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Advice: Mac Pro Nehalem or Hapertown

G

gmen01

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2009
2
0
Hi there,

Need some advice on buying my next mac.

Situation:
Now in possesion of a Imac Core 2 duo 3,06 Ghz - 4 GB RAM - Nvidia GS 8800 GT - 750 GB harddisk

Profession:
Graphic designer - webdesigner - webbuilder

Apps that are open when working:
Adobe CS4 Dreamweaver
Adobe CS4 Photoshop
Adobe CS4 Indesign
(sometimes Adobe Flash or Adobe After Effects)
Firefox 5-10 tabs)
Mail
VM Ware - Windows **** (for testing in IE7 en IE8)
Word
Local Server (MAMP)
Navicat
Mysql administrator
Itunes (always some music when working)
skype
Filezilla

Problem:
Imac doesn't hold in anymore...System slow down and does not have enough power to run all those prog's smoothly... Mac 'blocks' several times....

Question:
Looking to buy a Mac Pro (and selling the Imac)
Don't have the budget to buy the Octo core 2,9...

But are hesitating between:
1) 1 Quad core Nehalem 2,9
2) 2 Quad (octo core) core Nehalem 2,26
3) 2 Quad (octo core) core Hapertown 2,8 (with DDR2 ram)

Which option would you advice?

Personaly I thought buying the Quad core Nehalem 2,9 -> that because CS4 uses much off the graphics card (would buy a EVGA Geforce GTX 285 - 1GB RAM).

Thx already for your help

Greetings

G!
 
Personally I would go for the 2008 Octad. You would maximise bang for the bucks and still get a machine that will be able to run everything Apple will bring in the near future. It got EFI64 so it will run Kernel64 as well. The Nehalem Quad is marginally faster in single threaded apps but much slower in multi threaded, which wouldn't be so nice longer term.
 
I was in exactly the same situation as you are now. After a lot of research, I decided to go with the Quad Core 2.66 (instead of the Octo), the 4870 ATI card, and save the difference for a couple of good displays and other stuff (extra RAM, internal HDD, webcam, new UPC, etc).

I'm a business consultant - I do web development, some audio and video... What I found is that in the mid-term, the web dev apps - including CS3 and CS4 (some say even CS5) will not take full advantage of all 8 cores to justify the extra expense. All threads and people I consulted - including the Apple Store - agreed that an 8-core would be a total overblow...

PLUS, me coming from the latest high-end iMac, the entry-level Quad Core with the ATI card would more than double the power I'm used to work with... I figured that in 2-3 years, IF the applications I use are re-written to take full advantage of multiple processors/cores, then I would consider upgrading... but by then, even if I buy the 8-core now, there will be better technology anyway! There's no such thing as "future proof".

The Quad should arrive this week... we'll see how it turns out.

There are a lot of threads about this - ranging from the apps that take advantage of multiple cores, to the eternal discussion of clock speed vs number of processors. There seems to be an agreement about octos are great for rendering pro video, high end massive multitasking and scientific apps, but for the rest apps, higher clock speeds are better.

Anyway- my 2 cents...

Good luck!
 
Thx already for your advice and messages!!!

Hereby the prices:

Quad Nehalem 2,6: 2406 EUR
Quad Nehalem 2,9: 2843 EUR
OctoCore Hapertown: 2,8: 2499 EUR

Is it more advised to buy the Nehalem Quad or better the Hapertown OCTO?

Very difficult choice!! Can the hapertown run x64? How many Ram can it Max have?
 
Don't forget the biggest negative about the quad Nehalem MPs: only 4 memory slots, so you'll be into high priced 4GB sticks real quickly if you want to expand memory. Judging by the OP's apps memory will be as important as processor. I'd go with the octo 2.8 in your situation.....
 
artivideo.nl said:
Any word on the successor of the octa core 2.9 Nehalem??

What will be the code name of the successor and what will be improved.

I need lots of rendering speed !
Click to expand...

Erm, as in, the next line of processors in the MacPro? Its called Gulftown, its Nehalem's die-shrink, and maybe will have 6 cores.

I recommend this in future.

fandsw said:
Don't forget the biggest negative about the quad Nehalem MPs: only 4 memory slots, so you'll be into high priced 4GB sticks real quickly if you want to expand memory. Judging by the OP's apps memory will be as important as processor. I'd go with the octo 2.8 in your situation.....
Click to expand...

The price here is the most reasonable I've seen. Nothing like Newegg's expensive 3x4GB kits that range into the thousands.
 
gmen01 said:
Quad Nehalem 2,6: 2406 EUR
Quad Nehalem 2,9: 2843 EUR
OctoCore Hapertown: 2,8: 2499 EUR

Is it more advised to buy the Nehalem Quad or better the Hapertown OCTO?
Click to expand...

fandsw said:
Don't forget the biggest negative about the quad Nehalem MPs: only 4 memory slots, so you'll be into high priced 4GB sticks real quickly if you want to expand memory. Judging by the OP's apps memory will be as important as processor. I'd go with the octo 2.8 in your situation.....
Click to expand...

Good point... also, in some of these threads the previous version of Octo MacPro vs present Quad was discussed... the general consensus was that the past generation of Octos were a better deal for now, if you could get them refurbished and at a lower price (which sadly, is not my case, hence I went for the new Quad).

Another good solution to massive RAM (in case you go with the Quad and its RAM limit) is a good-fast scratch disk in one of the HD slots.

It's a tough decision... check the benchmarks at Barefeats and Macworld.

Good luck!
 
diazj3 said:
I was in exactly the same situation as you are now. After a lot of research, I decided to go with the Quad Core 2.66 (instead of the Octo), the 4870 ATI card, and save the difference for a couple of good displays and other stuff (extra RAM, internal HDD, webcam, new UPC, etc).

I'm a business consultant - I do web development, some audio and video... What I found is that in the mid-term, the web dev apps - including CS3 and CS4 (some say even CS5) will not take full advantage of all 8 cores to justify the extra expense. All threads and people I consulted - including the Apple Store - agreed that an 8-core would be a total overblow...

PLUS, me coming from the latest high-end iMac, the entry-level Quad Core with the ATI card would more than double the power I'm used to work with... I figured that in 2-3 years, IF the applications I use are re-written to take full advantage of multiple processors/cores, then I would consider upgrading... but by then, even if I buy the 8-core now, there will be better technology anyway! There's no such thing as "future proof".

The Quad should arrive this week... we'll see how it turns out.

There are a lot of threads about this - ranging from the apps that take advantage of multiple cores, to the eternal discussion of clock speed vs number of processors. There seems to be an agreement about octos are great for rendering pro video, high end massive multitasking and scientific apps, but for the rest apps, higher clock speeds are better.

Anyway- my 2 cents...

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I was price-checking last week. On Apple's site, admittedly with student ID:

* single Quad core at 2.93
* 8GB RAM
* Radeon 4970
* 640GB HD

= $3154

or

* dual Quad core at 2.26
* 6GB RAM
* Radeon 4970
* 640GB HD

= $3179

$25 difference is not that much.

Now if I kept to 2.66GHz for the single quad unit, shave off $450. Then we've got a story, and does a 270MHz speed difference mean anything? But if one will be doing lots of rendering, or rendering a big project while working on another one, the extra $475 (student) for the 8-core may very well be worth it.

Quad core can still do a lot. But dual quad core shares data faster under needy situations. Not to mention, with 8 RAM slots, it's cheaper to upgrade RAM in the future. 4GB-density RAM modules will always be rather more expensive than 2GB modules...

Nixing the faster video on the dual quad makes it $300 more than the single quad with the better video card.

$300 for processing power that benefits nicely under certain conditions and, again, most modern apps WILL make use of at least two cores...

Then again, $300... one would have to do a LOT to really make use of the dual-quad's capabilities...

http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html

I still refer to that article. Even at 2.26GHz, the dual quad is NO slouch, and it's far less expensive to upgrade RAM to 16GB... and after effects and virtual machines will eat RAM for breakfast... After Effects will readily consume 8GB...

http://www.macworld.com/article/139507/2009/03/macpro2009.html

Macworld's review has good points too.

And those tests are base-model figures.

Maybe a single quad is the way to go; upping the video card only as needed.
 
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