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Mac pro 4 core or 8 core?

T

Toneboat923

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 1, 2008
57
0
Howdy,
Well as a breif introduction i am new here as well as new to mac's. i just made the big conversion from pc to mc (thank god). I recently purchased a new mac pro (4 core) and new mac book pro. More recently I learned that apple is releasing an 8-core mac pro. This fustrates me a little because I JUST purchased the 4 core.

Now I am a design student and trust me this mac pro definately meets my needs, but I am wondering how big of a difference the 8 core makes? Would it be worth returning or selling my mac pro and getting the 8 core?:confused:
 
I have an 8 core mac pro now. They have been out since January. Did you really not know about he 8 core standard mac pro since january? You would have had to downgrade to a 4 core.
 
When I went to my local Apple store they told me that the 8 core wasn't available "yet" and that this was the best one out now.....
 
i may be a little bit of a noob on this but i just looked over my recipt and I don't know if this means anything but it says..

Mac Pro 2.8
8cx/2x1g/320/2600xt/sd
 
on my mac specs it also says

2 x 2.8 ghz quad-core intel xeon


so dos this mean i have 8 core and the salesman is a moron?
 
ahhhhhhhh ok ..thanks..sorry to be such a newb but I never really took much interest in any computer I've own internally so when I got this mac i wanted to make sure I had the best...after all I did spend 5 grand in one day :cool:
 
Toneboat923 said:
ahhhhhhhh ok ..thanks..sorry to be such a newb but I never really took much interest in any computer I've own internally so when I got this mac i wanted to make sure I had the best...after all I did spend 5 grand in one day :cool:
Click to expand...

Just in case, could you post the items you bought and how much you paid for each? I dont want you to have gotten ripped off after what the salesman said about the cores. Thanks.
 
mackbook pro 1,999 with 200.00 discount

mac pro 2,799 with 200.00 discount

then he got me to upgrade the ram on the laptop from 2 gig to 4 gig for 400.00 then i got 200.00 back for selling back the two 1 gig chips (if that makes any sense)
 
Toneboat923 said:
mackbook pro 1,999 with 200.00 discount

mac pro 2,799 with 200.00 discount

then he got me to upgrade the ram on the laptop from 2 gig to 4 gig for 400.00 then i got 200.00 back for selling back the two 1 gig chips (if that makes any sense)
Click to expand...
You should never buy Apple RAM. It's wicked expensive. You can get 4GB or RAM from Crucial or Kingston for less that $90.
 
well the laptop i onyl paid 100.00 bucks for 2 gig so its not that bad, but i more recently threw another 4 gig of ram into my mac pro for 120.00 from new egg wich was a sweet deal...I wanna have the ram all filled up by xmas
 
Unless you run complex algorithms and simulations like my dad does with his company's mac pro 8 core with 64GB ram, you probably don't need more than 10-15gb of ram. and if someone posts saying that 64GB ram is impossible, the mac pro in question runs linux with supports 64gb ram and they expanded the ram slots.
 
Toneboat923 said:
When I went to my local Apple store they told me that the 8 core wasn't available "yet" and that this was the best one out now.....
Click to expand...


they have been out for ages as the standard configuration

the dude lied to you
Click to expand...
It sounds like there was misunderstanding. The salesperson may have thought you were asking for an octo-core CPU. He's right, there is no such Mac yet; quad-core CPUs top the charts for now.

What you got, and is being referred to as an 8-core system, is really dual quad-core CPUs. Which is what you wanted, but probably didn't realize that, and the salesperson didn't grasp that's what you meant.
 
Toneboat923 said:
Now I am a design student and trust me this mac pro definately meets my needs, but I am wondering how big of a difference the 8 core makes? Would it be worth returning or selling my mac pro and getting the 8 core?:confused:
Click to expand...

Seems nobody answered the original question yet...

The eight core Mac doesn't do anything faster than the quad core. But you can throw more work at it... and more... and more... and more... At the point where the quad core has four cores running at hundred percent, you have still four cores doing nothing. So you can throw more work at it... and more... and more... and more...

Turn on Activity Monitor while your Mac is working really hard and display the "CPU window". You'll see eight bars showing CPU activity. When they average over 50 percent, that's where the four core Mac would start slowing down.
 
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