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32GB in the Mac Pro: Officially!

slughead

slughead

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 28, 2004
3,107
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http://barefeats.com/octopro7.html

Trans International has come to the rescue of professional Mac Pro users. They are now shipping 4GB FB-DIMM modules for the Mac Pro (in addition to 2GB and 1GB modules).

They sent us samples to try. First of all, they work great. Thirty-two gigabytes of memory. I remember when that was considered a respectable sized hard drive, by crackey!

Do they run hot? No. To our surprise, they ran just as cool as the coolest running 2GB modules we've tested. However, we did notice that the man inlet and exhaust fans in the Mac Pro's CPU bay ran faster.

Normally those fans idle at 600RPM. And when you run a CPU intensive task, they ramp up to 1200RPM. With eight 4GB FB-DIMMs installed, they idled at 1000RPM and ramped up to 1800RPM when we rendered with Compressor 3 in Virtual Cluster mode. Ditto for other CPU intensive, memory grabbing apps.

The GOOD NEWS: That means that the SMC firmware is doing its job. It's adjusting the fan speed to keep the memory cool.

The potential BAD NEWS: The noise level of your Mac Pro is going to be higher. That's not a big deal unless you are doing audio recording in your lab. Of course, the audio production labs I've visited typically put their Power Macs and Mac Pros in a sound proof box or chamber. There's a company in Nashville who makes them for music recording studios. There's also one on the West Coast. Other studios put the Mac Pro in an adjacent room and run the cables through the wall.
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LMFAO! They don't run any hotter than a 2gb dimm, only thing is your fans spin way the hell up. What a subjective review.
 
Jasonbot said:
Doesn't the cost of 32Gb's of RAM cost more than an 8 core mac pro without any RAM?
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At the current going rate, 32GB will run you up just over $5000 USD..I'll stick with 2GB stick upgrades with my Mac Pro when it arrives. 16GB will be plenty fast in the future, 32 would be insane.
 
The highest I would ever recommend (for now) is 8GB. 32GB is just off the charts (for now), maybe in 5-7 years and beyond 32GB would be necessary.
 
macenforcer said:
LMFAO! They don't run any hotter than a 2gb dimm, only thing is your fans spin way the hell up. What a subjective review.
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it actually makes sense..they dont RUN hotter, they put out more heat. They would run hotter if the heat dispenser couldnt lose the heat. so..the RAM moduals temperture is the same, but the air in the MP box has a higher temperature.

course maybe u knew that and thats why you said that..

Brad
 
macenforcer said:
LMFAO! They don't run any hotter than a 2gb dimm, only thing is your fans spin way the hell up. What a subjective review.
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I believe Rob made it clear that was the case: he was saying that they put out more heat, but there's no danger.

What's subjective about that?

Also, even if he were 'lying', that wouldn't be 'subjective'. Subjective means opinion (which can never really be proven 'wrong'). You keep using that word--I don't think it means what you think it means.
 
Would you actually notice much difference between, say, 4GB and 32GB at the moment?

On a side issue, I notice in Vista you can use certain USB memory sticks at "RAM Boosters" (or whatever). Anyone used this feature? Any good?
 
Digitaljim said:
Would you actually notice much difference between, say, 4GB and 32GB at the moment?

On a side issue, I notice in Vista you can use certain USB memory sticks at "RAM Boosters" (or whatever). Anyone used this feature? Any good?
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I think if you used apps that NEED that much RAM you would see a difference.

On a side note, I've used ready boost. It didn't do anything noticeable but then again I haven't done benchmarks to see. Basically readyboost just acts as virtual memory (like on your HDD) the only difference is that it becomes faster to access as it's flash.
 
Jasonbot said:
I think if you used apps that NEED that much RAM you would see a difference.
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Well, sorta. It depends on a couple of things:

1. How many apps are you running?
2. Are your apps 64-bit?

As far as I know, all OS X apps are still 32-bit (I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that one). As long as that's true, they're only going to be able to allocate 4G as it stands, anyway. Where the massive amounts of memory come into play is if you're running more than one memory-hungry app. Then having 8G or 16G (or 32... ) would be really handy.

But, if it's one pig of an app and nothing else, then for the time being, you're not going to see a boost with more than 4G.

jas
 
PS CS3 allows max use of 3GB RAM so I gave it all; now Aperture is very RAM hungry when importing large amount of images. I noticed I was having pageouts et all when indexing thumbnails of a couple thousand images (this with 7gigs)

My experience so far is that 4 gigs is plenty for most photo work -- even intensive -- unless you're upsizing for printing murals or working on an unusual amount of layers.

I don't know about video; I guess the super pros in the movies industry must give good use to huge amounts of RAM
 
ram madness

tribe3 said:
PS CS3 allows max use of 3GB RAM so I gave it all; now Aperture is very RAM hungry when importing large amount of images. I noticed I was having pageouts et all when indexing thumbnails of a couple thousand images (this with 7gigs)

My experience so far is that 4 gigs is plenty for most photo work -- even intensive -- unless you're upsizing for printing murals or working on an unusual amount of layers.

what about virtual memory buffering? as i understand it, you can use that plugin in photoshop cs3 to enable the program to address as much ram as you have before it writes to disk. anyone familiar with this? i only have 3Gb ram so far so i haven't tried it.
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I doubt that many will be buying 32gb. mainly because its overkill. For an above average user. Say someone who wants to burn DVDs, play a movie, edit a movie, and edit some raw photos, something like 8-10 gigs would be more than enough.
 
ob81 said:
I doubt that many will be buying 32gb. mainly because its overkill. For an above average user. Say someone who wants to burn DVDs, play a movie, edit a movie, and edit some raw photos, something like 8-10 gigs would be more than enough.
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4-6GB should be plenty fast for those tasks, I'm going to start my Mac Pro with 3GB to get a feel for what I need in the future. My plans are to add another 4GB in 4 months to take the machine to 7GB. 2GB sticks seem the best value at the moment, allowing you to take your Mac Pro to 16GB of RAM.
 
Glenn Wolsey said:
4-6GB should be plenty fast for those tasks, I'm going to start my Mac Pro with 3GB to get a feel for what I need in the future. My plans are to add another 4GB in 4 months to take the machine to 7GB. 2GB sticks seem the best value at the moment, allowing you to take your Mac Pro to 16GB of RAM.
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Well individually 3-4 gigs would be more than enough for those tasks, but I was speaking in terms of doing them all at once.
You bring up a good point about purchasing RAM for your Mac Pro. You almost have to go with 2gb sicks if you want to upgrade without having to remove the 512k or 1gb sticks one would have in already.
 
overcast said:
If you actually NEED 32GB of RAM, $5000 is NOT painful. That's like saying, $75,000 for a race engine is painful, because you don't need it for driving back and forth to work.
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I know, but I'm just saying!

Nothing is painful if you're stinking rich, or have a great income. It is painful if you can't afford it. :)
 
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