Anyone else disappointed by the 2.26ghz 8 core Nehalem Mac Pro's performance?

[MovieCutter]

Thanks for your input. I have the 2.26 ordered. The thing is my tasks are pretty much, Vista X64, Office, QuickBooks, VMWare, Photoshop, nothing real extreme. If the Quad would hold it's value decent I'd rather have that for the possible performance boost for single threaded apps....or is that just stupid? $$$ is not the nagging issue....I just for once thought maybe 8 is overkill for this computer. Also: I'm an online teaching administrator, I teach online courses, etc...I use Mac's so I can accept any assignment format, etc.. thanks.

You're talking smack about Pros who buy a 2.8Ghz Octo Mac and all you could afford is the 2.26? For all your talk, I'd expect you'd pick up the 2.93 like the rest of us real Pros...have fun with that. I picked up a 2.8 Octo Mac, 8GB RAM, 300GB 15k drive+750GB, 8800GPU, and 23" display for $1900 today...bad call? Not in the slightest. That being said, I also have a 2.93Ghz Octo on the way...thanks for your input about how buying a 2.8 Octo would be stupid though.

 

[VirtualRain]

I haven't read this whole thread yet, but I'm curious what you think would be the best way to spend $4-5K on one of the new Mac Pros. My primary focus is music and in particular Ableton Live. I was about to pull the trigger on the low end stock Octocore, but now I'm having some second thoughts. What would you recommend?

It's hard to imagine that Ableton live would be highly multi-threaded. I would research how threaded this app is first. If it can only utilize a couple of cores or a few threads, then why get an Octocore? A faster 2.93 Quad would be more beneficial.

 

[MadisonTate]

I wouldn't say I'm disappointed by the offerings at all but yes the 2.26GHz mac pro definitely makes me feel very happy about my month and a half old 2008 3.2Ghz mac pro.

My analysis...

2.26 GHz Mac Pro (2009). A bit cheaper but just as fast as the 3.2GHz at multi-core processes but MUCH slower at single threaded processes by a considerable margin. For single threaded apps you're missing out on the raw clock speed of the 3.2GHz and these apps will suffer. My recommendation would be to hunt down a second hand or refurb 2008 model if you can find one. You'd be able to get the same multi-core performance of the new 2.26 unit and enjoy the extra speed available to single core apps.

2.66 GHz Mac Pro (2009). A full £1120 more expensive than the 2.26! That's a LOT of cash that could be used for the likes of more memory, faster hard drives (SSD), a 30" cinema display etc. Multi-core performance is much better than the 2008 3.2Ghz but single threaded process are still a tiny bit short of the 3.2GHz... all for an extra £1120! This is a FAST machine if you take advantage of multi-core apps. Much better than the 3.2GHz but still a little short on single-threaded performance for the price. Unless you use a lot of multi-core apps this isn't worth the additional £1120 imho. The money would be better spent on ram and/or fast drives.

2.93 GHz Mac Pro (2009). It's a monster. Much faster than the 3.2GHz Mac Pro in multi-core apps by a good margin and faster for single threaded apps also. This is a powerhouse but this super computer comes at a HUGE price. In the UK this config is DOUBLE what I paid for my 3.2GHz 2008 mac pro.

Basically you have to look at the software you use. If you're running efficient multi-core apps that USE all cores properly and time is money the 2.93 will pay for itself in no time. An amazing choice if you can afford it.

At the opposite end of the spectrum you have the 2.26GHz dilema as stated above. This machine will probably be the main choice for most users. The additional cost of the 2.66 and 2.93 is substantial and you really have to balance your needs over wants to make sure you don't just waste money.

My view is maybe slightly biased since I just splashed on a 3.2GHz mac pro just over 6 weeks ago but I honestly think this machine is the best value/performance you can get. This machine may not have the fancy new architecture BUT it's just as fast as the 2.26 for multi-core performance and MUCH faster for single threaded apps.

Hindsight is always a great thing but if I chose to wait for the new macs I would have been pretty pissed to find out that my new option was the 2.26 considering the hit in single threaded apps over the 3.2.

I'll say it again but there's something nice about having the fastest mac pro from 2008 rather than having the slowest mac pro 8 core from the 2009 refresh.



PS. Just wanted to add that since the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is available as an upgrade kit for 2008 mac pros... again what else can I say

Silly boy. Most "single-threaded" OS X applications that would come close to saturating a single thread use OS services substantially. If the OS services are faster, the application can still run a good bit faster. Also, there are a good number of pipeline size and memory latency changes.

Yes, GHz matters, but that 40% clock premium doesn't matter as much if the entire memory subsystem is faster. Real world, you're looking at a 25% clock premium for single-threaded applications that are calculation bound. Meanwhile, OS calls will scale to the other cores and multi-threaded applications would be significantly improved.

 

[More]

Silly boy. Most "single-threaded" OS X applications that would come close to saturating a single thread use OS services substantially. If the OS services are faster, the application can still run a good bit faster. Also, there are a good number of pipeline size and memory latency changes.

Yes, GHz matters, but that 40% clock premium doesn't matter as much if the entire memory subsystem is faster. Real world, you're looking at a 25% clock premium for single-threaded applications that are calculation bound. Meanwhile, OS calls will scale to the other cores and multi-threaded applications would be significantly improved.

Haha. I'll take the boy thing as a compliment as the grey hairs continue to show. Silly? Not quite. The current benchmarks back-up my analysis. v0n's excellent post a few pages back helps puts the whole situation across quite nicely.

 

[jgbr]

I officially hate this forum post, I just ordered a 2.26. After working around the CPU industry for awhile and sporting a i7 under windows ive found all nahalem based systems faster then older C2D and Xeon FSB based stuff.

A couple of points;

1) Intel has included an overclocking tool, whereas it will shut down cores and overclock the used cores to provide more power. Ive seen it in Linux/Windows services throttle them up 600MHZ and shut down an entire CPU.

2) The only real change between 2.26 and 2.9 is QPI speed (link to memory), this has jumped 0.6GTS

3) Snow leopard and the move to multi core software encoding: Now developers have finally got their arse in gear over multi core, as time progresses, the systems with 8 cores will rip well past 4 core systems that have a higher GHZ

Conclusion: I really don't think you are going to notice a difference, maybe Nano seconds if that. I used to play the GHZ war, and learned quickly, it never made a difference.

DDR3, 40% reduction in latency and a TRUE multicore environment has to be balanced against raw speed. Like all this things its called:

"bang for buck with future proofing".

 

[Chaos123x]

The bottom line is that the Nehalem are too expensive to get a decent clocked chip.

A Octo 2.66 or 2.93 would be NICE upgrade but they cost WAY to much!!!


The quad 2.66Ghz and Octo 2.26ghz are not that great of a upgrade and they cost more than the comparable 2008 models.


The bottom line is that the 2008 Octo 2.8ghz was and is the best deal you can get as far as Price vs Performance. Upgrading from a octo 2.8ghz to one of the lower end Nehalems is not much of a upgade at all.

The worthy upgrade Octo 2.66ghz and 2.93ghz are way to expensive and a waste of money.

 

[sidewinder]

The bottom line is that the 2008 Octo 2.8ghz was and is the best deal you can get as far as Price vs Performance. Upgrading from a octo 2.8ghz to one of the lower end Nehalems is not much of a upgade at all.

The worthy upgrade Octo 2.66ghz and 2.93ghz are way to expensive and a waste of money.

Whether or not it is a waste of money depends on what your needs are in a system. For those that actually need or can use a 2.93GHz 8 core system will not think twice about the price.

It's all a matter of perspective.

S-

 

[jgbr]

Would we conclude that :

If you want a super powerful machine for now to play games and save 2 seconds of your render you buy the quad or octo 2.9?

and if you want to actually keep your pro for some time(future proof it) or buy machines regularly that you'll opt for the 2.26?

(PS: remind me to write an overclocking app for these chips. Only i have been using a 2.6i7 (PC chip) and found it trounces all C2D and Xeons....)

 

[oz1]

Comparison with a PC

Am about to migrate from a WIN XP PC to a Mac Pro. Out of curiosity I decided to run Cinebench on the PC.

Model is a dual core E6600 @ 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB RAM & two Nvidia Geforce 7600GTs. Disks are two RAID 0 arrays with 7000 rpm Seagates. Running 32 bit XP SP3.

Results:


OpenGL Standard Test 3675
Rendering (1CPU) 2435
Rendering (2 CPUs) 4680
Multiprocessor speedup 1.92x

Don't know how relevant/valid this is but it might be of interest to someone else thinking of switching.

 

[Chaos123x]

Whether or not it is a waste of money depends on what your needs are in a system. For those that actually need or can use a 2.93GHz 8 core system will not think twice about the price.

It's all a matter of perspective.

S-

It is a waste of money, it will be replaced in a year with something faster anyway. Paying 3x the price for a computer with a slightly different clock speed is just retarded.

Price/Performance it is a waste of money, did you see how much they are charging to bump the clock speed up?

Now if you have a endless cash flow, go right ahead.

I doubt that the resale value will be better than the 2008's, since I always sell to people who are noobs with apples and 2.8ghz looks faster than 2.26ghz to them. Got $2500 for my G5 this time last year.

 

[sidewinder]

It is a waste of money...

From your perspective.....

S-

 

[Chaos123x]

From your perspective.....

S-

No s**t, everything I say is from my perspective, thats why I am saying it.

All your saying to me is ****..... (from my perspective of course)

 

[jjahshik32]

Whether or not it is a waste of money depends on what your needs are in a system. For those that actually need or can use a 2.93GHz 8 core system will not think twice about the price.

It's all a matter of perspective.

S-

Yea I agree. I think most people that think the 2.66ghz and the 2.93ghz model are a waste of money are the people that actually dont need this amount of power.

But for someone who uses them to make a living and increase productivity and get more projects done, the highest end 2.93ghz maxed out can easily pay for itself.

But for me its more of a hobby/enthusiast thing and I understand, the 2.66Ghz/2.93Ghz is too expensive for what I want to do with it.

 

[jgbr]

Its a waste of money if you buy a mac pro every year....
Its a waste of money if you actually sit their counting the rendering seconds (while doing something else... oops i thought more cores, more tasks = my good? lol)

For joe bloggs who doesnt know much about it: a machine made in 2009 is still more to him then the 2008... thats how he will see it, surely?

Like me shifting from always have C2Q and C2D's macs , i couldnt care less.Just knowing its more future proof makes the bank happier!

 

[jjahshik32]

If you really think about it, we could all chug along just fine on even a powerbook g4 for most of our uses even for the next 2-3 more years.

Buy what you want now and just use the hell out of it.

 

[Chaos123x]

Yea I agree. I think most people that think the 2.66ghz and the 2.93ghz model are a waste of money are the people that actually dont need this amount of power.

But for someone who uses them to make a living and increase productivity and get more projects done, the highest end 2.93ghz maxed out can easily pay for itself.

But for me its more of a hobby/enthusiast thing and I understand, the 2.66Ghz/2.93Ghz is too expensive for what I want to do with it.

Actually I do some really heaving video editing and I can use all the power I can get, but those prices are freaking crazy. There is no way to justify those prices, increase of double $2,600 for a clock speed bump.

 

[jjahshik32]

Actually I do some really heaving video editing and I can use all the power I can get, but those prices are freaking crazy. There is no way to justify those prices, increase of double $2,600 for a clock speed bump.

I do agree its expensive and over priced but my point was that if you make a living and need the absolute best to get through projects faster to get more clients then the machine will pay for itself real quick and well worth the $$.

I dont doubt that you could use all of the power with the renderings that you do but I'm sure you dont get paid to render for a living.

I want a Mac Pro at a reasonable price just as the 2.8ghz 8 core models were and as an enthusiast of owning the fastest mac and using it as my personal computer for everything I do (future proofing), I wished the 2.66ghz model was priced at $3299 even that would still be a bit expensive.

 

[Chaos123x]

Well my income is all from video editing.

I guess if your a scientist setting up a huge render farm it would make sense.


If the Octo 2.66ghz was at $3,000 I would buy in a heart beat.

Other than that, no deal.

 

[jjahshik32]

Well my income is all from video editing.

I guess if your a scientist setting up a huge render farm it would make sense.


If the Octo 2.66ghz was at $3,000 I would buy in a heart beat.

Other than that, no deal.

Only if the 2.66Ghz Octad model was $2999!! I feel your pain man!!

I'm going to chug along on my 2.0ghz mac mini I just bought with the 24" LED ACD until sometime this summer and HOPEFULLY when the 3.2ghz Nehalem is out, Apple will do a silent speed bump and probably bump the 2.66Ghz down to the base model. I wouldnt mind paying $3299 + student ADC that knocks it down to $2639.

Also I'm going to be reading about all the benchmarks of the Nehalem and keep my eye out on if the new mac pros have any issues. Its a totally new architecture which is awesome and all but it is still a rev. a product nonetheless.

 

[IainH]

Actually I do some really heaving video editing and I can use all the power I can get, but those prices are freaking crazy. There is no way to justify those prices, increase of double $2,600 for a clock speed bump.

So youre running FCP I assume? Didnt realise it could use so many cores during render.

What else are you using all that power for?

 

[m1stake]

From your perspective.....

S-

I know what you mean, but I don't think that it's a smart buy. The value of the system is not what Apple is asking for it. The total value of all the individual parts is much, much lower than what Apple is asking for the complete package. While perceived value is in the eye of the beholder as you say, market value is dictated by the benefit of the product for the price of the product.

In a production environment these things can pay for themselves pretty quickly, but why put extra money into a product that isn't entirely necessary? That's not a smart way to run a business, even if people get away with it all the time.

 

[jjahshik32]

I know what you mean, but I don't think that it's a smart buy. The value of the system is not what Apple is asking for it. The total value of all the individual parts is much, much lower than what Apple is asking for the complete package. While perceived value is in the eye of the beholder as you say, market value is dictated by the benefit of the product for the price of the product.

In a production environment these things can pay for themselves pretty quickly, but why put extra money into a product that isn't entirely necessary? That's not a smart way to run a business, even if people get away with it all the time.

Yup exactly. I have a couple of places where I can scoop up the 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro from and only thing currently stopping me is waiting for the barefeats benchmark to put me at ease in ordering the previous gen models.

 

[mogus3000]

2.26 cinbench

Just took delivery of my 2.26ghz octo and i have been running some cinebench test as this machine is destined to become my cinema 4d (cinebench) workstation.

The test results are decent and it clearly outperforms the previous 2.8ghz and 3.0ghz in multithreading. Just a bit shy of the 3.2ghz. I have ran the the cinebench 4 times as it can vary quite a bit, but it always hovers above 20,000cb for multi-threading. I knew when i saw tessalators chart that the 2.26 - 18.000cb score was bull ****. The open gl score is not too hot though.

this machine is a tiny bit overpriced and the baseline octo should have been the 2.66 octo IMO, but i am very happy with it.
Remember folks, the previous gen 2.8Ghz octo represented insane value for money at the time. No other vendor could compete on price with the last model.

 

[mogus3000]

Oh yeah, the hyper threading is pretty sweet, all 15 of them according to the image. The final one doesn't seem to kick in.

 

[Daim]

the test states pretty obvious that the 2x2,26 is a better choice than the old 2,8 since it's really little behind the 2,8 in single threaded performance and snow leopard is taking advantage of multi threading mostly