I am giving my 21.5 iMac i3 3.2ghz to a relative as this will be there first computer. I buying a 2006 Mac Pro with 2x2.66ghz Dual Core Intel Xeon Processors. How will the Mac Pro compare to the iMac performance wise? I know the Mac Pro is older but will the performance be just as good or better than the iMac?
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Mac Pro 2x2.66ghz Dual Core Intel Xeon vs 21.5 iMac i3 3.2ghz
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It gets 5788 in GeekBench, so quite close. iMac might perform better in single-threaded tasks though.
So that would be 32bit benchmark? I get 6800+ on 64bit.
That said, I just ran 32bit Geekbench on my 1,1 3.0 Quad with all kinds of apps running and got 5942 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/452023)
EDIT: Ok, so I got curious and rebooted and no apps running result was 6146 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/452030)
EDIT2: And here's my 64bit result of 6827 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/452041)
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Yeah, that's 32-bit. I'm looking at the results here but I know they may vary a bit. After all, GB is synthetic and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
DO NOT buy the 2006/2007 mac pro if you plan on doing any gaming.
-You can't install 64 bit windows 7 (without extreme hacking)
-windows will only see 2 GB of your ram
If you want to stay on the cheap side, get at 2008 Mac Pro. On those you can put in many new graphics cards and still get really good performance. The 1st gen mac pros have a pretty severe bottle neck and doesn't show a noticeable improvement with anything faster than a Radeon 4870
-You can't install 64 bit windows 7 (without extreme hacking)
-windows will only see 2 GB of your ram
If you want to stay on the cheap side, get at 2008 Mac Pro. On those you can put in many new graphics cards and still get really good performance. The 1st gen mac pros have a pretty severe bottle neck and doesn't show a noticeable improvement with anything faster than a Radeon 4870
2006 MP is fine for gaming. What makes you say they're not?
Are you sure? I run 64bit Windows 7 in VMWare so I can't say about native booting. Need to see some sources for your statement.
Severe bottleneck? What bottleneck would that be compared to the 2008 Pro? You can slap in a 6870 to a 1,1 Mac Pro without any hacking. No different than any other Mac Pro.
Yes I'm sure. This is common knowledge that the 1st gen mac pros only have 32 bit EFI, so you cannot put 64 bit windows on it natively. No need for sources, practically everyone that has a 1st gen and tried to upgrade their video cards discovered this unfortunate fact. It caused quite an uproar in 2008 when they released the 8800GT and said that 1st gen users couldn't use it due to the EFI problem.
As far as the bottle neck, I'm not entirely sure if it's the processor, the slow ram, or the architecture, but if you head over to barefeats.com you can see that any video card above the radeon 4870 performs the same on a 1st gen mac pro, thus something else is slowing things down somewhere because the newer cards don't provide any performance increase.
Oh and the reason why the ATI cards work is because ATI was nice enough to make it backwards compatible with the 32 bit efi. You can't use the newer nvidia cards with the 1st gens because of the 32 bit efi problem!
http://barefeats.com/wst10g5.html
Here is one of many examples. With the exception of portal, you can see what I mean.
Also, these tests don't mention the that fact that windows will only see 2GB of your ram if using the 1st gen. So as games take up more and more ram this starts to have an effect as well.
Here is one of many examples. With the exception of portal, you can see what I mean.
Also, these tests don't mention the that fact that windows will only see 2GB of your ram if using the 1st gen. So as games take up more and more ram this starts to have an effect as well.
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I wasn't aware that the 32bit EFI issue affected Windows installations as well. Is that another limitation imposed by Apple on Bootcamp? Apple could release a 64bit EFI for the 1,1 MP anytime as there is no hardware limitation. Pretty silly for Apple especially if they use such a method to force people to upgrade their perfectly capable computers just to run the latest software and hardware.
The only limitation that would cause a bottleneck on the 1,1 MP that I'm aware of is the fact the it does not have PCIe 2.0.
Yes, I'm aware of this. There has been success in running later Nvidia cards on a 1,1 MP using hacks involving keeping 2 video cards inside.
Thanks for the link. I'll study that more in detail. It would certainly seem that there is no performance gain in using a 5870/6870 but makes you wonder why Portal would take advantage of a more powerful card? Is it a code-based problem? If it were a hardware limitation, surely Portal would show similar results as others? And if Portal shows a performance gain, how many other games out there would how improved performance over 4870/5770? Has anyone tested all the games?
The 1,1 MP definitely is not the best gaming rig out there but surely not bad, now is it? Not being the best can mean still being pretty good. Even very good.
64bit Wind0ze not working is news to me, it's fine on my 1,1 ;-). The only caveat is that you may need to rebuild the iso with different settings so that it will boot to the installer. Other than that, no problems at all.
With either the 5770 or 5870 (your two choices of video card in a Mac Pro) you will NOT get a CPU bottleneck, even with something like Crysis 2 DX11.
With either the 5770 or 5870 (your two choices of video card in a Mac Pro) you will NOT get a CPU bottleneck, even with something like Crysis 2 DX11.
I would buy a new iMac personally, quad core i5 is the base CPU, it will fly compared to a 2006 Mac Pro or your i3 iMac.