This is too funny!
What cracks me up is the grease spot around the turbo button, a result of frequently frantic usage.
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Apple Gets Nehalem Early, h264 and VMWare Performance Boosts
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This is too funny!
What cracks me up is the grease spot around the turbo button, a result of frequently frantic usage.
not yet.
You'd be surprised the stuff that doesn't use all the cores of a multiprocessor machine. I'm working on a dual quad 2.8 right now, and Final Cut isn't noticeably faster at rendering to me than my previous dual 2.3. Cinema 4d, OTOH, absolutely flies during a render with my 8 cores.
I would love to have 16 render threads.
Some jobs are more easily parsed than others. Rendering a static image in C4D is essentially a set of math problems that can be split up equally among the cores. FCP on the other hand is rendering video in a codec. Most video codecs are going to rely on an entire frame or series of frames to get quality compression and those jobs are difficult to split up.
Exactly, it's totally dependent on application support. So I expect this "turbo" feature to actually be useful for the majority of apps that aren't multi-core aware.
A friend of mine was complaining the other week that his Mac seems to have gotten slower in Cinema 4D. I suggested it's because he's using a single 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 and he's gotten used to the performance gains on the Intel Macs he occasionally uses away from home now.
Time for him to get a Nehalem Mac Pro. I love spending other people's money
The problem is the Xeon only has two things (well in the 3500 series one thing) that sets it apart from the desktop version. The first is ECC support and the second is an extra QPI link (which isn't present in the 3500 series). Before the Xeon also had more cache and faster FSB. Unless there is something else that it can do that the i7 can't that Intel hasn't told anyone about.
Not really, he's already asked what the Xeon brings to the party that the Core i7 can't do almost as well at much less cost.
I'd like to see some benchmarks comparing the two. Let's see if the Mac Pro tax is worth it - I suspect not, but would like to be wrong if only to claw back some credibility for recommending Apple desktop hardware.
The OS can't do it alone because it doesn't have any way of knowing which parts of an operation can be run in parallel with other parts of the operation.
The application itself has to do this. Then the OS can distribute these parts among the available cores.
It's not always easy to break up an operation into separate bits that can run in parallel, though. That's why apps don't always do it. Actually, in the past it was rarely, if ever, even remotely "easy." So it was only done in circumstances where it was highly, highly desireable. These days OS's and API's provide much easier ways to break up an operation into parallelizable parts so application developers are doing this a lot more.
However, many operations cannot be split up into parallelizable bits or would require a very different approach to split up. There can also be practical or logical limits on how much a particular operation can be split up.
So turbo boost is a help for operations that haven't been split up for whatever reason, into bits that can run in parallel.
Many people using these high end machines have many applications running simultaneously. If you have eight applications running that each aren't multi-core aware, then you will be using eight cores. If you run one single application that isn't multi-core aware and nothing else, you might as well use an iMac.
The xMac is Here!
It was just release yesterday -they call it the Mac Pro quad. The just accidentally listed it for $1000 too much.
I still may buy it.
It was just release yesterday -they call it the Mac Pro quad. The just accidentally listed it for $1000 too much.
I still may buy it.
It was just release yesterday -they call it the Mac Pro quad. The just accidentally listed it for $1000 too much.
I still may buy it.
LOL. Accidentally too much. Priceless. Well, I guess it cost about $1000
Something I find odd is how software is becoming parallelized for multi-core/multi-proc systems & hardware is becoming serialized. Look at ATA & SCSI. You rarely see PATA or parallel SCSI anymore. Most everything today is SATA & SAS. Logic would say bits going in parallel would be faster than in serial. But then again, I'm not the one designing these technologies so I don't know what the reasons are.
People are talking about how some operations can't be split up to run over multiple cores and therefore can't run faster on a multi-core computer. Yes this is true but there is an even larger class of apps that will not run faster on a multi-core machine. Those are apps that don't tax even a single core computer. In other words if the CPU is not the performance bottle neck then getting a faster CPU will not help much. As it turns out MOST ofthe things people do with computers are like this. They simply don't use a lot of the CPU. Even FCP is like this most of the time. Most of the time FCP just sits there doing nothing but waiting for operator input. A faster CPU wil not make it "wait faster".
Which generation of the Mac Pro to get?
I am conisdering replacing my G5 with a Mac Pro. I am considering though wether to get the new base model or the previous model.
One real annoying thing about the new mode is it seems to no longer comes with the ability to run two monitors. You have to splash out the $150 for a second graphics card. So $2,449 is really $2,599.
You do get a extra GB and more hard disk but you can only go up to 8GB on the new model.
New Model:
$2,449 + $150 = $2,599
One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor
3GB (three 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive NVIDIA
GeForce GT 120 with 512MB
vs
Old Model:
$2,629
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors,
2 GB RAM,
320 GB Hard Drive,
16x SuperDrive
thoughts?
I am conisdering replacing my G5 with a Mac Pro. I am considering though wether to get the new base model or the previous model.
One real annoying thing about the new mode is it seems to no longer comes with the ability to run two monitors. You have to splash out the $150 for a second graphics card. So $2,449 is really $2,599.
You do get a extra GB and more hard disk but you can only go up to 8GB on the new model.
New Model:
$2,449 + $150 = $2,599
One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor
3GB (three 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive NVIDIA
GeForce GT 120 with 512MB
vs
Old Model:
$2,629
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors,
2 GB RAM,
320 GB Hard Drive,
16x SuperDrive
thoughts?
Read this: http://intel.wingateweb.com/US08/published/sessions/SVRS005/SF08_SVRS005_100r.pdf
Skip to page 33 and note that strlen(just an example) only needs 3 instructions now, this instead of the previous 8.
This is too funny!
What cracks me up is the grease spot around the turbo button, a result of frequently frantic usage.
Huh! Turbo button..Meh!!!
Now GO-FASTER-STRIPES!!!
Now THAT'S more like it...
Attachments
I'm in the same exact dilemma. Anyone have any advice? Please do elaborate on the benefits and shortcomings applicable between these two models. I've read the entire thread, amongst others, yet I'm still not sure which route to go.
You will have to wait up to two weeks for the new Mac Pro's to arrive (that's what they told me earlier today) but some of us, being developers, received the hardware before launch (for testing) and as such I would say just get one!
Why so angry? Are you expecting quantum leaps with every update? No one is forcing you to buy. I have usually bought the top or near the top of the line every three years or so, which pretty much guarantees that I will get a noticeable speed bump, along with architecture improvements. By then the machine has more than paid for itself.
It basically depends on what you do with it, what software you use and how much memory you need since the single CPU configuration currently "only" supports 4x2GB. And you won't be able to add a second CPU so you better think twice.
Either way, your (old) applications will run more smoothly, and the new Mac Pro's consume less energy.
Also of note there is no option for 15k SAS drives anymore.
Anyone who edits long HD sequences knows that disk speed can be a large bottleneck with standard drives.
All in all I have to agree that this is a lame upgrade. Bargain basement video cards that require you to buy two to run 2 30" displays because of Apples stupid Mini DVI connector is just ridiculous on a supposedly "Pro" machine.
Anyone who edits long HD sequences knows that disk speed can be a large bottleneck with standard drives.
All in all I have to agree that this is a lame upgrade. Bargain basement video cards that require you to buy two to run 2 30" displays because of Apples stupid Mini DVI connector is just ridiculous on a supposedly "Pro" machine.