Upcoming 12-Core Xeon CPU Destined for Apple's New Mac Pro Posts Impressive Benchmark Scores

smetvid said:

I am still amazed how little people understand about processor speeds between generations. How can anybody expect better than a 30% performance increase between twelve cores on this generation and twelve cores on the previous generation? That is all CPU's ever gain in preformance between genrations when you factor in amount of cores and clock speed.

Click to expand...

You seem to be forgetting that the current Mac Pros are not the "previous generation" but their CPUs are three years old. 30% might seem like a lot, but the previous Mac Pros were dual CPU machines - the upgrade should have been a significant performance increase.

smetvid said:

The big deal with this machine is not the raw CPU speed but the fact that it can do tasks 30% faster at half the size and half the power with half the fan noise. The other big deal is the dual GPU's which is where a lot of processing is moving in pro applications. Both FCPX and Adobe Premiere Pro see massive performance gains with better GPUs. By having two monster video cards the hope is that most of the applications used on this new machine will make great use of off loading a lot of processing to the video cards. That is where you will see 50% of the performance boost from this machine. The CPU itself is just ok and yes it would have been that much better with a dual CPU configuration. Apple is banking on the dual GPUs to really matter where pros need it. This also happens to be the area that will really jack up the price, fast.

Click to expand...

GPU compute is a nice dream, but for today's applications, it's mostly irrelevant. Yes, there are some apps which can take advantage of it, but in most cases you will see bigger improvements from better CPU performance.

spaz8 said:

Agreed. I run a few apps that probably can deal with 64 threads, and scale very well. But the vast vast majority of software doesn't know what to do with more than 4 threads. Look at all the Adobe apps, I think they can deal with 8 in the best cases in the absolute latest versions. In the present and immediate future the majority of users benefit from less cores at higher frequency. The majority of software needs to catch up, and software developers may even turn to the GPU for that. In another year or 2 there will probably be 16 cores on a single CPU.

Click to expand...

Part of the reason I buy a high end system is so that I am not limited to a single task at a time. A quad-core system might be fine if you are just doing some Photoshop work, but not if you are working in Photoshop while doing video encoding or rendering in the background.

tallscot said:

The current Mac Pro can have 4 internal hard drives and 2 internal optical drives. The new Mac Pro has 1 SSD hard drive. Soooo, that means you would have 5 cables, not 20.

Click to expand...

Don't forget power. I hate dealing with external drives - especially 3.5" ones.

Another thing people may not have considered is that hard drives are loud when they are outside a PC case. Using external storage for multiple drives like that sucks.

Why waste $ on anything Apple?

Unbeknownst to their incredibly gullible consumer base, all Apple products are are parts that became outdated 5-8 years ago, put into a new case, with a really crappy Unix-based OS, that purposely wastes resources (MAC OS X) installed on them. Even if a 12-Core Intel CPU is placed into the new, Mac Pro, the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1 processing core is Windows 7. Windows 7 can use up to 2 physical CPUs, up to 144 Cores, and up to 192GB of DDR-3. MAC OS X can use 1 physical CPU, 1 processing core, and 8GB of DDR-3.

SecuriTRON 7 said:

Unbeknownst to their incredibly gullible consumer base, all Apple products are are parts that became outdated 5-8 years ago, put into a new case, with a really crappy Unix-based OS, that purposely wastes resources (MAC OS X) installed on them. Even if a 12-Core Intel CPU is placed into the new, Mac Pro, the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1 processing core is Windows 7. Windows 7 can use up to 2 physical CPUs, up to 144 Cores, and up to 192GB of DDR-3. MAC OS X can use 1 physical CPU, 1 processing core, and 8GB of DDR-3.

Click to expand...

Wow really weak first troll post. Much better to start with how you have been an apple fan forever and spent over $50k on apple gear and this new MP is a slap in the face and you are going to go build your own cluster.

djjclark said:

Wow really weak first troll post. Much better to start with how you have been an apple fan forever and spent over $50k on apple gear and this new MP is a slap in the face and you are going to go build your own cluster.

Click to expand...

That wasn't Troll post, it was a fact. I absolutely loathe Apple, and would never spend a single cent on their overpriced junk. If you actually know anything about the inner workings of computer systems, you wouldn't have even tried your extremely poor attempt at discrediting me. The statistics to back up my claim are both in my post, and publicly available to anyone with an internet connection, and the intelligence to research their computing systems. If you use Apple products, you're being ripped off. You can spend the same amount you spend on an Apple product on parts to build your own system, and wind up having hundreds to thousands of times more capability.

SecuriTRON 7 said:

That wasn't Troll post, it was a fact. I absolutely loathe Apple, and would never spend a single cent on their overpriced junk. If you actually know anything about the inner workings of computer systems, you wouldn't have even tried your extremely poor attempt at discrediting me. The statistics to back up my claim are both in my post, and publicly available to anyone with an internet connection, and the intelligence to research their computing systems. If you use Apple products, you're being ripped off. You can spend the same amount you spend on an Apple product on parts to build your own system, and wind up having hundreds to thousands of times more capability.

Click to expand...

As much as I share your loathing of Apple, I don't understand the factual basis of your comment "the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1 processing core is Windows 7".
I've seen FreeBSD run on 24 physical CPU's!!! Mac OS X shares much of FreeBSD. Apple just have to compile a kernel to use more physical CPU's and cores. Considering they don't ship hardware with more than 2 physical CPU's they probably don't compile with more than this, all be told though, OS X does use more than 1 CPU and all the cores available in their hardware. I do recall Apple's AIX Unix running on 4 RISC Power PC CPU's back in the early 90's. Plenty of years before your Windows 7, and probably before you were born, by the sound of your temperament.

This comment is pure trolology at it's finest, "MAC OS X can use 1 physical CPU, 1 processing core, and 8GB of DDR-3" There is very little of statistical credibility in your post. oh and typing "MAC" gives you up as a troll.

drayon said:

As much as I share your loathing of Apple, I don't understand the factual basis of your comment "the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1 processing core is Windows 7".
I've seen FreeBSD run on 24 physical CPU's!!! Mac OS X is shares much of FreeBSD. Apple just have to compile a kernel to use more physical CPU's and cores. Considering they don't ship hardware with more than 2 physical CPU's they probably don't compile with more than this, all be told though, OS X does use more than 1 CPU and all the cores available in their hardware. I do recall Apple's AIX Unix running on 4 RISC Power PC CPU's back in the early 90's. Plenty of years before your Windows 7, and probably before you we born, by the sound of your temperament.

This comment is pure trolology at it's finest, "MAC OS X can use 1 physical CPU, 1 processing core, and 8GB of DDR-3" There is very little of statistical credibility in your post.

Click to expand...

Let me rephrase this, the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1, physical CPU, that is actually worth running on a system that powerful, is Windows 7. OS X does NOT use all the cores in the CPU of the system on which it is installed. The default settings of the BIOS in ANY Motherboard is one core per CPU. Windows 7 is the only OS with the ability to utilize more than one core in a CPU, from within the OS itself. In order to use more than one core per CPU in any other OS, you have to modify this, from within your BIOS. In Apple Motherboards, this is not even possible.

SecuriTRON 7 said:

FreeBSD and OS X are both Unix-Based Operating System's, of course they share code, but that's the Unix Kernel. OS X IS limited to 1 Physical CPU. There is no debating this. If I'm wrong, then show me proof of OS X using more than 1 Physical CPU.

Click to expand...

No it fsckin ISN'T, there is no debating this with you, because you're stupidly WRONG, about as wrong as the earth being claimed as flat.
I can't be fsckin bothered trying to prove anything to you, you said you did the research, look for yourself and harder this time. Here's one hint, on your 27" LCD, tap the text "Handbrake Mac Pro CPU usage" into the stupid Bing search in your stupid Windows 8.

Regardless, Apple products are still a colossal waste of $. If you buy any sort of Apple system, the most Hardware you can get is a Dual-Core CPU and 8GB of DDR-3. Furthermore, all apple products are chip-locked, and have embedded CPU's, and in some cases, even embedded RAM. This completely eliminates the potential to improve upon a prebuilt system. I purchased a Toshiba Satellite, four years ago, for $700, and it's still far more powerful than the most powerful system manufactured by Apple, to date, which costs well over $1,000, now.

Click to expand...

blah blah blah, Fatcat & Humphrey said goodnight hours ago so it's well past your bed time. Keep the trolls away from the dexies!!!

Beta Particle said:

Don't forget power. I hate dealing with external drives - especially 3.5" ones.

Another thing people may not have considered is that hard drives are loud when they are outside a PC case. Using external storage for multiple drives like that sucks.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I did forget about the power cables. Good point.

I only use SSD drives for my video, now, because of the huge speed increase. I use a traditional hard drive for Time Machine and it's very quiet.

The loudest thing on my Mac pro with 4 hard drives is the video card fan.

Overall, I agree that having a new tower that has internal storage is optimal over having a non-exapandable unit. That's a no-brainer. I've upgraded my 2008 Mac Pro's video card twice. So 3 years from now when there is a new GPU that is twice as fast as the one in the upcoming Mac Pro, you will be screwed.

Beta Particle said:

You seem to be forgetting that the current Mac Pros are not the "previous generation" but their CPUs are three years old. 30% might seem like a lot, but the previous Mac Pros were dual CPU machines - the upgrade should have been a significant performance increase.

Click to expand...

Well, some of the previous generation were dual cpu, and some were single. And it's kind of sad but that 30 percent boost over three years is the best intel has been able to do. There are tons of PC users with older machines who still aren't bothering to upgrade because there just hasn't been that much of a boost. And much of that is because intel is making the big money on mobile devices, so they are putting way more effort into reducing power consumption than boosting processing power.

Beta Particle said:

You seem to be forgetting that the current Mac Pros are not the "previous generation" but their CPUs are three years old. 30% might seem like a lot, but the previous Mac Pros were dual CPU machines - the upgrade should have been a significant performance increase.

GPU compute is a nice dream, but for today's applications, it's mostly irrelevant. Yes, there are some apps which can take advantage of it, but in most cases you will see bigger improvements from better CPU performance.

Part of the reason I buy a high end system is so that I am not limited to a single task at a time. A quad-core system might be fine if you are just doing some Photoshop work, but not if you are working in Photoshop while doing video encoding or rendering in the background.

Don't forget power. I hate dealing with external drives - especially 3.5" ones.

Another thing people may not have considered is that hard drives are loud when they are outside a PC case. Using external storage for multiple drives like that sucks.

Click to expand...

This has nothing to do with how good of a machine as the MP is but what kind of processors Intel puts out. It all comes down to the Intel CPU and the what GPU is used. That is all that really matters with a computer give or take a couple of percent here and there.

Like has been mentioned above CPU advancements are just not there anymore. Everybody is so focused on mobile that the highend CPUs are being a bit neglected. They are still advancing but not at the insane raw speed we experienced in the past.

You also seem to forget who this machine is aimed at. Professionals. Professional software is highly optimized for the GPU. Adobe products, CAD software, 3D animation software including the free Blender, FCPX, Aperture, color correction applications like Davinci, media encoding applications and the list goes on. FCPX alone sees massive render speed boosts with a better GPU. This is no longer a theory or dream but a reality most pros have been living with now for years. Premiere Pro can quadruple in timeline performance with a good GPU.

These are the types of tools most likely to be used on the new MP. Not web browsing and Keynote. Keynote may even be assisted by the GPU now.

Like I mentioned the new MP could have been 200% + faster if they would have used a dual socket system. This is how Xeons have always worked. The real advantage was a dual socket motherboard. The single sockets were not all that much different than a good core i7 quad core. In fact a solid fast core i7 beats most of the low clocked. This time it is really impressive that a single socket can actually have twelve cores. So I guess from that perspective Intel has made massive advancements. It is Apple that chose to limit the machine to a single socket design.

mabhatter said:

Because intel charges crazy money for not much more performance. What they DIDN'T SHOW on their graphs was the COST of the Xeon chips vs the i7. Intel charges WAY more for the slower Xeon, and about TRIPPLE for the motherboard hardware to hold it.

Complain about Apple all you want, but Intel is the one dragging feet here. They haven't releases useful new Xeon chips in years, to the point the mobile i7 chips are "almost" as good for regular users. All you really gain using Xeon is the high-end interfaces... The wide PCIE and PCIX busses, access to multiple Gigabit nics, support for Fibre Channel and SCSI RAID boards, support for large memory sets... All stuff that intel demands crazy premium prices just to SUPPORT, so you can pay EXTRA for all the Add-on cards that are $500+ each.

Apple's Mac Pro woes are more about how Intel protects their expensive server business by preventing "desktop" chips that are faster from access to the high-end IO cards and power management needed to be "real servers". It's remote power tools, lights out management, BIOS for RAID cards, etc that Intel has pulled the wiring right out of the i7 chips for, and forbids cheap manufactures from adding back in. Without that stuff, your super fast gaming box is just a shiny toy to somebody building a data center. Or the difference between a zippy sports car and semi truck for moving stuff down the information super highway.

Click to expand...

Its true, the margins are much fatter on xeon products, but comparing i7 to xeon isn't exactly a fair comparison. You gain a lot more than high end interfaces. The most cores you can get in an i7 is 4. With these new chips (even if they are two gens behind at this point), you could have up to 12 in a single socket configuration, and up to 48 in a quad-config. If you're just using iTunes and Safari, i7 is more than enough, but if you can use the cores, they're worth it.

wiz329 said:

Its true, the margins are much fatter on xeon products, but comparing i7 to xeon isn't exactly a fair comparison. You gain a lot more than high end interfaces. The most cores you can get in an i7 is 4. With these new chips (even if they are two gens behind at this point), you could have up to 12 in a single socket configuration, and up to 48 in a quad-config. If you're just using iTunes and Safari, i7 is more than enough, but if you can use the cores, they're worth it.

Click to expand...

Actually, the Xeon E3-* are priced almost the same as i7....

SecuriTRON 7 said:

Let me rephrase this, the only Operating System that currently exists, that is capable of using more than 1, physical CPU, that is actually worth running on a system that powerful, is Windows 7. OS X does NOT use all the cores in the CPU of the system on which it is installed. The default settings of the BIOS in ANY Motherboard is one core per CPU. Windows 7 is the only OS with the ability to utilize more than one core in a CPU, from within the OS itself. In order to use more than one core per CPU in any other OS, you have to modify this, from within your BIOS. In Apple Motherboards, this is not even possible.

Click to expand...

Are you kidding me? Are you saying the OS kernel itself doesn't use more than 1 core, or nothing on OS X uses more than 1 core?

How on earth would Apple sell multi-core machines if the software didn't take advantage of it? Unless activity monitor is flat out lying to me, my machine is definitely using more than 1 core.

And what's the BS about not using more than 8 GB of RAM? Mavericks can address 128GB for sure.