Is the current quad-core Mac Pro even worth buying?

[Umbongo]

I believe that url might not offer the best insight when talking about a potential refresh from the Westmere series Xeon to the SandyBridge E series Xeon. Rather than looking at the i7 980x you should look at the x5680. For SandyBridge rather than looking at the 3930k you should look at the E5 1650. It paints a slightly different picture.

This is another synthetic benchmark to consider but it shows aprox. 37% increase. http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5680+%40+3.33GHz

Who knows what will actually be released... if anything. Just a thought.

The two I linked are consumer versions (i.e same performance) of the two Xeons he asked about and show real world usage which is a much better example than PassMark. As you will see from your link the i7 980, i7 980x, W3680 and X5680 all have the same performance as do the and 3930K, E-5 1650 because they share specifications. It doesn't much matter which you compare.

 

[sjaxon]

24gb 2 hex 2 radeon 5,1 -- what do do?

Well, I feel I have stumbled upon the right forum here. Lots of great thoughts about the Mac Pros. I am trying to decide whether I should keep mine or sell it. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but my experience matches what I'm reading on here -- the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the virtual windows 7 machine gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I sell it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

 

[Nostromo]

Well, I feel I have stumbled upon the right forum here. Lots of great thoughts about the Mac Pros. I am trying to decide whether I should keep mine or sell it. It has 2 6 core 2.66's, 24 gigs of RAM, 5TB on 3 drives, two radeon 5770's, about a year of applecare remaining.

It's great to use, but my experience matches what I'm reading on here -- the speed, even though the CPU's score over 7000 passmark scores (and there are two of those), doesn't feel as fast as my i5 with 16gb of ram and one nvidia card (forget which one). In Photoshop, the zoom is super smooth on the i5, and jumpy on the mac Pro. Apps don't load too fast, and the machine is slow in starting up.

However, the virtual windows 7 machine gets a higher windows experience score than my fast i5 desktop and faster than my fast i7 laptop (both score over 7000 passmark scores). Maybe there aren't many apps that actually make use of all the cores.

Should I sell it? I know what they retail for, but what is this machine really worth? What would be an ideal purpose for this mac?

Thanks...looking forward to reading what you all have to say about this.

Now would be a good time, just before the upgrade. Some people still think there will be no upgrade. This will increase pricing, and fewer people might sell their Mac Pros, especially the more powerful, more recent ones.

When Final Cut Studio 7 had been discontinued for a while at the introduction of FCP X, people could sell their FCPS 7 for up to $ 1400 on e-Bay.