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Audio Decoding KILLS MacPro (2009) green factor

This is the reply I got from the business manager from the apple store I got my mac pro from

Hello Roberto,
Thank you for your reply. I wanted to follow up with you in regards to the heat issues you are describing. I spoke with our Genius Team and they said there are sensors in the Mac Pro that would shut the Mac Pro down if there was any issues detrimental to the functioning of the system. Are the issues that it is heating up the room or just the Map Pro itself is heating up? According to our Genius Team, the heat issues should not cause any problems.

Thanks again and I hope you have a great day.


Best Regards,
Click to expand...

This guy has to be kidding me!!!
 
beto2k7 said:
This guy has to be kidding me!!!
Click to expand...

The so called "Genius Team" simply doesn't know it better. They've got absolutely no clue of what they're talking about.

However, the Intel chips protect themselves by shutting themselves down in case that the core temperatures exceed the given maximum (95° IIRC). This results in a Kernel panic.
Considering the current temperatures in the UK, and the fact that I never used the radiator in my room, the core temperatures of my machine stay just below that value (~91°).

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming summer. :mad:
 
Transporteur said:
[...] the Intel chips protect themselves by shutting themselves down in case that the core temperatures exceed the given maximum (95° IIRC). This results in a Kernel panic.
Click to expand...

smacman, have you noted any console logs of kernel panics caused by heat?
If so, what are we looking for?
 
Transporteur said:
The so called "Genius Team" simply doesn't know it better. They've got absolutely no clue of what they're talking about.

However, the Intel chips protect themselves by shutting themselves down in case that the core temperatures exceed the given maximum (95° IIRC). This results in a Kernel panic.
Considering the current temperatures in the UK, and the fact that I never used the radiator in my room, the core temperatures of my machine stay just below that value (~91°).

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming summer. :mad:
Click to expand...
I'll presume you don't have a centralized A/C system to help out, but would a small window unit be possible for the room the MP's located in?

It wouldn't just help the computer, but keep you from roasting as well. ;) :p
And yes, I do understand it's an additional expense not only for the unit, but the electricity consumption as well. But it's better than a dead computer and you suffering heat exhaustion. :D
 
nanofrog said:
I'll presume you don't have a centralized A/C system to help out, but would a small window unit be possible for the room the MP's located in?

It wouldn't just help the computer, but keep you from roasting as well. ;) :p
And yes, I do understand it's an additional expense not only for the unit, but the electricity consumption as well. But it's better than a dead computer and you suffering heat exhaustion. :D
Click to expand...

your joking right?

uk summer your lucky to get 25c :cool: i have a ac though,
 
smogsy said:
your joking right?

uk summer your lucky to get 25c :cool: i have a ac though,
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Yes and No.

Serious about using it to help the system, as ambient has a drastic effect on Nehalems. No, about the heat exhaustion bit (hence the emoticons). ;) But if it's already there, why not enjoy it. :eek: :p
 
EHLO said:
It's interesting to read how people will run an application without a clear understanding of what it does.
If you decompile the AppleScript application contained in the ABF installer made by Cindori, you will see that it moves AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext to AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.old, and then to enable sleep which has now been broken, it installs the SleepEnabler.kext made by pista7.
Besides breaking the power management design, this will cause a kernel panic at boot after an update from 10.6.0-1 to 10.6.2, or from 10.6.2 to 10.6.3, because of incompatibilities between SleepEnabler and kernel versions.
The developer's site for SleepEnabler is at http://code.google.com/p/xnu-sleep-enabler/.
Better to wait for Apple to release a fix, and if you're concerned with component life, use a Fan Control application until then.
Click to expand...
you are absolutely right on this.

"My" MP is a working machine, and I don't want to mess things up with this kind of approach ...
 
smacman said:
I think it is a great idea, and a real possibility. The challenge would be the lack of participation. There are not that many Mac Pro (Early 2009) users out there, and within this small group, only a small percentage are aware of the issue. On the positive side, even if they fixed it all tomorrow, there is still a reasonable case given the unnecessary heat these machines were all exposed to. Combine that with the fact that performance has been adversely affected, and we could have a chance.
Click to expand...

COUNT ME IN!
 
Max(IT) said:
you are absolutely right on this.

"My" MP is a working machine, and I don't want to mess things up with this kind of approach ...
Click to expand...

I was using the patch but have since removed it as it is not official and who knows what it could do.

I turn off HyperThreading and 2 cores via X Code, that keeps things nice and cool :)
 
nanofrog said:
And yes, I do understand it's an additional expense not only for the unit, but the electricity consumption as well. But it's better than a dead computer and you suffering heat exhaustion. :D
Click to expand...

I see your point, but to be honest, I don't accept purchasing extra hardware for a computer that I bought because of its promoted reliability.
The same counts for additional fan management software such like SMC fan control.
I didn't put $2000 in a machine and then have to struggle with overheating issues in the summer. A $200 discounter PC does better than that!
In case that summer heat will be an issue whatsoever, I definitely won't deal with that. I paid a premium price for a so called premium product, plus premium service, so Apple is definitely responsible for solving that issue.
 
Transporteur said:
I see your point, but to be honest, I don't accept purchasing extra hardware for a computer that I bought because of its promoted reliability.
The same counts for additional fan management software such like SMC fan control.
I didn't put $2000 in a machine and then have to struggle with overheating issues in the summer. A $200 discounter PC does better than that!
In case that summer heat will be an issue whatsoever, I definitely won't deal with that. I paid a premium price for a so called premium product, plus premium service, so Apple is definitely responsible for solving that issue.
Click to expand...
Apple definitely needs to solve the issue, but so far, their official response hasn't been good.

It should also be noted, that Nehalem processors do run hot compared to previous CPU generations under high load conditions, no matter the vendor. As a result, higher ambients (even a few degrees) will drive the temps higher than the increase in ambient.

For example, I live in a hot climate during summer (humid as well). The house has a central A/C system, and set it for 25C during summer. But the room with the computer tends to stabilize at ~32 - 33C most of the time. That's rather uncomfortable, and late July and August are a little worse. So a window A/C was the best solution for that room. It's less expensive on power, and less wear and tear on the central system (get the computer room comfortable, but the rest of the house is cooler than it needs to be).
 
Hi, I'm new here.

I have a very brand-new '09 Mac Pro 4,1 Quad 3.33 GHz that I built online, and just started using in January. I ordered it with the Mac RAID card, ATI Radeon 4870, and all four drive bays loaded (1x640 Gb, 3x1Tb) along with little stuff like wifi and magic mouse. I upgraded (via OWC) to 16 Gb of RAM.

My whole purpose for the machine is to edit a feature-length film shot on DVCPRO HD, which has been going splendid thus far. I downloaded iStat Nano, iStat Menus, Hardware Monitor and Cinebench R10. Here is the result from a little while ago:

CINEBENCH R10
****************************************************

Tester : Me

Processor : Nehalem Quad 3.33
MHz : 3.33GHz
Number of CPUs : 8
Operating System : OS X 32 BIT 10.6.2

Graphics Card : ATI Radeon HD 4870 OpenGL Engine
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 4417 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 17836 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 4.04

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 7876 CB-GFX


****************************************************

This is my first time benchtesting, so I'm noobified. I read 98% of this thread first, and have these observations:

1) My fan picks up speed gradually when I'm watching video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 for longer than five minutes or so.

2) My fan also speeds up when watching video online. I don't use iTunes, but sure enough, if I play audio with something like VLC, the temps go up as you've experienced.

3) CPU A temperature diode readings got as high as 73 C. on Hardware Monitor when editing video in Premiere. Fan was going faster than idle, but not blowing a hurricane by any means. Everything seemed to be performing just fine as far as I could tell.

I didn't buy AppleCare (yet) because it came with that one year warranty, so I figured I'd get it later. My thought is this... If I crank away on this thing editing film (which is 90% of what this machine is used for) all year, constantly running the CPU at 70+C, and it dies in that year, won't the warranty ensure a repair or replacement for me, relatively hassle-free? Also, if it does last the whole year with such use, and I'm still worried about it dying, could I buy AppleCare prior to years' end, and be covered beyond the first year?

I may be naïve, but I have to believe Apple will fix this in 10.6.3, and/or be there for me if the CPU burns up by simply editing video. It's one thing to step up and admit there's a mysterious issue that MAY be a problem, and another thing to deny warranty on a failure after it occurs. As far as I've read (unless I missed it), nobody has had a new MP '09 burn up, and then been out thousands of dollars, right?
 
Has anyone looked in to whether this is happening on the Nehalem based iMacs, or is it limited to X58 derived chipsets only?
 
Umbongo said:
Has anyone looked in to whether this is happening on the Nehalem based iMacs, or is it limited to X58 derived chipsets only?
Click to expand...
Just the X58 (Quads) and 5520 (Octads) chipset based systems, which also have a separate ICH. iMacs are using the P55, which don't seem to be affected by this issue (ICH is on the P55).
 
nanofrog said:
Just the X58 (Quads) and 5520 (Octads) chipset based systems, which also have a separate ICH. iMacs are using the P55, which don't seem to be affected by this issue (ICH is on the P55).
Click to expand...

I assumed it wasn't, just curious really as some iMac users are complaining about the heat.
 
Umbongo said:
I assumed it wasn't, just curious really as some iMac users are complaining about the heat.
Click to expand...
It's been awhile since I checked on the new iMac (LGA1156 based models), but I recall the early tests (those willing, such as DoFoT9), didn't have the audio problem the MP's do.

For that machine, it could also be a result of the housing/enclosure used rather than a bug. Might be worth a second look though.
 
I wasn't convinced, so I ran my own test to see...

OK -- here's my test results for running on my Mac Pro (early 2009 model) 4-core 2.66 GHz Nehalem computer.

I ran two tests.

Test 1. Ran HandBrake to encode two BBC Rough Dimand DVD series to Apple TV format using HandBrake defaults.

Test 2. Same as 1 except I had iTunes playing audi files during the HandBrake execution.

The HandBrake execution was consuming 70% of all my core's CPU cycles and core temps all climbed to around 200 to 206 deg F. Power consumption was at around 95 watts for the CPU/Processor.

Test 1 completed in 3,685 wall time seconds

Test 2 completed in 4,272 wall time seconds

Difference in walltimes was 587 seconds.

Test 2 was slower than Test 1 by approximately 16%

I should run Test 1 several times to understand what its walltime variation would be -- but at this point it does seem that iTunes playing audio files is somehow influencing the likes of HandBrake execution performance.

The HandBrake is very parallel and will consume as many threads as the computer provides and it's very CPU intensive.

The iTunes CPU use is minimal so should not impact HandBrake running alongside it and in addition HandBrake leaves around 30% of my CPU cycles for other processes to use. So on the face of it the iTunes and HandBrake, from a CPU use standpoint, should not interfere with each other. That leaves at least two other resources or features that could be influencing the interaction between iTunes and HandBrake.

One would be memory bandwidth contention. Is iTunes and HandBrake fighting over the aggregate memory bandwidth and slowing each other down ?

Another thought which has been voiced/mentioned elsewhere is that somehow the Intel/Nehalem turbo boost is not being allowed to accelerate Handbrake's use of the cores but disallowing the cycle times to be increased from 2.66 GHz to 2,793 GHz, then to 2.926 GHz and finally 3.059 GHz.

I find it of interest that the increase from 2.66 GHz to 3.059 GHz is 15%.

The difference between Test 1 and Test 2 is 15.93%

So, could the HandBrake degraded performance be supported by iTunes not allowing the turbo boost feature to favor/help HandBrake complete faster?

At this point I'm apt to say this issue is not bogus and Apple needs/should in all fairness explain to Mac Pro (2009 models) users what is causing this. I suspect it may be a fact of life and we have to live with it -- but then on the other hand Apple may have a fix for this.

Hmmmm ---- interesting...
 
Techhie said:
Not unusual, my previous 2009 quad climbed to ~209F while under full load. Something tells me the fans should kick in at that point.
Click to expand...

I tried to reach those values and not even handbrake + iTunes got me
close on my 8core mac pro. Something tells me there's something else in your machine that's wrong. What's your ambient temp? 200F is way outside intel's limits.
 
cl-user said:
My vote is that we keep hammering away at truth and clarity, work to nail down as much information as possible so Apple and all new comers can see exactly what is going on.

Try to present things so we cut defensive attitudes off before they gain momentum. And try not to irritate any egos.

Some humor, exquisite wordsmithery, relevant pictures, captivating stories, etc., may help get the message over. But in general less obfuscation, more on message. Merge all constructive contributions. That's the target.

AFAICS the message is: there's a bug, what is it, how to see it, what to do about it (temporary remedies), consequences, and above all try to get through to Apple in hope of them working on a complete fix.

I'm putting together material to that end for a web site (will notify when something running).
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right... the truth about what's going on and presenting it in the clearest fashion is best for everyone (including Apple... where the truth seems to be in short supply).

The fact is (and will always remain) that honesty is more important than money. Apparently Apple doesn't think so.

So, I offer the following headline in an effort to rattle the Apple tree...

The 2009 Apple Mac Pro: No virus required. From $2499... and up


Oh, and that refurb. 2.93 Quad w/3GB less RAM... is still $2549 - the same as I paid for twice the RAM.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/G0G80LL/A?mco=MTEyMDA5NDY
 
wonderspark said:
[...]
I didn't buy AppleCare (yet) because it came with that one year warranty, so I figured I'd get it later. My thought is this... If I crank away on this thing editing film (which is 90% of what this machine is used for) all year, constantly running the CPU at 70+C, and it dies in that year, won't the warranty ensure a repair or replacement for me, relatively hassle-free? Also, if it does last the whole year with such use, and I'm still worried about it dying, could I buy AppleCare prior to years' end, and be covered beyond the first year?
Click to expand...

I don't think Apple will swap a failed machine for a new one, they flat refused to when mine failed. So expect the drawn out process of repair. My understanding is that at any time during the first year you can extend your AppleCare to 3 years (from purchase date). Apple persuaded me to buy AppleCare, when my new machine failed, as I was told it would speed repairs. In fact it did the opposite., but that might be due in part to the regional shippers used by Apple.

Be warned that the process of evoking AppleCare in such a situation as this can be quite fraught, and take a long time. You could be out of action for most of a month and lose a lot of hair through frustration (my experience). But I get the impression that AppleCare in the USA may be of a higher standard than in some countries. I definitely do not want to have to deal with AppleCare ever again, I found the experience the epitome of hassle.

On the CPU heating issue -
-(a) Apple seem unable to formally state temperature tolerances
-(b) people tend to mix up which temperatures they are referring to
(your CPU A temperature diode reading seems the best indicator)
-(c) Intel specify that ~70C is the upper ceiling
-(d) CPU failure might be a matter of shortened life
(or instability, rather near term failure)
-(e) You could use SMCfancontrol to bring temperatures down
(a safety measure with little side effect other than noise)

I believe the dual CPU systems lose 26% of peak performance due to the audio bug in single thread apps. I'm unsure how much the single CPU systems lose. I suspect that most of the time, most people don't fully load their machines so probably won't notice much difference. Multi threaded apps seem to lose ~8% on dual CPU systems under the audio bug.
To see how much your system suffers, just run Cinebench with and without audio playing in the background.

To my mind, your work load is exactly the sort of load that these machines were designed for. And hence they should be working to perfection in just these circumstances.
 
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