating around.


-hh

[OSXconvert]

People seem to forget that Apple and Intel are corporations and their raison d'etre is to make lots of $.

I suspect that one of the goals of getting Snow Leopard out the door is to optimize the performance of the best Mac Pros (the 2009 ones) so that Apple can increase hardware sales. It may be that when Snow Leopard is released, the 2.26 model will beat the 2008 2.8 model in many programs (especially in a SL-optimized version of FCP). But for now it does not appear to be the case. Also, rarely do new OSes perform as well as promised; it takes a revision or two to get things right. So if SL 10.6 was released for WWDC in June, it may take until August to get 10.6.1 out the door and September for 10.6.2. By then the processor prices will have decreased, the PC competition will have been releasing their own benchmarks, and Apple and Intel would have tweaked their designs one more iteration.

Unless rendering time is crucial and you can justify spending >$5K for a decent 2.93 model, I think you are better off waiting at least three to six months to get more proven value. On the other hand, given that Snow Leopard's goal is to stimulate new hardware sales, the value of the 2008 and earlier models will drop even more, especially if Apple only minimally optimizes SL for them.

[-js-]

In two years time, isn't it safe to assume that DDR3 4GB dimms will be a lot cheaper than they are today? And if so, is there any reason to believe that the quad Nehalem Mac Pro couldn't be upgraded to 16 GB of RAM?

[IainH]

In two years time, isn't it safe to assume that DDR3 4GB dimms will be a lot cheaper than they are today? And if so, is there any reason to believe that the quad Nehalem Mac Pro couldn't be upgraded to 16 GB of RAM?

Apple claims that its a hardware limitation - aka. theyve made it so the mobo wont address more than 8GB.

[Marsil]

Apple claims that its a hardware limitation - aka. theyve made it so the mobo wont address more than 8GB.

Do anyone know this - it sound like stupid if it should not accept more ram that 8GB. Im very close to get the Mac Pro 4 core but hesitate because of the ram limit - now it too expensive anyway and I dont really need more the 8 but in a years time it might be handy?

[Igantius]

Do anyone know this - it sound like stupid if it should not accept more ram that 8GB. Im very close to get the Mac Pro 4 core but hesitate because of the ram limit - now it too expensive anyway and I dont really need more the 8 but in a years time it might be handy?

Until we get someone to test, it's just guesswork at this stage - but I would love to know.

IainH may be on the money - but as has been pointed out on other threads, with other machines, what Apple has said and what was possible were two different things.

Although Apple always said the non-SR C2D MacBooks could take a maximum of 2GB, you could install 4GB (but only 3.3GB was accessible by the machine). It was quite fun here on MacRumors, people quoting Apple's specs and arguing with people that had installed this, that it couldn't be done.

There were a lot of theories about this (e.g. Apple not wanting to confuse the consumer or worried that people were going to pay for RAM they couldn't actually use) - it did occur to me that Apple might have been using this a way of suggesting a larger differential between the MBPs, although it could gave been a combination of factors and this was just a 'bonus' for Apple.

I stressed 'might' as I've no evidence to support this.... I just have a base cynical mind! That said, I do think that the 8GB limit is going to help sway people opting for a octo machine instead...

*edit* Oops, sorry! IainH merely stated what Apple's line is, which I didn't reflect in my post.

[netdog]

While it has been mentioned by others, I want to emphasize that in my 'reading the tea leaves', these machines have been designed with Snow Leopard as the envisioned OS rather than Leopard.

While it will be great when things like Adobe CS are designed to specifically run on multiple cores, I expect that Snow will farm apps to their own cores thus making pretty much any app faster depending on the number of cores and the number of applications open. I'd wouldn't be surprised to find that memory management also has its own core.

Honestly, I'd wait until Snow Leopard before deciding if you don't know whether you want a 4-core or 8-core for best performance. Benchmarks and tests run under 10.5 may very well mislead in regards to how these machine will compare under 10.6.

[barefeats]

Today we are finally starting to see the GeekBench scores and it apppears that the quad 2.93 is going to be faster then the 2.26 8 core MP. For someone that mainly just does photoshop and dreamweaver and some gaming do you think I would be better off with getting the Quad 2.93 or the 2.26 8 core MP?

We tested both the 2.26GHz octo-core and 2.93GHz quad-core Mac Pro using the 64-bit version of Cinebench. The 2.26 is faster.

Now, only some Photoshop filters are MP aware, so the benefit of the extra cores will depend on which ones you use. More important, though, is the memory. The octo-core 2.26 has more memory slots. You can expand up to 16GB vs only 8GB on the quad-core 2.93. It's possible that 4GB modules will work in the quad-core but they are going to cost you $1200 per module.

Memory is key because, Photoshop is able to use more than the 3GB memory cache defined in preferences. If you overflow that and there is memory to spare, OS X will allocate unused memory as a virtual scratch volume. Now maybe 8GB is enough for your use if you edit smaller files with few layers. But if you are editing RAW photos with lots of layers and lots of history states, you can use up the 8GB in a hurry.

[-js-]

Apple claims that its a hardware limitation - aka. theyve made it so the mobo wont address more than 8GB.

Where have they said this? Links?

[xgman]

I feel like the 2009 2.9 quad with 8gb would be a pretty nice and fast box. I have a 2008 quad 3.2 and would love to have the faster memory architecture that the 2009 has, but it seems that I would have to go the whole quad 2.9 overly expensive route to get there. On normal stuff though, I wonder if I would notice a performance increase at all with a quad 2.9 2009 vs my octo 3.2, both using 8gb ram? I'm thinking probably on non intensive stuff that doesn't need 8 cores, but probably not by any significant amount. We need an complete comparison chart to all of the various 2008/2009 combinations for this sort of thing.