I bought the Baseline model

[iondot]

After much debate and consideration, I decided to go with the baseline 2.8GHz Quad-Core. Actually, I didn't so much decide, but, due to a bunch of crazy circumstances at the Apple Store, I ended up with a deal that made the 2.8GHz a heck of a value.

Anyway, my reasons for purchase aside, if anyone would like me to perform any speed or benchmark tests, please let me know. I would very much like to see how it compares in actuality to the 3.33GHz. (If mine fares badly, I do have 30 days to return it!)

 

[deanostetto]

what was the price if you dont mind me asking?

 

[jjahshik32]

Now I'm at the point of keeping my 17" macbook pro and maybe picking up a 2.8GHz quad mac pro. I really really want the 3.2GHz (awesome to have 3.2GHz running constantly at default) but if there is no big difference between the 2.8GHz and the 3.2GHz in real life usages, I could save myself $360.

I'm desperately in need of more space though. I could really use 4TB+ space. I came to the conclusion that getting the Mac Pro (any model) would be ideal for overall usages. But then again man I really really love my 17" macbook pro.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

You pretty much get what you pay for. The 3.2Ghz QC is roughly 15% faster and also 15% more expensive. It's just a matter of what kind of power you need. Personally I bought 2.8QC myself because of price and not needing the fastest out there since I only use it for my hobbies.

 

[iondot]

You pretty much get what you pay for. The 3.2Ghz QC is roughly 15% faster and also 15% more expensive. It's just a matter of what kind of power you need. Personally I bought 2.8QC myself because of price and not needing the fastest out there since I only use it for my hobbies.

True for the 3.2Ghz. The cost to speed ratio goes up with the faster configurations, at least from a real world use point of view.

 

[cnstoll]

I went with the 3.2QC because I figured it was the CPU upgrade that made the most sense for my mostly single/few threaded workflow.... The 3.3 6-core was just too expensive. I view the upgrade from 2.8 to 3.2 as mostly a longevity investment. Hopefully I'll get just a tad more use out of it that way.

 

[iondot]

I went with the 3.2QC because I figured it was the CPU upgrade that made the most sense for my mostly single/few threaded workflow.... The 3.3 6-core was just too expensive. I view the upgrade from 2.8 to 3.2 as mostly a longevity investment. Hopefully I'll get just a tad more use out of it that way.

That seems a very prudent solution.

 

[oilfighter]

After much debate and consideration, I decided to go with the baseline 2.8GHz Quad-Core. Actually, I didn't so much decide, but, due to a bunch of crazy circumstances at the Apple Store, I ended up with a deal that made the 2.8GHz a heck of a value.

Anyway, my reasons for purchase aside, if anyone would like me to perform any speed or benchmark tests, please let me know. I would very much like to see how it compares in actuality to the 3.33GHz. (If mine fares badly, I do have 30 days to return it!)

I would very much be interested if you could run the Photoshop speed test that is sticky'ed on top of this forum.

 

[iondot]

I would very much be interested if you could run the Photoshop speed test that is sticky'ed on top of this forum.

I ran this test yesterday and 6 out of 7 runs yielded a scores pretty close to 19.5 seconds. The first run was 30 seconds.

Same result today; first run was 31 seconds, each subsequent run was 19.5 or so. I believe this is related to the memory "warm up" issue.

I will be trying again shortly when my RAM arrives and I upgrade from the miserly 3GB provided to the modest 12GB I've purchased.

 

[ProxiVCD]

I also bought a base model becuase the price allowed me to get 24GB Ram and 120GB SSD drive... hopeully it's enough to offset the slower CPU.

I did take a lot of advice from the Lloyd Chambers site and he has done a great job of reviewing the new 6 core "Westmere". However, Lloyd is a photographer and I am a Graphic Designer and I'm never sure if the advice given for a machine for a Photographer is compatibale for a Graphic Designer. Will the base model with 24GB Ram and 120GB SSD drive be able to run all the Creative Suite apps plus Word, Excel and a bunch of other apps simultaneously and do it fast enough? We will find out as my new machine arrives in a few days. My intention is to document my findings on The Proxi Blog (the Blog is brand new and there are no entries yet, but visit in 10 days or so and the post should be up).

 

[oilfighter]

I ran this test yesterday and 6 out of 7 runs yielded a scores pretty close to 19.5 seconds. The first run was 30 seconds.

Same result today; first run was 31 seconds, each subsequent run was 19.5 or so. I believe this is related to the memory "warm up" issue.

I will be trying again shortly when my RAM arrives and I upgrade from the miserly 3GB provided to the modest 12GB I've purchased.

Thanks for the info! Would love to hear how things go with the RAM update too.

congrats on the new Mac Pro

 

[abccba]

what geekbench 64-bit score do you get?

 

[iondot]

what geekbench 64-bit score do you get?

I'm waiting on my RAM and SSD, so this is what you get out of the box.

note this is 32bit - I don't own geekbench.

 

[englishman]

I ran this test yesterday and 6 out of 7 runs yielded a scores pretty close to 19.5 seconds. The first run was 30 seconds.

Same result today; first run was 31 seconds, each subsequent run was 19.5 or so. I believe this is related to the memory "warm up" issue.

1st run took 1min 50secs on PS CS 8.0 ? Why so slow? i couldn't see how to set the history states.

On trial PS8 took 23 and then 18 secs after warming up ram. (I am thinking of selling mine and going for the base quad so these tests are interesting to me)

 

[petvas]

I also bought the baseline model and it just came today. I am still waiting on my Kingston 16GB RAM, but It will be here till Friday. When I have the RAM I will run tests. So far everything seems faster than my first gen Mac Pro, but of course the real difference will be more obvious when I start doing more cpu intensive stuff. I want to convert some mkvs and start using my VMWare based Windows Server test environment, but I am waiting for the extra RAM.

 

[oilfighter]

I also bought the baseline model and it just came today. I am still waiting on my Kingston 16GB RAM, but It will be here till Friday. When I have the RAM I will run tests. So far everything seems faster than my first gen Mac Pro, but of course the real difference will be more obvious when I start doing more cpu intensive stuff. I want to convert some mkvs and start using my VMWare based Windows Server test environment, but I am waiting for the extra RAM.

Why not try and run the test before the new RAMs go in, see how much of a difference you get (and possibly a nice chuckle).?

 

[englishman]

I ran this test yesterday and 6 out of 7 runs yielded a scores pretty close to 19.5 seconds. The first run was 30 seconds.

Same result today; first run was 31 seconds, each subsequent run was 19.5 or so. I believe this is related to the memory "warm up" issue.

So the 2010 base quad is pretty close in performance to my 2009 2.26 Octo which cost more. So looks like the 2010 are a good deal.

 

[Transporteur]

So the 2010 base quad is pretty close in performance to my 2009 2.23 Octo which cost more. So looks like the 2010 are a good deal.

In single threaded tasks the new base quad will be faster than your base octad, multithreaded tasks that can utilise all threads of the system, however, will run WAY faster on your machine (~60% faster!).

 

[englishman]

In single threaded tasks the new base quad will be faster than your base octad, multithreaded tasks that can utilise all threads of the system, however, will run WAY faster on your machine (~60% faster!).

So with my mix of tasks home/office no video I guess I should have saved my money and gone for the base quad. I will be doing that when I go for one of the new 2010 models anyhow. Interesting to know though on a real world benchmark.

In the UK there is £600 difference between the base quad and octo both with 6GB.

 

[iondot]

So with my mix of tasks home/office no video I guess I should have saved my money and gone for the base quad. I will be doing that when I go for one of the new 2010 models anyhow. Interesting to know though on a real world benchmark.

In the UK there is £600 difference between the base quad and octo both with 6GB.

There really isn't any excuse for the current version of Photoshop to be so poor with multi-threading. But if, like me, you are tired of waiting for the software to catch up with the hardware, the baseline seems to make good sense.

 

[petvas]

I ran the 64bit version of Geekbench and here are the results:

 

[petvas]

In the meantime the extra RAM came and after installing it I got the following result. I think the extra RAM doesn't make any difference at all, at least for the test. Of course it does make the system faster and more able to run many apps...

 

[iondot]

In the meantime the extra RAM came and after installing it I got the following result. I think the extra RAM doesn't make any difference at all, at least for the test. Of course it does make the system faster and more able to run many apps...

Thanks for posting! What do you get running at 32 bit?

 

[petvas]

This is the result I get from the 32bit version