Rolling back to the 32bit kernel was one of the first things I tried after I had my first heat induced kernel panic. With respect to this issue, 32bit vs 64bit has no effect.
I use the 64 bit kernel for the slight performance gain.
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Audio Decoding KILLS MacPro (2009) green factor
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Rolling back to the 32bit kernel was one of the first things I tried after I had my first heat induced kernel panic. With respect to this issue, 32bit vs 64bit has no effect.
I use the 64 bit kernel for the slight performance gain.
Yes, yes I did. I've tried emailing the guy who made it to help me improve it but emails keep bouncing.
TBH Mate, my coding knowledge is abit thin on the ground and really don't have time to learn more. If there is an easy way to compile it for 10.6 SL 64 Bit then I'll give it a wirl.
And point two, interesting... hmmm.
I shall have a dig around later to check the installer that its assigning the correct preferences but after i've done some uni work, as im wayyyy behind!
will an audio card (pci or firewire/usb thingy) solve that problem? anyone done it?
Ummn because im not spending £100 on a Mac Pro compatible card when this bug on a £2k computer shouldn't exist.
You don't own a 2009 Mac Pro, therefore don't get involved.
People think its a non issue who HAVEN'T SPENT £2200 ON A MAC PRO.
If you turned the radio on in your car and suddenly you could only do 60 instead of 80 you would settle for that?
No. Therefore if you DO NOT OWN a Mac Pro, keep out, please.
If my applecare fails to address it then I will start legal proceedings!
Several people over on the Apple forums found a PCI-X card for about $150 USD that addresses Audio, but not FW / USB / Etc...
I think some are using it as a stop-gap in the mean time as everyone waits for some traction on the issue. I read about it yesterday.. fwiw... The card looks interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/ESI-MAYA44e-A...8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1262252929&sr=8-1
I think some are using it as a stop-gap in the mean time as everyone waits for some traction on the issue. I read about it yesterday.. fwiw... The card looks interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/ESI-MAYA44e-A...8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1262252929&sr=8-1
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
That card is PCIe, and the manufacturer does claim OS X support (10.4.4 and higher; source).Several people over on the Apple forums found a PCI-X card for about $150 USD that addresses Audio, but not FW / USB / Etc...
I think some are using it as a stop-gap in the mean time as everyone waits for some traction on the issue. I read about it yesterday.. fwiw... The card looks interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/ESI-MAYA44e-A...8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1262252929&sr=8-1
That would be the least expensive PCIe audio card that works in a Mac Pro I've ever seen.
BTW, nice find.
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in short
as a potential buyer i needed some info so now i know to keep another 150 euro available for the audio thingy
as a 'serious' computer user keep the following in mind:
that rig has a 'glitch' or call it a 'fault'
even with 25% performance loss a mac pro is still the fastest mac rig you can buy/config.
spending an extra 150 euro could solve it right away. awaiting an apple fix could take months (if ever)
about that car.. if you turn on your airco and your car loses more power than it should.... well.. don't turn on your airco when you need to win a race
i'd rather aim my bullets at those who deny the problem at all
but do contact apple, it might help!
as a potential buyer i needed some info
so now i know to keep another 150 euro available for the audio thingy as a 'serious' computer user keep the following in mind:
that rig has a 'glitch' or call it a 'fault'
even with 25% performance loss a mac pro is still the fastest mac rig you can buy/config.
spending an extra 150 euro could solve it right away. awaiting an apple fix could take months (if ever)
about that car.. if you turn on your airco and your car loses more power than it should.... well.. don't turn on your airco when you need to win a race
i'd rather aim my bullets at those who deny the problem at all
but do contact apple, it might help!
This doesn't solve anything right away. It is a bandaid solution at best, that to my knowledge solves the audio portion of the problem only. Writing to a FW disk will still trigger the issue, and there are not enough people who have reported results yet to know just how well this hardware even works in OSX.
Most people buy these machines expecting a well engineered product. A machine of this calibre and at this price level should not need a third party sound board to function correctly. I won't feel good about this machine until Apple fixes this.
How sure are we that this is an audio issue only? My Mac Prpo also has the problem if I just record TV in EyeTv or watch adds video in my browser. I would not want to buy an additional audio card just to find that the video still triggers the fault.
in short
as a potential buyer i needed some info
as a 'serious' computer user keep the following in mind:
that rig has a 'glitch' or call it a 'fault'
even with 25% performance loss a mac pro is still the fastest mac rig you can buy/config.
spending an extra 150 euro could solve it right away. awaiting an apple fix could take months (if ever)
about that car.. if you turn on your airco and your car loses more power than it should.... well.. don't turn on your airco when you need to win a race
i'd rather aim my bullets at those who deny the problem at all
but do contact apple, it might help!
again. I say most people who use a Mac Pro, need it for professional use. Such a Creative Soundcard is just a bad joke for people who are into audio. It is a costumer product. I don't recommend buy such a crap. It's better making apple fire under the ass instead ! I expect high quality, when I invest thousands of dollar into a machine.
Right, here we go:
Application 1: VMware Fusion 3.0.1 and Windows 7 x64
Test 1: Booting from Bootcamp partition, timing starts when I hit enter after entering password to unmount the HD. When Windows Live Messenger opens, restart from the Start menu. Once Windows Live Messenger starts again then Quit VMWare fusion, timing stops when VMWare Fusion disappears from the dock.
Run 1: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk
Run 2: Audio + No FW800 Hard disk
Run 3: No Audio + FW800 Hard disk plugged in and copying 172Gb of videos to an internal HD 4.
Run 4: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk (Repeat of Run 1)
Results
1. 4 Minutes 55 Seconds
2. 5 Minutes 30 Seconds (+12.2%)
3. 5 Minutes 38 Seconds (+14.6%)
4. 4 Minutes 56 Seconds (0.3%)
Application 2: Lightroom 2.6
Test: Export 1535 40D JPEG images to 1080p, 100%, sharpened JPEGs. Timing starts when you click "export" Finishes when lightroom says its done
Run 1: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk
Run 2: Audio + No FW800 Hard disk
Run 3: No Audio + FW800 Hard disk plugged in and copying 172Gb of videos to an internal HD 4.
Run 4: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk (Repeat of Run 1)
Results
1. 16 Minutes 36 Seconds
2. 20 Minutes 10 Seconds (+21.5%)
3. (Can't be bothered! Takes too long!)
4. (Can't be bothered! Takes too long!)
Application 3: Quicktime 7
Test: Using 1525 1080p JPEGs, time to encode from hitting "Save" from the export menu into a 1080p, 10Mbit H264 mov file. Timing stops when it finishes.
Run 1: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk
Run 2: Audio + No FW800 Hard disk
Run 3: No Audio + FW800 Hard disk plugged in and copying 172Gb of videos to an internal HD 4.
Run 4: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk (Repeat of Run 1)
Results
1. 7 Minutes 24 Seconds
2. 8 Minutes 33 Seconds (+11.9%)
3. 8 Minutes 39 Seconds (+16.9%)
4. 7 Minutes 22 Seconds (-0.5%)
Application 4: Cinebench in OS X
Test: Cinebench scores
Run 1: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk
Run 2: Audio + No FW800 Hard disk
Run 3: No Audio + FW800 Hard disk plugged in and copying 172Gb of videos to an internal HD 4.
Run 4: No Audio or FW800 Hard disk (Repeat of Run 1)
Results - 1 Thread
1. 3575
2. 2727 (-23.7%)
3. 2716 (-24.0%)
4. 3563 (-0.3%)
Results - 8 Threads
1. 14,468
2. 13,535 (-6.4%)
3. 13,826 (-4.4%)
4. 14,446 (-0.2%)
Results - Open GL
1. 6395
2. 5161 (-19.3%)
3. 5025 (-21.4%)
4. 6230 (-2.6%)
So as we can see, major, major issues...
Image 1:
Here I am copying 172Gb of video files to one of the internal HDs...
http://www.thunder-keep.co.uk/site/macproissue/fw800hd_test.jpg
Image 2:
Here is the temperatures from tests 1&2.
http://www.thunder-keep.co.uk/site/macproissue/VMWare3_tests_1&2.jpg
Image 3:
Temperatures at idle 100% and 800% load, with iTunes playing at the end.
http://www.thunder-keep.co.uk/site/macproissue/cputemperatures.jpg
CR,
Just wondering if you have reported these results to Apple yet...
No, it's not a pro audio device. But it will give audio playback for those too impatient for Apple to solve the issue by moving it to the PCIe lanes. Others may still experience issues though (USB or FW devices).
I definitely agree that users need to keep pestering (embarassment might be effective) Apple into producing a solution.
Yup.
Waiting to hear back from my level 2 rep.
in short
as a potential buyer i needed some info
as a 'serious' computer user keep the following in mind:
that rig has a 'glitch' or call it a 'fault'
even with 25% performance loss a mac pro is still the fastest mac rig you can buy/config.
spending an extra 150 euro could solve it right away. awaiting an apple fix could take months (if ever)
about that car.. if you turn on your airco and your car loses more power than it should.... well.. don't turn on your airco when you need to win a race
i'd rather aim my bullets at those who deny the problem at all
but do contact apple, it might help!
DO NOT BUY until this is fixed. We need to tell apple we are serious otherwise we'll never get it solved.
not an option.
i've an assignment coming up in June which requires me to edit large format scans. my imac can barely handle them..
if i need to buy an extra soundcard or a good old radio for some music than i'll live happily with a audio-cripled macpro
Buy a 2008 one then. I hope you don't intend to use FW800 devices, any audio what so ever or even (I think and will be tested tomorrow) USB transfers too.
It's crippled and buying one, esp when they are worthless IMO is stupid.
BTW, for people that are interested, updated fan control software. The way the code handles the SMC is weird and annoying.
I cannot for the life of me get it to go down to 500RPM *shrug*
http://www.thunder-keep.co.uk/site/macproissue/MP2009CPUFancontolV0.5.zip
Benchmarks
Geekbench 2.1.4 (64-bit) w/o iTunes: 11,084
Geekbench 2.1.4 (64-bit) w/ iTunes: 10,859
Difference: 2% slower w/ iTunes
iTunes CPU utilization: 1.9%-2.3% as reported by Activity Monitor
Cinebench R10 multi-CPU render w/o iTunes: 17,672 (Safari running)
Cinebench R10 multi-CPU render w/ iTunes: 17,105 (Safari running)
Difference: 3.2% slower w/ iTunes
No firewire devices were attached or used during this test.
WHAT'S UP WITH THIS? My results don't show appreciable slow down with either Geekbench or Cinebench while running iTunes in the background. Cinebench is more sensitive and shows a 3% decline in performance, but since iTunes has 2-3% CPU utilization, the results are perfectly in line with expectations. OpenGL scores take a 21% hit in Cinebench when running iTunes on my machine.
Truly bizarre results.
Geekbench 2.1.4 (64-bit) w/o iTunes: 11,084
Geekbench 2.1.4 (64-bit) w/ iTunes: 10,859
Difference: 2% slower w/ iTunes
iTunes CPU utilization: 1.9%-2.3% as reported by Activity Monitor
Cinebench R10 multi-CPU render w/o iTunes: 17,672 (Safari running)
Cinebench R10 multi-CPU render w/ iTunes: 17,105 (Safari running)
Difference: 3.2% slower w/ iTunes
No firewire devices were attached or used during this test.
WHAT'S UP WITH THIS? My results don't show appreciable slow down with either Geekbench or Cinebench while running iTunes in the background. Cinebench is more sensitive and shows a 3% decline in performance, but since iTunes has 2-3% CPU utilization, the results are perfectly in line with expectations. OpenGL scores take a 21% hit in Cinebench when running iTunes on my machine.
Truly bizarre results.
I just did the same tests with my machine, even though I had several other apps running.
Average of 3 runs Geekbench without iTunes playing: 13304
Average of 3 runs Geekbench with iTunes playing: 12897
Makes a difference of 3%.
Absolutely nothing to worry about.
I don't have the time to make some real life tests now, but I will keep an eye on it as soon as possible.
I never paid any attention to my temps. running itunes until I saw this thread.
Just assumed everything was fine. Boy was I wrong. Between the watt. draw and rise in temps. surley 
will post a fix. Or someone will beat them to it. Still love my Mac Pro though. Maybe Uncle Steve will make it possible for us drop in a Gulftown to make up for this slight oversight.
Just assumed everything was fine.
Boy was I wrong. Between the watt. draw and rise in temps. surley will post a fix. Or someone will beat them to it. Still love my Mac Pro though. Maybe Uncle Steve will make it possible for us drop in a Gulftown to make up for this slight oversight.Strange. The performance loss seems to only rear it's head in certain benchmarks. The bad news is, the real world application based tests that Concorde Rules was kind of enough to conduct showed a real and substantial hit.
People's results will vary, and the more we test, the more contradictory results we'll see. Having said that, there definitely seems to be a loss (true extent unknown), and I am not willing to accept even 5% of my CPU cycles being donated to Steve Jobs and his lame product engineers..
mmm perhaps i can link to a previous post but:
here in belgium it's hard to find an refurb 2008. if only apple stores would ship to other countrys....
i came across 3 nice 2008 refurbs in the uk store.. here in belgium.. just nothing.
second hand.. the next option.. yes there are some nice setups via germany or the uk but i just don't like the idea to pay +2000 euro on a second hand machine (no guaranties it will work, and no possible way to go and check myself)
importing from the usa or china.. well, than it's the same cat in a bag AND it needs to pass trough customs
so.. waiting for a 2010... or something :-/